Digital BW, The Print

I'd like to do some experiments with the qimage demo to see if I like
it and could use some input. Since I use StudioPrint all I will do is
use it to process tiffs, then place them in the RIP. First of all, I
was told the x600 printers were native 720dpi, no? I thought qimage
reported back the printer native dpi, and it currently says 360x360
for my 9600.
Also, any advice you could give about the various scaling/sharpening
algorythms would be a help, I'd like to limit my experimenting time.
Basically, I'd just like to see if I can get better large prints from
smaller format files. Is this worth playing with for that, or are
normal Photoshop tools going to get me to pretty much the same place?
Thanks,
Tyler

PS- of course what I'm really trying to do is avoid reading the manual...

very strange, my first test it spit back out an RGB file from my gray.
I guess I really do have to read the manual.
T

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Tyler Boley" 
<tyler@t...> wrote:
>
> very strange, my first test it spit back out an RGB file from my 
gray.
> I guess I really do have to read the manual.
> T
>

Doesn't Studioprint give you a good interpolation for scaling?

Qimage may not understand grayscale, and I know it doesn't understand 
CMYK (at least not CMYK profiles). I made some CMYK profiles for 
someone using the HP RIP with a 130, and he needs to jump through 
hoops to get his images to push through Qimage. Something about the 
HP RIP not knowing about black point compensation, so he needs to 
convert to the cmyk space in photoshop, and then convert back to an 
RGB space to use Qimage.

There was a long string of messages in this group on this topic quite a
while ago. Roy Harrington and Mike Chaney worked together to find the best
way for Qimage to send images to QTR for printing. The RGB/gray effect that
you are seeing was widely discussed. Some posts may have appeared on the
DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint group also.

Steve Bye

-----Original Message-----
From: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Tyler
Boley
Sent: Saturday, October 22, 2005 3:32 PM
To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Digital BW] Re: qimage advice?

very strange, my first test it spit back out an RGB file from my gray.
I guess I really do have to read the manual.
Tyler

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Greg"
<dfaprinting@y...> wrote:
...
> Doesn't Studioprint give you a good interpolation for scaling?

yes it does, but it doesn't do what I would call "smart" scaling and
sharpening, using some of these fancy algorythms qimage and some other
apps have. 99.9% of the time it works great and I don't think about
it. But I'm getting more and more files in that are less than ideal,
and people want prints from them that are too big. So I thought I
would play with some other options.
> 
> Qimage may not understand grayscale...

yes that may be the problem. It seems to make it's decisions based on
what the selected printer driver wants to see, which is RGB.
On the other hand, I think a lot of people are using it with QTR, so
maybe I'm just doing something wrong...
Tyler

The newer Epson desktop printers, probably 1280 or later, are native 720
dpi, but the Epson X600 wide format printers are native 360. I think I read
this in a FAQ somewhere on the Qimage homepage, but I can't find it now. I
like the fact that Qimage can apply "smart sharpening" after the
interpolation to 720 dpi, which is not something I'd want to do in Photoshop
because of the file size. Qimage's advantage is less important for the wide
format printers since 360 dpi is not too much different from the resolution
of my original file.

In my tests I could detect a slight improvement in detail when using Qimage
to up-sample and then smart sharpen, but only with images that really had
very sharp detail. 

Regarding interpolation methods, here are three links which you may have
already seen. 

http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage/quality/
http://www.steves-digicams.com/techcorner/January_2005.html
http://www.ddisoftware.com/testpics/resample.jpg

Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Tyler
Boley
Sent: Saturday, October 22, 2005 3:20 PM
To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Digital BW] qimage advice?

I'd like to do some experiments with the qimage demo to see if I like
it and could use some input. Since I use StudioPrint all I will do is
use it to process tiffs, then place them in the RIP. First of all, I
was told the x600 printers were native 720dpi, no? I thought qimage
reported back the printer native dpi, and it currently says 360x360
for my 9600.
Also, any advice you could give about the various scaling/sharpening
algorythms would be a help, I'd like to limit my experimenting time.
Basically, I'd just like to see if I can get better large prints from
smaller format files. Is this worth playing with for that, or are
normal Photoshop tools going to get me to pretty much the same place?
Thanks,
Tyler

PS- of course what I'm really trying to do is avoid reading the manual...

thanks for all the info Steve.
Hey, how was that color management evening for a couple of hours of
clarity, eh?
I'm suprised people weren't running away screaming...
T

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Steve Bye"
<steve_bye@c...> wrote:
>
> The newer Epson desktop printers, probably 1280 or later, are native 720
> dpi, but the Epson X600 wide format printers are native 360. I think
I read
> this in a FAQ somewhere on the Qimage homepage, but I can't find it
now. I
> like the fact that Qimage can apply "smart sharpening" after the
> interpolation to 720 dpi, which is not something I'd want to do in
Photoshop
> because of the file size. Qimage's advantage is less important for
the wide
> format printers since 360 dpi is not too much different from the
resolution
> of my original file.
> 
> In my tests I could detect a slight improvement in detail when using
Qimage
> to up-sample and then smart sharpen, but only with images that
really had
> very sharp detail. 
> 
> Regarding interpolation methods, here are three links which you may have
> already seen. 
> 
> http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage/quality/
> http://www.steves-digicams.com/techcorner/January_2005.html
> http://www.ddisoftware.com/testpics/resample.jpg
> 
> Steve
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
> [mailto:DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Tyler
> Boley
> Sent: Saturday, October 22, 2005 3:20 PM
> To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [Digital BW] qimage advice?
> 
> I'd like to do some experiments with the qimage demo to see if I like
> it and could use some input. Since I use StudioPrint all I will do is
> use it to process tiffs, then place them in the RIP. First of all, I
> was told the x600 printers were native 720dpi, no? I thought qimage
> reported back the printer native dpi, and it currently says 360x360
> for my 9600.
> Also, any advice you could give about the various scaling/sharpening
> algorythms would be a help, I'd like to limit my experimenting time.
> Basically, I'd just like to see if I can get better large prints from
> smaller format files. Is this worth playing with for that, or are
> normal Photoshop tools going to get me to pretty much the same place?
> Thanks,
> Tyler
> 
> PS- of course what I'm really trying to do is avoid reading the
manual...
>

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Tyler Boley" <tyler@t...> 
wrote:
>
> very strange, my first test it spit back out an RGB file from my gray.
> I guess I really do have to read the manual.
> T
>

From the little I've used Qimage, it accepts grayscale but after that all
operations are RGB.  QTR takes the RGB tiff and converts it to grayscale
on input.   So yes if works but there's some extra conversions happening.

Roy

Tyler Boley wrote:
> I'd like to do some experiments with the qimage demo to see if I like
> it and could use some input. Since I use StudioPrint all I will do is
> use it to process tiffs, then place them in the RIP. First of all, I
> was told the x600 printers were native 720dpi, no? I thought qimage
> reported back the printer native dpi, and it currently says 360x360
> for my 9600.
> Also, any advice you could give about the various scaling/sharpening
> algorythms would be a help, I'd like to limit my experimenting time.
> Basically, I'd just like to see if I can get better large prints from
> smaller format files. Is this worth playing with for that, or are
> normal Photoshop tools going to get me to pretty much the same place?
> Thanks,
> Tyler
> 
> PS- of course what I'm really trying to do is avoid reading the manual...

Qimage is RGB and RGB only. The greyscale will be handled as 
RGB and if you want to use the conversions to the QTR matte 
profile etc you need to use the RGB version of the profiles. 
Qimage's color management delivers the same color print 
results as Photoshop does but I rather use PS to do the 
greyscale conversions with the QTR profiles and then feed 
Qimage with the greyscale while Qimage's color management is 
off. I'm not sure after some tests that it does the greyscale 
conversions correct.

The 9600 has two native PPI's: the finest settings ask for 720 
PPI and Qimage reports that, the other ones are 360 PPI.

With huge enlargements: 8 MP take to say 3 x 4 feet I use the 
max of interpolations and pyramid but take the sharpening down 
to 2 as otherwise the artifacts are not acceptable. At that 
size you see that it is enlarged but my customers can't get 
better quality.

The manual is quite useful though and the GUI is not that 
informative while trying things out so I had to read a thing 
or two.
                    --
           Ernst Dinkla


www.pigment-print.com
(         unvollendet         )

Thanks Ernst, every single question answered! Sounds like gray-RGB-back to gray would 
be necessary for my idea. Perhaps not wise.
Tyler

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Ernst Dinkla <E.Dinkla@c...> 
wrote:

>
> Tyler Boley wrote:
> > I'd like to do some experiments with the qimage demo to see if I like
> > it and could use some input. Since I use StudioPrint all I will do is
> > use it to process tiffs, then place them in the RIP. First of all, I
> > was told the x600 printers were native 720dpi, no? I thought qimage
> > reported back the printer native dpi, and it currently says 360x360
> > for my 9600.
> > Also, any advice you could give about the various scaling/sharpening
> > algorythms would be a help, I'd like to limit my experimenting time.
> > Basically, I'd just like to see if I can get better large prints from
> > smaller format files. Is this worth playing with for that, or are
> > normal Photoshop tools going to get me to pretty much the same place?
> > Thanks,
> > Tyler
> > 
> > PS- of course what I'm really trying to do is avoid reading the manual...
> 
> Qimage is RGB and RGB only. The greyscale will be handled as 
> RGB and if you want to use the conversions to the QTR matte 
> profile etc you need to use the RGB version of the profiles. 
> Qimage's color management delivers the same color print 
> results as Photoshop does but I rather use PS to do the 
> greyscale conversions with the QTR profiles and then feed 
> Qimage with the greyscale while Qimage's color management is 
> off. I'm not sure after some tests that it does the greyscale 
> conversions correct.
> 
> The 9600 has two native PPI's: the finest settings ask for 720 
> PPI and Qimage reports that, the other ones are 360 PPI.
> 
> With huge enlargements: 8 MP take to say 3 x 4 feet I use the 
> max of interpolations and pyramid but take the sharpening down 
> to 2 as otherwise the artifacts are not acceptable. At that 
> size you see that it is enlarged but my customers can't get 
> better quality.
> 
> The manual is quite useful though and the GUI is not that 
> informative while trying things out so I had to read a thing 
> or two.
>                     --
>            Ernst Dinkla
> 
> 
> www.pigment-print.com
> (         unvollendet         )
>