Hi Tom, thank you for your input. I was kindly referred to some earlier posts that covered some of this topic. I have gone back and read some of those also. That has helped to clarify a little more, but it would seem that I might (as someone has put it) be tyring to compare apples and oranges.
To improve my understanding further and to answer your specific, and not at all pedantic, questions (clarity around all this seems to be a skill in its own right!):
1. I am currently just comparing images between a) Photoshop with curves and b) QTR alone - to familiarise myself with the processes and to check my proofing and setup. I should say here that this comparison involves two different ink sets.
The Roark curves process is to use Photoshop to edit and convert to black and white and then add a curve adjustment layer to the image (one of his which he provides on his site) and then send to the Epson driver. The Epson driver has no adjustments made (that appears to be yet another workflow option) to it other than correct media setting and ICM disabled. The addition of one of these curves (themselves labelled 'cool' 'neutral' 'carbon' etc seem analogous to the curve names/styles in QTR
2. With this image - in the above workflow - I have not converted to QTR grayscale. I have merely produced a black and white image that I like and according to Paul Roark's directions, the image is eft it in RGB space. I'll likely use a channel mixer approach for this. Adding his adjustment curves displays a strangely coloured image which it is impossible to soft-proof. This image workflow is output to a colour ink set with only one black but which printer has been calibrated with an extended grey patch set. So while I like the result, this workflow is impossible to soft-proof.
4. I printed the images on pearl paper - I only have MIS Photo black in the B&W printer.
3.The blacks that would be considered 'squashed' or 'flattened' are those produced in a different workflow from above, which involves taking the same edited image above and this time converting to (in this case) QTR gloss paper profile and printing through QTR. Now I realised when I did this that it seems that matte papers can hold more black ink and therefore are considered to produce deeper blacks. But that wasn't actually at the heart of my post. I have converted to the QTR matte profile but although I didn't print it, I couldn't see a very great increase in depth.
What I was commenting on is that using Epson media and MIS inks in the QTR printer, I was happy to accept the supplied curves as accurate enough for the time being. The soft-proofing setup that seemed to best describe the printed output was to use the QTR gray Lab profile but to enable switches for Preserve numbers and Simulate Black Ink. And I don't know why that is.
In light of these two workflows, several things arose which I'll re-state here, hopefully a little more clearly:
5. QTR is widely commented on as being a very good tool for black and white printing. That's why I bought and installed it. Of course there is a fairly steep learning curve involved and as such, the difference in above outputs is most likely down to something I've overlooked or misunderstood.
6. In comparing the two workflows, the first one with the Roark curves, meant that I simply 'hoped' that the printed output would be what I wanted - there is no preview avialable. The print was in the same neutral tones as the QTR ouput (also using a neutral curve). But the deep blacks on this Roark print had noticeably richer tones without any intervention on my part and due, presumably, to the way the curves bias the image data to compensate the Epson driver. The QTR print on the other hand, matched almost exactly what I saw on my monitor - the monitor too shows these flattened deep black areas.
7. I can think about applying an adjustment curve in this second, QTR based workflow to adjust the levels. But when applying the soft-proof profile, the same relative flattening occurs. My preference in all of this is to correctly set up and use QTR since it is repeatable and what I'd call fully managed. So why does it seem that using QTR curves and workflow produces accurate prints but which appear 'muted' in comparison to the other workflow?
8. If I'm not going to confuse matters further the following relates to the above: I've since set about profiling some other paper I have here - which are medium cost Pearl and Gloss papers. Yes, I reaslise that this might seem perverse to those of you familiar with high quality media and prints, but I am currently aiming to fully understand the principles involved. To do so I don't think I have to burn through £25 boxes of paper (please correct me on that one if necessary). I will be purchasing more ink and decent matte papers once I am satisfied. Anyway, I started with a aupplied QTR curve set and stripped out the linearisaton data and began the ink limit tests etc. I printed a 21 step gray patch. I linearised the curve data and measuring the reprinted gray patch produces an almost perfectly flat linearisation graph. So I'm getting to grips with all this. But - as this relates to all the above - I notice that typical neutral curve sets for non matte papers typically don't use
the black ink. The L value of the black on this second, calibrated grey patch was 9.2 - hardly very black.
So clearly the proofing methods are working but what I'm looking for is the type of output from QTR that matches the deep blacks produced in workflow one above. If that means writing a new curve set then I'm all ears.
--
Alan Ansell
aansell@...
Show quoted textHide quoted text
----- Original message -----
From: "Tom Moore" <rtmlists8888@...>
To: QuadtoneRIP@yahoogroups.com
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 02:37:02 -0400
Subject: RE: [QuadtoneRIP] Re: Soft Proofing QTR in Photoshop
Alan
Just to confirm the details
1. you have an image that prints the way you like using the Epson driver
using Paul Roark's curves.
2. With that image you have used the Photoshop Convert to Profile (i.e not
the Assign Profile) menu to convert it to the QTR-Matte-Paper profile
4. you actually printed the image on matte paper
3. the blacks are still muddy when compared to the print with Paul's curves?
Sorry to be so pedantic in my response. Your last reply was involved and
seemed to leave the potential for confusion on my part.
Tom Moore
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [1]QuadtoneRIP@yahoogroups.com [mailto:[2]QuadtoneRIP@yahoogroups.com] On
> Behalf Of Alan Ansell
> Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2007 8:38 AM
> To: [3]QuadtoneRIP@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [QuadtoneRIP] Re: Soft Proofing QTR in Photoshop
>
>
> Thanks, Tom
> I have thought about those two options but here's the thing:
> I thought that the soft-proofing was a means to show what the final print
> WILL look like, so that we can make any necessary adjustments beforehand.
> My images are converted to the QTR grayscale profiles, but here's the
> thing: It doesn't matter which profile I convert to in a visual sense (I
...
> printer may well use the black ink, but the resulting image is much
> richer.
> It may just be some overlook during setup or I may be misunderstanding how
> to use QTR - either way this difference in output is confusing.
>
> --
> Alan Ansell
> [4]aansell@...
>
> ----- Original message -----
> From: "Tom Moore" <[5]rtmlists8888@...>
> To: [6]QuadtoneRIP@yahoogroups.com
...
>
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