Digital BW, The Print

I've been criticized by a couple of people, off-list, for being too easy on 
HP in my post about the Z series printers. These are first-of-kind machines, so 
I think its important to emphasize the potential more than the details, but I 
agree there are other issues worth mentioning. The first is the fact that 
both people contacted me privately; there seems to be a sense of foreboding about 
criticizing HP openly. That seems odd to me: I wrote an absolutely scathing 
review of a much earlier HP wide format model, and received feedback from HP 
reps on three continents within 24 hours. They disagreed with me on some points, 
pointed out workarounds or firmware updates for others, extended my warranty, 
and shipped me new CDs. Overall I'd have to say it was a positive experience, 
and no once did I feel that I was having my arm twisted, as I have with a 
number of other companies over the years. More importantly, virtually every point 
of criticism was addressed in the next generation of HP printers, so my 
complaints were certainly not ignored.

On to the list of "sensitive" issues with the Z series printers. First would 
be profiling time. Its a bit odd, but HP's marketing materials say something 
like "no longer does it take hours to profile your printer". Strange choice of 
angles, as the automatic profiling is easy, convenient, and close to 
idiotproof, but not particularly fast. I can build a profile with any of the current 
handheld spectros faster. I don't understand why HP is sensitive about this, its 
pretty much automatic, so its not that critical how long it takes. Setting up 
a straw man to knock down, when the serious user already knows how long it 
takes to build a profile manually is a poor alternative to emphasising the Z 
series strongpoints.

That leads to the issue of drydown. HP seems to somehow feel that having the 
profiling process clog up our printer for a day makes the magic go away. Well, 
once you load a roll, you are hardly going to unload it, damage some ends, 
and print on another media for 24 hours before reading the patches back in with 
the printer. So HP downlpays the issue that serious profiling is generally 
done with at least several hours of drydown. I can see that once the target is 
out of the printer, putting it back in later is not much more convenient than 
reading by hand, so this would be a touchy issue. But its certainly possible to 
put off most profiling untili the end of the day, print the target, and not 
read it until morning, so this is not a huge problem. And wet results from 
Ultrachrome-type inks are quite reasonable on many media, so this is only an issue 
for some paper types, and for the most demanding users.

Next is patch numbers. HP materials state 500 patches. But when you count 
them, its actually three hundred and some odd. Again, this seems to be a 
sensitive point, and HP reps at Photokina were stating that the linearization patches 
are "sort of" included. These patches certainly assist in improving results, 
but they absolutely cannnot be part of the patches that are used to 
characterize the printer for profiling. So again the marketing spin seems to point out 
that HP is uncomfortable about this. Which is silly, since profiles from patch 
sets in the 300 patch range can be very good. Admittedly the current Z series 
does not offer an alternative with more patches (next step up is typically in 
the 800 patch range) for situations where their lower patch option doesn't do 
the trick. But for most typical media (and certainly all HP media recommended 
for these printers), the current patch number should be fine. Gloss fine art 
papers, non-gessoed canvas and other new media would have to be tested as they 
appear to make sure they are sufficiently linear on the Z printers to profile 
well with the current number of patches.

Last, and very definately least, is HP's gloss optimizer. The GLOP is printed 
in an area outside the image, so signing, numbering and notating gloss/luster 
prints occurs on top of the GLOP. This is a real opportunity for someone to 
create an archival, HP GLOP compatible pen, as I ruined every pen in my 
briefcase writing on Z3100 prints.

So, I hope that covers the issues that it was felt I "glossed over" in my 
previous post...

C. David Tobie
Product Technology Manager
ColorVision Business Unit
Datacolor Inc.
CDTobie@...
www.colorvision.com



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