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QTR-Quadtone RIP

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Newbie issues

Newbie issues

2016-09-19 by paul.yarnall@...

Hi, new guy and new to Quadtone. Installed in an iMac running El Capitan. Lightroom CC 2015. Epson 3880. The drivers installed OK. I can pick a QTR profile for softproofing. I can pick the Quad3800-K7 printer in the printer settings and I can pick the K7-2880-HahnPhotoRag for Curve 1.


I have tried printing a B&W file twice... once with color management by "Printer" and once picking "QTR_RGB_Photo_Paper". Both times I get a psychedelic print composed of garish red pale yellow and dark blue.


I appear to be overlooking something really basic, but I don't' know what it is.


Any suggestions?


Thanks?

Re: Newbie issues

2016-09-20 by paul.yarnall@...

A follow up.... I discovered my primary error... installing the K7 printer - profiles. Should have installed the UC printer - profiles. My bad.

I picked the UCpk-PRBaryta-cool-2880 as well as another profile and finally succeeded in getting a B&W print.

I can't say I am impressed with the documentation provided by Quadtone.... all the documents are rather dated, and none are very specific to Lightroom. All the profiles have fairly cryptic names... some are easier to decode than others. For example. I have no idea what UCmk vs UCpk means. PR? M? H (Hahnemuele?), and so on. I use the Hahnemuele Photo Rag Baryta which perhaps is the UCmk-HPhotorag series? I don't see a profile for Epson Exhibition Fiber, which is disappointing.

Perhaps my B&W needs aren't sophisticated enough to justify the effort and confusion of sorting out Quadtone, but I would love to be convinced.

Happy to hear from sympathetic users with Quadtone experience.


Re: [QuadtoneRIP] Re: Newbie issues

2016-09-20 by forums@walkerblackwell.com

The answers to all your questions lie in this forum via searching.

That said, there are certainly more things that can be done vis a vis QTR Documentation. Some practitioners have done some excellent work in the past but it certainly can be updated.

UCmk means Ultrachrome Matte Black (MK is the universally recognized symbol for Matte Black in the printing world). UCpk is the same for Photo Black. The reason why Black is not designated a “B” is because that would denote Blue and get confusing.

HPR is Hahnemuhle Photo Rag (a matte paper). You will see references to “HPR” on this forum quite a bit.

Most of the gloss profiles will work on every gloss paper. Most of the matte profiles will work on every matte paper so don’t be disappointed by lack of profiles. They aren’t really profiles, they are media types essentially: ink percentages. This is the same as the Advanced Black and White where you have only say 5 different media types that are supported by ABW but those media types print “well” on hundreds of papers.

QTR can certainly be a beast to get running but once it is it produces superior results.

best,
Walker
Show quoted textHide quoted text
> On Sep 19, 2016, at 9:46 PM, paul.yarnall@... [QuadtoneRIP] <QuadtoneRIP@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
> 
> A follow up....  I discovered my primary error... installing the K7 printer - profiles.  Should have installed the UC printer -  profiles.  My bad.
> 
> 
> I picked the UCpk-PRBaryta-cool-2880 as well as another profile and finally succeeded in getting a B&W print.
> 
> I can't say I am impressed with the documentation provided by Quadtone....  all the documents are rather dated, and none are very specific to Lightroom. All the profiles have fairly cryptic names... some are easier to decode than others. For example. I have no idea what UCmk vs UCpk means.  PR? M? H (Hahnemuele?), and so on.  I use the Hahnemuele Photo Rag Baryta which perhaps is the UCmk-HPhotorag series?  I don't see a profile for Epson Exhibition Fiber, which is disappointing.
> 
> Perhaps my B&W needs aren't sophisticated enough to justify the effort and confusion of sorting out Quadtone, but I would love to be convinced.
> 
> Happy to hear from sympathetic users with Quadtone experience.
> 
> 
> 
>

Re: [QuadtoneRIP] Re: Newbie issues

2016-09-20 by Paul Yarnall

Hi Walker,

Thanks very much for the response and clarifying a few of the abbreviations. In as much as I was using Epson prem luster as “testing” paper and picked two different UCpk paper profiles, that exercise proved your point about not necessarily confining a profile to a specific paper, (Epson prem luster is not profiled either). I was struck by how different the tone and look was between the two. I may have to test print all the pk profiles just to get a visual reference of what each is like. Adding in the second and third curves in the RIP setup starts to boggle the mind!

Your statement that it produces superior results encourages me to give more of a work out before deciding to purchase or not.

Thanks again!

P.

--
Paul Yarnall
Technical Resolutions
5711 Thomas Rd.
Canandaigua, NY 14424
585-394-8651

On September 20, 2016 at 6:22:12 AM, 'forums@walkerblackwell.com' forums@walkerblackwell.com [QuadtoneRIP] (quadtonerip@yahoogroups.com) wrote:

Show quoted textHide quoted text

The answers to all your questions lie in this forum via searching.


That said, there are certainly more things that can be done vis a vis QTR Documentation. Some practitioners have done some excellent work in the past but it certainly can be updated.

UCmk means Ultrachrome Matte Black (MK is the universally recognized symbol for Matte Black in the printing world). UCpk is the same for Photo Black. The reason why Black is not designated a “B” is because that would denote Blue and get confusing.

HPR is Hahnemuhle Photo Rag (a matte paper). You will see references to “HPR” on this forum quite a bit.

Most of the gloss profiles will work on every gloss paper. Most of the matte profiles will work on every matte paper so don’t be disappointed by lack of profiles. They aren’t really profiles, they are media types essentially: ink percentages. This is the same as the Advanced Black and White where you have only say 5 different media types that are supported by ABW but those media types print “well” on hundreds of papers.

QTR can certainly be a beast to get running but once it is it produces superior results.

best,
Walker

On Sep 19, 2016, at 9:46 PM, paul.yarnall@... [QuadtoneRIP] <QuadtoneRIP@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

A follow up.... I discovered my primary error... installing the K7 printer - profiles. Should have installed the UC printer - profiles. My bad.


I picked the UCpk-PRBaryta-cool-2880 as well as another profile and finally succeeded in getting a B&W print.

I can't say I am impressed with the documentation provided by Quadtone.... all the documents are rather dated, and none are very specific to Lightroom. All the profiles have fairly cryptic names... some are easier to decode than others. For example. I have no idea what UCmk vs UCpk means. PR? M? H (Hahnemuele?), and so on. I use the Hahnemuele Photo Rag Baryta which perhaps is the UCmk-HPhotorag series? I don't see a profile for Epson Exhibition Fiber, which is disappointing.

Perhaps my B&W needs aren't sophisticated enough to justify the effort and confusion of sorting out Quadtone, but I would love to be convinced.

Happy to hear from sympathetic users with Quadtone experience.




Re: [QuadtoneRIP] Re: Newbie issues

2016-09-21 by donsbryant@...

The Yahoo Group search engine sucks. If it didn't then there probably wouldn't be as many duplicate questions. The Google search engine for searching sites actually works much better. As for ABW, it works best when a custom ICC profile is used.

And sadly, the QTR documentation is woefully insufficient although there are some decent online guides to be found but those are not completely comprehensive.


Re: [QuadtoneRIP] Newbie issues

2016-09-21 by forums@walkerblackwell.com

It’s a community effort on a lot of this re: documentation and support (this forum). Anything remotely equivalent to QTR costs higher than $2500.00 and has even less documentation.

best,
Walker
Show quoted textHide quoted text
> On Sep 21, 2016, at 3:51 PM, donsbryant@... [QuadtoneRIP] <QuadtoneRIP@...m> wrote:
> 
> The Yahoo Group search engine sucks. If it didn't then there probably wouldn't be as many duplicate questions. The Google search engine for searching sites actually works much better. As for ABW, it works best when a custom ICC profile is used. 
> 
> 
> And sadly, the QTR documentation is woefully insufficient although there are some decent online guides to be found but those are not completely comprehensive.
> 
> 
> 
>

Re: Newbie issues

2016-09-22 by donsbryant@...

That's why we all are keeping our fingers crossed to read Richard Boutwell's seminal book on QTR. Fortunately Richard understands the wet side of printing just as well as the digital side.

Regards,

Don Bryant

Re: Newbie issues

2016-09-23 by richard@...

With all the problems Yahoo is having (changed your passwords lately?) i wonder if it would be better to move this to groups.io....

The book... now i just hope it lives up to expectations... I'm editing, cutting, and rewriting based on some profiling tools I've came up with last month. I went through everything about how and why I do what I do and then decided to just built a tool that does it all for you. Its basically auto everything... Just print and measure a few custom generated targets and and everything from the ink limits to the final linearization is done automatically—even generating the .qidf. At the moment it is geared toward making custom profiles with up to 6 gray inks only for 4-8 ink printers. The only thing left is to get it to work with the toners partitions and the 10 ink printers... timetimetime

Thanks for all the continued support (and pressure...) :)

Richard Boutwell

http://www.richardboutwell.com/



Re: Newbie issues

2016-09-23 by csocolow@...

Richard,

Hope you're well. Can't wait to see what you've done. As always, thanks for all your effort.

Carl

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