QTR-Quadtone RIP

I've used QTR in the past with stock or 3rd party profiles on an Epson 2200 printer. I recent upgraded to an Epson 3880 and decided to try my hand at building my own profiles, particularly since my most commonly used paper doesn't have a stock profile.

I'm running into significant problems printing an ink separation page in calibration mode for an Epson 3880 using Epson Ultra Premium Photo Paper Luster. The resulting print is not at all what was expected and seems unusable.

Ink 1 (Black) - each step prints, but so much ink is laid down that after 60 the ink starts to run down the page.

Ink 2 (Cyan) - each step prints, but in varying colors. Several positions run.

Ink 3 (Magenta) - prints varying colors up to 35, no ink is laid down on positions above 35.

Ink 4 (Yellow) - prints varying colors up to 15, no ink is laid down on positions above 15. 

Ink 5 (Light Magenta) - prints only in position 5.

On the lines for the remaining inks, no ink is laid down. 

Here are the particulars: 

OS: Mac OS 10.6.5
QTR: 2.7.1  (did a fresh re-install, just in case).

I'm printing the target from within Photoshop CS5 (as QTR on the Mac has no GUI) - due to the inability to specify "no color management" in CS5 under Mac OS, I followed this workaround procedure:

1) Opened the inkseparation8.tif file.
2) When asked about color management, left it as untagged.
3) ASSIGNED a color space (ProPhoto RGB)
4) Printed with the following CS5 options:
     - Photoshop manages color
     - Printer Profile: ProPhoto RGB
     - Rendering Intent: Relative Colormetric
     - Black Point Compensation: Unchecked
   and the following QTR driver options:
     - Paper Size: US Letter
     - Mode: Calibration
     - Calibration Ink Limit: 100
     - Paper Feed: Sheet Feed
     - Resolution: 1440
     - Speed: Bi-directional
     - Black Ink: Photo Ink

I also tried printing using the recently released Adobe Color Printing Utility - which is supposed to get around the issues which prevent printing with no color management in CS5... very different, but equally unusable results. The background which should be white comes out magenta and a number of steps on several rows show pools of ink that eventually run down the page.

Unfortunately I don't have the option to go back to an older version of Photoshop (CS 4 has similar issues printing with no color management anyway). I do run XP on bootcamp partition, so I guess I could just try doing this from XP... At this point, though, I'm a bit obsessed with *making* this work under Mac OS 8-)

Any thoughts on what I might be missing here?

thanks!

The symptoms sure point to an unwanted color conversion happening somewhere.
It sounds like you are doing the right thing but the OS X color
management has been
particularly hard to pin down version to version.   I need to go
through more testing.

The one thing I can think that may be worth trying is to use sRGB
rather than ProPhoto.
(Its the internal default for lots in OSX).I'd also use Perceptual
Intent and BPC checked on.
Another variable (which shouldn't matter) is in Color Settings try
sRGB as the RGB working space.

As a general comment: I'd read Amadou Diallo's workflow on the
Download page.   You
can probably do just fine re-linearizing an existing profile.   The
profiles for photo papers
especially are extremely similar.

Roy

On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 10:53 PM, scholt64@...
<scholt64@bellsouth.net> wrote:

> I've used QTR in the past with stock or 3rd party profiles on an Epson 2200 printer. I recent upgraded to an Epson 3880 and decided to try my hand at building my own profiles, particularly since my most commonly used paper doesn't have a stock profile.
>
> I'm running into significant problems printing an ink separation page in calibration mode for an Epson 3880 using Epson Ultra Premium Photo Paper Luster. The resulting print is not at all what was expected and seems unusable.
>
> Ink 1 (Black) - each step prints, but so much ink is laid down that after 60 the ink starts to run down the page.
>
> Ink 2 (Cyan) - each step prints, but in varying colors. Several positions run.
>
> Ink 3 (Magenta) - prints varying colors up to 35, no ink is laid down on positions above 35.
>
> Ink 4 (Yellow) - prints varying colors up to 15, no ink is laid down on positions above 15.
>
> Ink 5 (Light Magenta) - prints only in position 5.
>
> On the lines for the remaining inks, no ink is laid down.
>
> Here are the particulars:
>
> OS: Mac OS 10.6.5
> QTR: 2.7.1  (did a fresh re-install, just in case).
>
> I'm printing the target from within Photoshop CS5 (as QTR on the Mac has no GUI) - due to the inability to specify "no color management" in CS5 under Mac OS, I followed this workaround procedure:
>
> 1) Opened the inkseparation8.tif file.
> 2) When asked about color management, left it as untagged.
> 3) ASSIGNED a color space (ProPhoto RGB)
> 4) Printed with the following CS5 options:
>     - Photoshop manages color
>     - Printer Profile: ProPhoto RGB
>     - Rendering Intent: Relative Colormetric
>     - Black Point Compensation: Unchecked
>   and the following QTR driver options:
>     - Paper Size: US Letter
>     - Mode: Calibration
>     - Calibration Ink Limit: 100
>     - Paper Feed: Sheet Feed
>     - Resolution: 1440
>     - Speed: Bi-directional
>     - Black Ink: Photo Ink
>
> I also tried printing using the recently released Adobe Color Printing Utility - which is supposed to get around the issues which prevent printing with no color management in CS5... very different, but equally unusable results. The background which should be white comes out magenta and a number of steps on several rows show pools of ink that eventually run down the page.
>
> Unfortunately I don't have the option to go back to an older version of Photoshop (CS 4 has similar issues printing with no color management anyway). I do run XP on bootcamp partition, so I guess I could just try doing this from XP... At this point, though, I'm a bit obsessed with *making* this work under Mac OS 8-)
>
> Any thoughts on what I might be missing here?
>
> thanks!
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

That seems to have done it; though I would really love to understand why. As I understood the various work arounds for the missing "no color management" option, I thought that simply having consistency between the assigned profile and the "printed" profile was sufficient to trick the drivers into not doing any color mapping. I wonder if its really the different rendering intent that is making this work right... I may do some experimentation later.

You are correct, though, I could probably been happy just taking an existing profile and doing a new linearization curve for it. This, however, was less about getting a good print and more about teaching myself the process of building a profile.

thanks!

--- In QuadtoneRIP@yahoogroups.com, Roy Harrington <roy@...> wrote:

>
> The symptoms sure point to an unwanted color conversion happening somewhere.
> It sounds like you are doing the right thing but the OS X color
> management has been
> particularly hard to pin down version to version.   I need to go
> through more testing.
> 
> The one thing I can think that may be worth trying is to use sRGB
> rather than ProPhoto.
> (Its the internal default for lots in OSX).I'd also use Perceptual
> Intent and BPC checked on.
> Another variable (which shouldn't matter) is in Color Settings try
> sRGB as the RGB working space.
> 
> As a general comment: I'd read Amadou Diallo's workflow on the
> Download page.   You
> can probably do just fine re-linearizing an existing profile.   The
> profiles for photo papers
> especially are extremely similar.
> 
> Roy
>