QTR-Quadtone RIP

Jim & Nick,

First of all -- Nick, thanks for doing some write ups -- every bit helps.

Color Management with the endless permutations and combinations of
programs and settings is not
easy to figure out what's going on.  For color/RGB/epson color driver
I think PS, LR, and PT can all
give pretty much the same results. (PT does use the Apple CM ColorSync
rather than Adobe's CM
which is the only caveat).  But getting all the settings identical can
be a challenge.  Between Apple
and Adobe there are many copies of the print settings -- saved with
the image file, saved with the
program, default settings, last-used settings, saved presets, current
settings(if you change anything).
If some of these settings are different, results can depend on what
order you go through the menus.

One particular print setting that I think is most often forgotten is
the Color Matching dialog pane.
It usually has two selections:  ColorSync or Epson Controls (or QTR Controls).
PS and LR both override this making is ColorSync when you pick PS or
LR controls color.  This
overrides all the above settings.  You get to select which when you
pick Printer Controls Color.
PT always allows you to pick  (I may be able to figure out how to do
this too in the future).
So if you are trying to get the same output from different programs
you ought to check this.

Grayscale printing is more of a problem.  First PS and LR no longer
show any gray profiles at all.
This seems a bit arbitrary but since QTR is the only gray icc creator
I guess they never noticed.
Even without this problem grayscale printing for the last several
versions of PS and OSX have
had gray icc CM problems -- CS3 was the last one where gray & RGB
worked well.  My usage of
PT puts out identical results as the old CS3 -- which was my goal. Of
course if you've
compensated for the later PS versions you may not get the same results with PT.
With so many potential workflows its really hard to comment about
specific results people get.

Roy

On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 11:25 AM, Jim Stewart <8jstewart@...> wrote:
> Thanks, Nick.
>
> Yes, I'm only referring to the B&W side of PrintTool used with QTR RIP.
>
> As soon as I drop the file into PrintTool, I can tell that it's notably darker (not lighter) than the image I exported from LR (I exported it various ways: ProPhoto and QTR_RGB_matte. I'm limited in LR in profiles available to export with; GG2.2 is not available, and I can't figure out why LR doesn't see it in my Colrosync folders.
>
> The Print Module in LR is actually pretty good. I can CM within LR using "QTR_RGB_Matte" and when I print to my Quad9600, I see and can use the QTR_RIP options to select my curves. If I'm careful, and lucky, the prints come out close to what I want. I was hoping PT would make it all seamlessů still more research to do I guess.
>
> Thanks for helping out.
>
> Jim
>
>
>
> On Nov 28, 2012, at 12:07 PM, nmenghardt wrote:
>
>> J. Riley,
>>
>> I've got a few questions about your workflow. You're outputting files from Lightroom with ProPhoto RGB and selecting "no color management" in the color management section. Is this because you're using quadtone rip?
>>
>> The Print-Tool will convert your images to gray if you're outputting through one of your quad printers.
>>
>> I just ran a test exporting a raw file from lightroom using ProPhoto RGB as the colorspace, dropped it in to QTR Print Tool. It read the embedded profile correctly. Color management set to off, sent to our quad7800 matte black printer. in qtr selected the 16 bit option and the HanPhotoRag-Neutral curve that was created for that printer.
>>
>> The image outputted with normal values and gray densities nearly match the color version using Hahnemuhle's canned profile for the 7800mk albeit the grayscale print is a bit lighter than I'd prefer and this is why:
>>
>> AdobeRGB 1998 uses Gamma 2.2 and ProPhoto RGB is built on 1.8. This can lead to a difference in densities between your prints. This is also why it's better to use AdobeRGB 1998 or Gray Gamma 2.2 when outputting with QuadTone RIP as it produces images more closely using that gamma setting than 1.8.
>>
>> Hope some of this offers some insight as to what's going on with your prints.
>>
>> Nick Enghardt
>> St. Edward's University Advanced Imaging Lab Manager
>>
>> --- In QuadtoneRIP@yahoogroups.com, Jim Stewart <8jstewart@...> wrote:
>> >
>> > Lightroom keeps all edits to an image in a sidecar file that Print Tool doesn't apparently see. Therefore, you need to export the file to one of the compatible PT formats before sending it to PrintTool. Also, by default, Lightroom embed Prophoto colorspace to all files (color and B&W). So when you export the flattened file, you can choose to have it convert to another color space or keep it ProPhoto.
>> >
>> > I read that QTR PrintTool converts all RGB files to Gray, and that the image in PT preview should look the same as it does in Lightroom preview, or very close. My problem is that it doesn'tů PT image (on screen and printed) is noticeably darker. I've tried various fixes, but the only thing that seems to work is to edit the image in Photoshop, convert it to GrayGamma 2.2, then print it using PrintTool, using "No Color Management"
>> >
>> > The other method that comes close is to use the file exported from Lightroom in ProPhoto space, open it in Print Tool, but to use "Application Managed" CM with the color space as "QTR-RGB-Matte" (the paper I'm using). Then once I hit "Print" and the QTR dialogue box opens, I set it to my curves setting.
>> >
>> > I'm still not sure what's going on as I'm following all the most recent instructions for Print Tool, but I don't want to open my B&W files in PS just to convert to GG2.2 in order for PrintTool to work. Perhaps PT isn't the best solution for LR usersů. don't know. Anyone have any thoughts about this?
>> >
>> > J. Riley Stewart
>> >
>>
>>
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-- 
Roy Harrington
roy@...
www.harrington.com