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Neutral Prints With QTR and 7890

Neutral Prints With QTR and 7890

2018-05-15 by deanwork2003@...

I recently set up a restored 7890 with a new head that I will be converting to Piezography Neutral K7.


Before I did that I wanted to see how good I can make some neutral prints with the Epson color inks out of qtr for teaching purposes. I used to use QTR with older epson printers but it has been a LONG time.


I just set up an Epson P800 for one of my clients and right off the bat we made some lovely totally neutral prints on Platine with the existing generic Neutral curves. It was so good I was a little shocked at how clean and uniform the hue was in all areas of the ramp.


Anyway I was playing with the 7890 last night with Canson Rag Photographique and see that there are no neutral qtr curves with these previous printers ( I assume the same is the case with my 3880 ) and that you need to blend a warm with a cool. The "selenium" curve is so magenta it seems totally unworkable to me.

So what are people using for a clean neutral on Photorag or Rag Photographique and Platine. You have three curves to blend. I have used one warm and one cool together so far. Still seems a little cool to me on Rag Photo and Photorag but it might be good for Platine with PK which I haven't tried yet. Are there any other

formulas I should play with? And/Or does anyone have a custom curve that I could try out for either the 7890 for the 3880 in neutral hue? I don't see many curves for more recent printers in the Files section here.


John

Re: Neutral Prints With QTR and 7890

2018-05-15 by mccarvill@...

Hi John,

If I'm not mistaken, the P800 and the 7890 use the same 8-channel inkset. If that’s the case, it might be interesting to start with that generic neutral curve that you liked on the P800 … and then just tweak it for the 7890.

On the topic of neutral prints, I've spoken with a couple of very well-known photographers who specialize in black-and-white and was surprised to learn they swear by the Epson color inkset with just Epson driver.

Mark


_________________________________________________

Mark McCarvill Photography | markmccarvillphoto.etsy.com


Re: Neutral Prints With QTR and 7890

2018-05-15 by brian_downunda@...

I am traveling at present with only a tablet, so I can't double check what I am about to say, but on my OEM 3880 I use the Ilford Smooth curves for both Platine and IGFS. I was staggered just how linear these were. For CRP I would have used either the HPR or EEM curves. My recollection is that a small amount of relinearisation was needed. I'd need to check the details on CRP but I'm certain about Platine.

BUT .... I don't regard the 3880 neutral curves as exactly neutral, I find them slightly warm. Not objectionably so, but if someone I'm printing for wants dead neutral then I add in 15-20% of the cool curve. I suspect the higher figure was for Platine, but again, I can't check for a couple of days.

IIRC, Roy has a P800, which may be why those curves ars spot on.

Re: Neutral Prints With QTR and 7890

2018-05-16 by deanwork2003@...

Thanks Brian,

I will be looking at the Platine this weekend.

Actually the qtr driver for the 7890 does not have neutral curves, ( does the 3880? ) it has cool, warm, sepia, and selenium. That is why I was wondering if anyone had made one . The selenium on the matte media was of no use, even when blended. The cool really cold and the warm not good on Canson Rag Photo, but of course one could create one. The best I got was one curve warm and one cool. still a little cool. But this is on the matte rag. photo rag curves, I will try this combination blend on the Platine with the Ilford curves. That is what we used on the P800 that was so good I think.

What I was wondering is if you could use the three curves to do something or stick with just two. Like I said it's been about 15 years since I did any bw with epson inks and so the quality of the p800 with QTR really surprised me.

By the way the inkset is different on the P800, as with all the new sure color printers, it has the new yellow and the new blacks which give it more dynamic range. However, with my two printers I see no reason why one couldn't add the new blacks and the yellow with refillable carts and relineraize and reprofile.


john


Re: [QuadtoneRIP] Neutral Prints With QTR and 7890

2018-05-16 by Paul Roark

FWIW (and hopefully not to OT), some of what I think I learned in experimenting with different inkset approaches is that most people cannot profile an inkset that uses the high gamut OEM colors. It's just too sensitive, and sometimes the color pigments seem to be absorbed differently with different papers/coatings. So, a premixed neutral that is profiled by the seller for the specific papers one wants makes a lot of sense for most. Very well made OEM profiles can be fine, but it takes a good profilier to do it for different papers. If good profiles exist, great, but what's good for one paper may need more than just a relinearization to look neutral on a different paper.

I now use Canon pigs for my toner mix. I think Canon does a better job of matching the pigment absorptions on different papers, perhaps due to more uniform sizes of the color pigments, but I don't know. I always suspected that the magenta, historically much weaker than the cyan pigs, was ground to a slightly larger size in the early inksets we had in an effort to better match the longevity of the colors. However, I speculated that also caused the magenta to end up being held more on the surface of some papers than the cyan, with the result that at least on some papers, a "neutral" on one paper became too "selenium" (magenta) on a different paper.

It also appears that usually lighter tones need more color than the darker ones to be neutral. So, a neutral inkset (depending of one's definition of such) cannot just be different dilutions of a basic carbon to color ratio. On the other hand, such a constant ratio inkset, which will typically give slightly warmer highlights, appeals to some as something of a "split tone."

I always use QTR these days (although some of the inkset designs on my main inkset webpage remain Epson driver compatible).

With the single pre-mixed color (bluish) toner I use in all my B&W printers now (the other positions are all 100% carbon), I find that, while I start with a pre-made QTR toner curve, I always end up translating that into discreet points so that I can fine tune it. One needs a spectro to do this well, in my view. This as well as the difficulty of making good profiles knocks out most B&W printers.

In my view, the post 1280 days and the "ABW" OEM inksets made the dedicated B&W approach obsolete for the average B&W photographer. If I were in the business of doing pro-level color as well as B&W, I might well just stay with the OEM solutions and profiles. (But what fun is that? Anything worth doing is worth overdoing!)

I think for the small minority of us who still use the dedicated B&W approaches, the rewards are probably, in part, in our knowing that it is superior, even if the buyers are clueless. It also can save us lots of money in ink costs. I know that some of the large users of my approaches are schools or other such institutions where holding down costs are probably the main reason for using a dedicated B&W approach.

Regards,

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com






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On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 11:32 AM, deanwork2003@yahoo.com [QuadtoneRIP] <QuadtoneRIP@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

I recently set up a restored 7890 with a new head that I will be converting to Piezography Neutral K7.


Before I did that I wanted to see how good I can make some neutral prints with the Epson color inks out of qtr for teaching purposes. I used to use QTR with older epson printers but it has been a LONG time.


I just set up an Epson P800 for one of my clients and right off the bat we made some lovely totally neutral prints on Platine with the existing generic Neutral curves. It was so good I was a little shocked at how clean and uniform the hue was in all areas of the ramp.


Anyway I was playing with the 7890 last night with Canson Rag Photographique and see that there are no neutral qtr curves with these previous printers ( I assume the same is the case with my 3880 ) and that you need to blend a warm with a cool. The "selenium" curve is so magenta it seems totally unworkable to me.

So what are people using for a clean neutral on Photorag or Rag Photographique and Platine. You have three curves to blend. I have used one warm and one cool together so far. Still seems a little cool to me on Rag Photo and Photorag but it might be good for Platine with PK which I haven't tried yet. Are there any other

formulas I should play with? And/Or does anyone have a custom curve that I could try out for either the 7890 for the 3880 in neutral hue? I don't see many curves for more recent printers in the Files section here.


John


Re: Neutral Prints With QTR and 7890

2018-05-16 by jeff.grant@...

I have curves for IGFS and HPR for the 3880. I would have made the IGFS one and the HPR one would be as delivered. PM me and I'll send them.

Re: Neutral Prints With QTR and 7890

2018-05-16 by brian_downunda@...

QTR ships with neutral, warm, sepia and cool curves for the 3880. All four Ilford Smooth curves were dead linear on both Platine and IGFS which was convenient for curve blending and split-toning. Perhaps you could try the 3880 curves, as the 7890 is also an 8 ink printer and may well use the same print head.

Yes, I know the P800 inkset is different. The curves look quite different to me so I'm not sure how you'd go using those inks and curves in the 7890.

I've had some success in curve blending, but only in limited circumstances. I have added a bit of cool to neutral to make it closer to genuine neutral. I've also played with trying to replicate Piezo Special edition. I love this inkset on matte, but it's too warm on gloss, so I've tried to roughly replicate the matte look on gloss using OEM. I've also to tried to replicate the selenium inkset based on a custom selenium QTR curve, but with only partial success so far. Trying to mix cool and warm to get neutral may be a touch optimistic. BTW, warm curves usually have no toning inks, so the warmth in those curves is usually just the native warmth of the black inks, so you may get lucky by adding in some of the cool curve in a blend.

QTR-OEM printing on recent generation printers is surprisingly good. In the sizes I print it can be hard to see the improvement in K6 in most images. Needless to say, this is not a comment that one makes on the IJM forum.


---In QuadtoneRIP@yahoogroups.com, <deanwork2003@...> wrote :

Thanks Brian,

I will be looking at the Platine this weekend.

Actually the qtr driver for the 7890 does not have neutral curves, ( does the 3880? ) it has cool, warm, sepia, and selenium. That is why I was wondering if anyone had made one . The selenium on the matte media was of no use, even when blended. The cool really cold and the warm not good on Canson Rag Photo, but of course one could create one. The best I got was one curve warm and one cool. still a little cool. But this is on the matte rag. photo rag curves, I will try this combination blend on the Platine with the Ilford curves. That is what we used on the P800 that was so good I think.

What I was wondering is if you could use the three curves to do something or stick with just two. Like I said it's been about 15 years since I did any bw with epson inks and so the quality of the p800 with QTR really surprised me.

By the way the inkset is different on the P800, as with all the new sure color printers, it has the new yellow and the new blacks which give it more dynamic range. However, with my two printers I see no reason why one couldn't add the new blacks and the yellow with refillable carts and relineraize and reprofile.


john


Re: Neutral Prints With QTR and 7890

2018-05-16 by deanwork2003@...

So Brian, how do you load a 3880 curve in the qtr 7890 driver. Do you mean copy and pasting the data in a pre existing 7890 curve? It’s been awhile.

Whatever Roy did with the p 800 neutral generic curve was exceptional, but like we said these are different inks.

Re: Neutral Prints With QTR and 7890

2018-05-16 by brian_downunda@...

I assume you're on Mac whereas I'm mostly on Win and only occasionally use a Mac. On Win I'd simply copy the 3880 quad files to the same folder as the 7890 quads. My recollection is that on a Mac you do the same and then run the 7890 install command.

Since these curves are from Roy I assume they come with qidf files (txt files on a Mac), and you could / may need to copy those instead and then run the install command. Perhaps a Mac user could confirm these comments. I still only have a tablet with me so can't check.

A clarification of my comment on the P800 issue. When that printer was released and before it was supported by QTR, people were trying to port the 3880 curves to it. My recollection is that they weren't very successful. Then when the P800 was supported there was no cool curve and again not much luck in porting the 3880 one. IIRC Roy create one in response to requests. I did once compare the structure of equivalent P800 and 3880 curves and my recollection is that they were more different than I expected them to be.

Hence my caution about going in the opposite direction and using the P800 curves and inks in a 7890. But I readily admit that this is probably out of my depth and are just reactions based on what I've read. Smarter people than I may have a different view. BoL.

Re: Neutral Prints With QTR and 7890

2018-05-17 by deanwork2003@...

Really if you can’t install them directly on a Mac, which I think you can by doing as you say, put in the folder and using the install command, you can always copy and paste the linearization data into a pre existing 7890 curve. As to the P800, you have a very different Black for matte at least, and they probably changed the dither.

Re: [QuadtoneRIP] Re: Neutral Prints With QTR and 7890

2018-05-17 by forums@walkerblackwell.com

I saw micro lines w/ P800 and 2880dpi until Roy updated to super microweave in 2.7.8 (thank you Roy). This was for both paper and negs on all new sure colors and all small format printers (P400-P800, not wide formats). The P800 uses software weave and the 38xx printers are hardware weave (in the printers).  Dither is a different thing than weave and is still: ordered.

I have found Eventone Hybrid dither (part of 5.xx gutenprint code) to work better for digital negatives and therefore built out an independent driver for this type of work with the help of a few Gutenprint developers and my own rudimentary coding skills. . . but it is private beta for now and ideally I’d like to see QTR incorporate this update although I fully understand that this would be a massive undertaking to re-structure QTR from it’s older code-base to a updated base with the improved dithers . . . .

Related to topic at hand: P800 is a different printer (nozzle density, etc) than it’s older brothers and sisters.

I’m working on getting third party chips for this printer over the next weeks (right now a decoder board is the solution for third party ink systems on the P800).

Best regards all,
Walker

> On May 17, 2018, at 3:01 AM, brian_downunda@yahoo.com [QuadtoneRIP] <QuadtoneRIP@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
> 
> There were issues with QTR and the P800 weave, fixed in 2.7.8.
> 
> https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/QuadtoneRIP/conversations/messages/15296 <https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/QuadtoneRIP/conversations/messages/15296>
> 
> https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/QuadtoneRIP/conversations/messages/15304 <https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/QuadtoneRIP/conversations/messages/15304>
> 
> Mostly affected DNG with any inkset, not just OEM. Walker said he also saw problems on paper, but I haven't seen anyone else say that. Roy felt that earlier versions were ok on paper.
> 
> 



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

Re: Neutral Prints With QTR and 7890

2018-05-19 by brian_downunda@...

Now that I'm back in front my production machine I can confirm what I said before. Ilford Smooth curves are perfect for Platine. For CRP I used the HPR curve. As shipped it was fairly close, just a little dark across the range, but something you could live with. Fairly easy to relinearise either directly in the qidf/txt file or via the QTR-Linearize-Quad droplet. HPR is a pretty good starting point for most matte papers.

Let us know if you need any more info, John. I'd be interested to hear how well the 3880 curves migrate to the 7890.

Are you still printing on CRP? Wasn't it you who was having batch problems in it under the new ownership of Canson?

Re: Neutral Prints With QTR and 7890

2018-05-19 by deanwork2003@...

My concern is not whether it is linear or not, I can fix that, it’s just that none of the qtr toning combinations on Matt media for the 7890 was even close to neutral, it was all very cold compared to everything else I do. Totally it was fine.

After trying to use the various Hahnemühle matte media I’d forgotten how inferior they were to Canson. So when I ordered the Rag Photographique in rolls a couple of weeks ago the dmax was back. Thank god. I hope it stays that way. I dont know about the Epson branded version but the last two batches of the Canson appeared normal again. Six months ago there were real problems. They have gone through a lot of changes in ownership. I talked to the head U S guy months ago and was very concerned and looked into it . I wasn’t the only one who was complaining. They have a new Italian owner and hopefully there will be no more weirdness. The Hah pr ultra smooth has a much less durable coating and has too much oba. And the photorag 308 just looks crude now to me. Entrada bright is nice and a great price but much too much oba, too bright, and the natural very nice but too warm for most of my needs.

I’ll check out the curves and see if I can adapt them. Very interested in the Platine print color results with Epson inks.

Re: Neutral Prints With QTR and 7890

2018-05-20 by brian_downunda@...

Just to be clear, when I said that the Ilford Smooth curve was perfect for Platine and IGFS, I was referring to linearity. Yes, it's not hard to fix if it's not linear, but it's better to be closer to linearity as a starting point, and it's a pleasant and unexpected surprise to get a curve that is dead straight.

Re toning, my previous comments still apply. The 3880 neutral QTR-OEM curves are slight warm. I don't mind it at all, it's like a very, very mild version of Special Edition. It sounds better than what you have at present. To approximate neutral on Platine I add in 19% of the cool curve. I don't seem to have notes on what I used for CRP, but I think it's about 15%.

In my view getting dead neutral with QTR is tricky if the shipped neutral curve isn't. Your only two options are to try to play with the toning inks, which seems like a dark and mysterious art to me, or to blend curves, which is fairly approximate. I think dead neutral is over-rated and so I've not tried to master the dark and mysterious art. The approximate blend seems to keep my few dead neutral customers happy enough.

Thanks for your feedback on CRP. Your dMax problems came right as I was running low and was just about to stock up at the end of a big discount in this country. So I got a single pack express shipped and tested it. No dMax or mottling problems at all, and I spoke to importers and distributors who new nothing about it. What I did find was a slight colour shift to warm. Not enough to be seen in a colour print, except in neutral tones, which shifted from neutral to slightly warm. Ditto for QTR-OEM. A reprofile fixed the colour printing.

Re: [QuadtoneRIP] Re: Neutral Prints With QTR and 7890

2018-05-20 by Mick Sang

In my experience, these anomalies can occur with any paper. We have encountered mid-sheet and mid-roll spots on Hahnemuhle PRB caused by seeds and other plant material which had been missed by QC. Hahnemuhle replaced the sheets and rolls involved. We also ran into coating flaking with Epson Exhibition Fiber. All that said, we have not run into any difficulties with Canson, as yet. But, we’re always on the lookout.



Mick
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From: <QuadtoneRIP@yahoogroups.com> on behalf of "brian_downunda@... [QuadtoneRIP]" <QuadtoneRIP@yahoogroups.com>
Reply-To: <QuadtoneRIP@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Sunday, May 20, 2018 at 9:22 AM
To: <QuadtoneRIP@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [QuadtoneRIP] Re: Neutral Prints With QTR and 7890





Just to be clear, when I said that the Ilford Smooth curve was perfect for Platine and IGFS, I was referring to linearity.  Yes, it's not hard to fix if it's not linear, but it's better to be closer to linearity as a starting point, and it's a pleasant and unexpected surprise to get a curve that is dead straight.



Re toning, my previous comments still apply.  The 3880 neutral QTR-OEM curves are slight warm.  I don't mind it at all, it's like a very, very mild version of Special Edition.  It sounds better than what you have at present.  To approximate neutral on Platine I add in 19% of the cool curve.  I don't seem to have notes on what I used for CRP, but I think it's about 15%.



In my view getting dead neutral with QTR is tricky if the shipped neutral curve isn't.  Your only two options are to try to play with the toning inks, which seems like a dark and mysterious art to me, or to blend curves, which is fairly approximate.  I think dead neutral is over-rated and so I've not tried to master the dark and mysterious art.  The approximate blend seems to keep my few dead neutral customers happy enough.



Thanks for your feedback on CRP.  Your dMax problems came right as I was running low and was just about to stock up at the end of a big discount in this country.  So I got a single pack express shipped and tested it.  No dMax or mottling problems at all, and I spoke to importers and distributors who new nothing about it.  What I did find was a slight colour shift to warm.  Not enough to be seen in a colour print, except in neutral tones, which shifted from neutral to slightly warm.  Ditto for QTR-OEM.   A reprofile fixed the colour printing.

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