Digital BW, The Print

Charlotte,  If you have an extra $600 to spend and want to gain control with
a more straight forward supported approach, you can use the Print Fix Pro
Suite and make profiles for use in an RGB environment and it would give you
good results. If that is a lot for you, try looking into QTR ($50) and using
your flat bed scanner to make things that look and act like ICC profiles.
The "real" profile makers are into the thousands and take some time to get
good at interpreting data and are really good for high volume precise
printing houses. If you haven't been printing high quality ink jets for a
long time, let me suggest this as a path.

 

Find or make a 100 step gray scale and print it using your ABW setting and
paper. Save those that really make you happy both for range and color
issues; i.e. toning. It works well if you are used to looking at your prints
in a somewhat critical way for separation of scale and evenness of tonal
scale. 

 

If you are trying to do color printing I have found that saturation and hue
are the two basic controls that help without custom profiles that really
work. Once again, QTR might help you down that path as well. 

 

I have seen that the less money you spend, the more "fly by the seat of your
pants" skills are required to get it right. But you can get it right. The
products like Profile Maker 5 by Gray Tag will give you plenty of control,
maybe more than you need, but a good solid program package both for making
and editing profiles. The more sophisticated the product the more devices
you will be able to work with like printers, projectors, etc. It provides
you a visual 3D tool to inspect your profiles and allows you to see where
things are not fitting. 

   

And just like there are PCs and MACs, not all profiling systems will talk to
each other and make data that can be read across the board. If you do go the
profiling route, realize that we have gone from 6 to 12 ink machines in a
short time. While we also had only extremely high priced profile packages to
work with and now there available to nearly ever serious amateur. Buy
wisely. 

 

Eric

 

Eric Neilsen Photography

4101 Commerce Street, Suite 9

Dallas, TX 75226

214-827-8301

http://ericneilsenphotography.com

 

Skype : ejprinter

  _____  

From: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Tyler
Boley
Sent: Wednesday, May 23, 2007 1:41 PM
To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Digital BW] Re: opening an icm file

 

--- In DigitalBlackandWhit
<mailto:DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint%40yahoogroups.com>
eThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Charlotte"
<cieloblu@...> wrote:
>
> Hi. Thanks for your replies. I was just wondering if opening an icm
file and adjusting it is a good starting point when I am not satisfied
with a profile.

Actually that is a bit of a daunting task, and not something many
people recommend. You'd need special profile editing software, not cheap.

> I have a 2400 and use the paper makers icm which is usually not
completely to my liking. I can easily make adjustments in the ABW and
save it for that paper.

This is a bit confusing, a color profile is not really applicable to
use with the ABW epson printing system. THough you could select one in
the Print With Preview section of photoshop, it would have been made
for color printing and very specific settings in the color section of
the driver. Pretty much irrelevant for ABW use.

> For other adjustments such as contrast, lightening and darkening a
tone I use a curves layer adjustment in CS3 and save it with the
papers name for future use if it is an adjustment I think will be
useful in the future. Clayton's, Paul's and this list's information
have been very helpful. The information and process involved in the
creation of an icm is a bit overwhelming for me and will take me a
while to grasp it all, if ever I do. 

You'd need specific software to do so, and also a measurement device.
Additionally, if you are talking ABW use for B&W printing instead of
color, the only relevant profiles would be those you can make with
QTR's Create ICC. None of the others, including those supplied by
paper makers, would be useful with the ABW section of the Epson driver.
For use with the color section of the driver, even for B&W, "real" icc
profiles would be relevant and there are applicable commercial
solutions available. I suspect someone may volunteer a specific
recommendation.
Tyler



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