Message
Re: Profiling HP DesignJets
2006-03-09 by CDTobie@aol.com
In a message dated 3/9/06 1:03:49 PM, jpgentry@... writes:
Excellent decription. Makes me more confident with reading my
patches and not being overly anal about the whole thing. I do know
at times however that a printer can have trouble with the heads or
there can be a very minute amount of gunk on the paper that will
cause an anomaly in the reading apart from just missing patches etc..
My idea with throwing out the anomalies of three patch readings would
catch either situation although a careful examination of the patches
beforehand should ceratinly suffice for print problems on the
patches... What you say makes sense. Nothing to worry about.
With the DesignJets you have an extra option. You can take your favorite paper from a given category (Say Matte, they have more gloss categories, but only one Matte, as I recall; HP is a bit weak on Mattes) and run a sheet of your preferred paper of the category through in the Calbrate process, calibrating that entire category (unfortunately its only one Calibration per category) and linearize and calibrate the printer to that paper. This means that (in most cases) your profiling targets will come out without clogged up dark areas, or weak light ends, or off color grays. So the profile can must do its job, without having to try to calibrate the device at the same time... This is not well documented, so I thought I should note it here, as many DesignJet users are unaware of this function.
Bravo on a great product. I've been printing with my dj130 now for
quite awile using default profiles and resisting the urge to get
custom profiles made (because I wanted an i1 in the past.) Now after
just one day with the PrintFixPro I feel like the last 20% of the
printer has been unlocked. I printed a photo heavy on browns out
last night that the custom HP profiles had destroyed. In the past
the colors looked aweful and I thought the browns were just out of
gamut for the printer or something. After profiling with PFP the
image is AWESOME! It looks just like the monitor. A little darker
because I'm viewing under standard lighting. Thanks for the great
product. Anyone using the default HP profiles for designjet printers
really NEEDS one of these.
I actually ran the process of custom calibrating and profiling a DesignJet 130 in front of the 130 Design and Marketing teams in Barcelona (where DesignJets are born), back before the printer was released. I told them then that their canned profiles were an improvement on previous models, but insufficient for serious photography. They didn't choose to alter their course at that late date, but perhaps with this next round of new machines. Of course, a DesignJet/PrintFIX PRO bundle would fix the problem too...
C. David Tobie
Product Technology Manager
ColorVision Business Unit
Datacolor Inc.
CDTobie@...
www.colorvision.com