QTR-Quadtone RIP

> On Nov 20, 2018, at 9:00 PM, per@... [QuadtoneRIP] <QuadtoneRIP@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
> 
> Is this really what cutting edge printers do when using QTR?

Doing a manual translation curve is not what cutting edge printers do, no. The first thing is to linearize/normalize your paper (you did it yay!). The second thing is to make sure you are working in Gray Gamma 2.2 space (Photoshop defaults to DotGain 20, check this out and convert to GG2.2 if you have the wrong working space.) The third thing to do is really look at your work environment. If you are viewing in too dark a space, than this will adversely effect your pixel-to-ink match. (In fifteen years of teaching print-work I can’t count how many times a student comes to me saying their print is too dark but they are looking at their print next to their monitor and the print is in the shadows.) The fourth thing to do is look at the actual computer screen environment. If you have a gray background in full-screen-mode, switch this to white so you can see your image as it appears on the printed page, etc.  The fifth (or first) thing, and this is actually what is really important which I think maybe the original poster is dancing around a bit, look at the quality of your monitor. If it’s a cheap monitor there is no way to actually do any cutting edge printing: it won’t show you the tonal range and will possibly never be properly calibrated. Think about buying an i1display or use your existing Spectro if it does monitors too, etc.

The takeaway here is this: if you’ve validated that the printer is printing in a uniform matter, that is not the problem. The problem is further upstream either with the gamma that you are saving your files in, or the monitor, room, etc. It could be a combination. Fudging with a temporary contrast match curve is a very old-school way of doing it when you have given up controlling any of the underlying variables at play and don’t want to get a better monitor. To answer the question above, no it’s not what cutting edge printmakers do: they actually control the variables directly so monitor matches printer or printer matches monitor.

Related to soft-proof: QTR_RGB_Matte and QTR_RGB_Gloss work just fine and are installed by default (at least on Mac, not sure on PC). You need to follow the instructions and soft proof using "Preserve RGB Numbers” if you are printing without an ICC (aka, on the PC or with no color management on the Mac).

Best regards,
Walker


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