Message
Re: New HP Z large format printers (cross posted)
2006-10-04 by CDTobie@aol.com
On to the list of "sensitive" issues with the Z series printers. First would be profiling time. Its a bit odd, but HP's marketing materials say something like "no longer does it take hours to profile your printer". Strange choice of angles, as the automatic profiling is easy, convenient, and close to idiotproof, but not particularly fast. I can build a profile with any of the current handheld spectros faster. I don't understand why HP is sensitive about this, its pretty much automatic, so its not that critical how long it takes. Setting up a straw man to knock down, when the serious user already knows how long it takes to build a profile manually is a poor alternative to emphasising the Z series strongpoints.
That leads to the issue of drydown. HP seems to somehow feel that having the profiling process clog up our printer for a day makes the magic go away. Well, once you load a roll, you are hardly going to unload it, damage some ends, and print on another media for 24 hours before reading the patches back in with the printer. So HP downlpays the issue that serious profiling is generally done with at least several hours of drydown. I can see that once the target is out of the printer, putting it back in later is not much more convenient than reading by hand, so this would be a touchy issue. But its certainly possible to put off most profiling untili the end of the day, print the target, and not read it until morning, so this is not a huge problem. And wet results from Ultrachrome-type inks are quite reasonable on many media, so this is only an issue for some paper types, and for the most demanding users.
Next is patch numbers. HP materials state 500 patches. But when you count them, its actually three hundred and some odd. Again, this seems to be a sensitive point, and HP reps at Photokina were stating that the linearization patches are "sort of" included. These patches certainly assist in improving results, but they absolutely cannnot be part of the patches that are used to characterize the printer for profiling. So again the marketing spin seems to point out that HP is uncomfortable about this. Which is silly, since profiles from patch sets in the 300 patch range can be very good. Admittedly the current Z series does not offer an alternative with more patches (next step up is typically in the 800 patch range) for situations where their lower patch option doesn't do the trick. But for most typical media (and certainly all HP media recommended for these printers), the current patch number should be fine. Gloss fine art papers, non-gessoed canvas and other new media would have to be tested as they appear to make sure they are sufficiently linear on the Z printers to profile well with the current number of patches.
Last, and very definately least, is HP's gloss optimizer. The GLOP is printed in an area outside the image, so signing, numbering and notating gloss/luster prints occurs on top of the GLOP. This is a real opportunity for someone to create an archival, HP GLOP compatible pen, as I ruined every pen in my briefcase writing on Z3100 prints.
So, I hope that covers the issues that it was felt I "glossed over" in my previous post...
C. David Tobie
Product Technology Manager
ColorVision Business Unit
Datacolor Inc.
CDTobie@...
www.colorvision.com