Re: Linearizing The Epson Printer
Re: Linearizing The Epson Printer
- Subject: Re: Linearizing The Epson Printer
- From: Nick Wheeler <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2002 13:26:21 -0400
on 6/9/02 4:17 PM, Anthony Sanna at email@hidden wrote:
>
For me, MPHW, seems to be the easiest of the Epson papers to profile.
>
I've had some seemingly very good profiles made for my Epson 1280 by Jack
>
Clark and his ProfileMaker/Spectrolino combination. The test prints of
>
the PDI image reproduce well with these profiles, but when printing
>
real-life images with deep shadow detail I'm getting extreme
>
posterization in these tones on the PGPP and the semi-gloss.
>
Yes we use the same profiling package here. Actually we have good profiles
for a variety of ink and paper combinations. I just happened to have Steve's
Heavyweight Matte settings written down so I threw them out as an example to
help people conceptualize a little bit.
>
We generated these profiles according to the THEN list-endorsed "no color
>
adjustment" printer set-up routine, but now it seems that optimal
>
settings for print profiling need to be arrived at by piggly-wiggly,
>
trial and error experimentation with random combinations of the confusing
>
array of Epson print driver controls.
>
NCA is certainly a way to go and is what Epson recommends. It just does not
work very well as the printer is so horribly non linear in the NCA state.
The situation is analogous to trying to profile a really non linear monitor
or scanner. Sure it works a little better than no profiling at all, but if
you can get that monitor or scanner to behave in a more linear fashion
through some combination of hardware and software adjustments - the
resultant profiled work will be far superior.
>
To me, this sounds like the scenario that ColorSync was intended to
>
prevent.
Actually colorsync was never intended to be used for calibration, but just
to characterize devices already in a known and steady state. The more one
can get a piece of hardware to be linear and consistent the better the
profile will be. A colorsync profile really shouldn't be relied on for
calibration.
Let's look at another analogy. In sound recording you can use equalization
to compensate for bad microphone or speaker behavior. But you are way better
off to start with the appropriate mike first so less post production eq is
necessary and you are way better off trying to optimize a speaker via proper
driver and crossover design than you are by altering the signal you are
feeding to the speaker in an attempt to compensate for the speakers bad
behavior. Very similar to the problem we are confronting with the Epson
printers.
Right now the Epson printer looks to me like a great speaker driver with a
really horrible crossover network. As I mentioned earlier - the only
application I personally know about out there right now actively trying to
address this problem head on is ImagePrint. No doubt there are others I just
don't have personal experience with them.
Best wishes:
Nick Wheeler
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