Digital BW, The Print

George Lepp has posted some new profiles for the 2200 on his web 
site. I tried the new one for Premium Semi Glossy. It produces a 
more neutral b/w than the previous one. The profiles are in a zipped 
file. They are :

Name                  Paper
Epson2200pbPremLuster Epson Premium Luster Photo Paper
Epson2200pbMatteHeavy Epson Matte Heavyweight
Epson2200pbPremSemiG  Epson Premium Semigloss Photo Paper
Epson2200pbProGlossy  Epson Professional Glossy Paper
Epson2200mbVelvet     Epson Velvet Fine Art Paper


Find them at 

http://www.leppphoto.com/learn/articles/profiles.htm

He promises that  "Additional profiles for matte papers using the 
Matte Black ink will be added soon."

Thanks George! Bring us one for Premium Glossy please!

The problem I'm running into with greyscale images on the 2200 is 
with metamerism. From what I understand metamerism is caused by an 
unaligned distribution of pigment particles in the ink that causes 
the reflected light to scatter. It seems that as the thickness of the 
the ink layer varies so does the metamerism effect thus getting a hue 
shift across tones. The fundamental hue will change depending on the 
frequency of light reflecting off the ink pigment, this is why you 
get the characteristic magenta cast under tungsten light and green 
cast under daylight. Since the hue is constantly shifting within 
lighter and darker areas of the print due to metamerism, you can't 
really build a custom profile to counter this effect since no 
spectrophotometer/profile bundle is designed to deal with metamerism.

Another phenomenom that we have to deal with is that the human eye 
can pick up a subtle color cast in a greyscale image right away when 
the same cast may go unnoticed in a color image. Tons of toner 
solution has been sold in the conventional darkroom field to take 
artistic advantage of this ability to pick up a color cast in 
greyscale. 

So, as far as digital greyscale images are concerned, one could have 
a spot-on profile but still have an unacceptable print due to 
metamerism. The bottom line is this: metamerism is an ink issue and 
must be solved there before greyscales are beautifully consistant 
using archival pigment inks.

Mechanically Epson printers are there, now Epson should concentrate 
on their drivers and inks to deal with the above. I know it can be 
done (in fact, some say ColorByte's ImagePrint 5.0 RIP has already 
done it, although it wouldn't run on my machine), and when it is we 
can concentrate on the art -- and Epson can sell more printers and 
ink. I would call that a win-win situation.

You wrote "you can't really build a custom profile to counter this
effect since no 
spectrophotometer/profile bundle is designed to deal with metamerism."
This is about to change. I had a lengthy discussion with a
Gretag/Macbeth engineer at PhotoPlus Expo in NYC last month.
He said that Q1 - 2003, software will be available for the EyeOne to
make it act as a spectroradiometer (Boy, that's my word-of-the-week)
The concept is that a standard profile is built; the EyeOne (presumably
on a laptop) is placed under the display light source (the EyeOne, I
assume is pointed at the light source to measure the ambient light).
This data then modifies the profile to create one which, under that
specific light source, exhibits no metamerism)
Also, ColorByte's profiles for Imageprint come in 3 flavors (cool white,
daylight and tungsten). The metamerism issue is being addressed.



 
Stan Shire
Associate Professor/Department Chair
Photographic Imaging
Community College of Philadelphia
Adobe Photoshop 6 A.C.E.
Author: Hands On Photoshop 7: Tutorial Workshops

215 751-8320
sshire@...

-----Original Message-----
From: sanfo2003 <SandyCornelius@...> [mailto:SandyCornelius@...]

Sent: Sunday, December 08, 2002 3:10 PM
To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Digital BW] Re: New Lepp Profiles for 2200
 
The problem I'm running into with greyscale images on the 2200 is 
with metamerism. From what I understand metamerism is caused by an 
unaligned distribution of pigment particles in the ink that causes 
the reflected light to scatter. It seems that as the thickness of the 
the ink layer varies so does the metamerism effect thus getting a hue 
shift across tones. The fundamental hue will change depending on the 
frequency of light reflecting off the ink pigment, this is why you 
get the characteristic magenta cast under tungsten light and green 
cast under daylight. Since the hue is constantly shifting within 
lighter and darker areas of the print due to metamerism, you can't 
really build a custom profile to counter this effect since no 
spectrophotometer/profile bundle is designed to deal with metamerism.

Another phenomenom that we have to deal with is that the human eye 
can pick up a subtle color cast in a greyscale image right away when 
the same cast may go unnoticed in a color image. Tons of toner 
solution has been sold in the conventional darkroom field to take 
artistic advantage of this ability to pick up a color cast in 
greyscale. 

So, as far as digital greyscale images are concerned, one could have 
a spot-on profile but still have an unacceptable print due to 
metamerism. The bottom line is this: metamerism is an ink issue and 
must be solved there before greyscales are beautifully consistant 
using archival pigment inks.

Mechanically Epson printers are there, now Epson should concentrate 
on their drivers and inks to deal with the above. I know it can be 
done (in fact, some say ColorByte's ImagePrint 5.0 RIP has already 
done it, although it wouldn't run on my machine), and when it is we 
can concentrate on the art -- and Epson can sell more printers and 
ink. I would call that a win-win situation.


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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Fantastic! Now you're talking -- I hope to be among the first in line 
for such a device if Gregtag MacBeth decides to market it (unle$$, of 
cour$e, it$ out of my league). The viewing advantage still goes to 
the conventional print, however, because metamerism would still be 
there in the digital archival print -- you just wouldn't be able to 
see its effects while the print was viewed under the profiled light 
source. Move the print into different lighting conditions and 
metamerism raises its ugly head again. It would be so nice if 
metamerism just went away altogether like in a dye-ink digital print. 
Thanks for the info -- it gives me hope.