ImagePrint 5
ImagePrint 5
- Subject: ImagePrint 5
- From: "Cris Daniels" <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 21:57:29 -0300
>
Trick is to maximise the gamut by linearisation,
something that the Epson drivers didn't have.
You can't possibly put this kind of control in the hands of "Joe 6-pack". I
cannot imagine the number of tech support calls Epson would have to follow and
then everyone would have a cow that a $2995 Epson printer didn't include a
DTP41 in the box.
>
Gamut by proper linearisation is
increased not decreased.
Sounds great on paper and of course you can't have a printer that is printing
mud for patches, but I'd like to see a RIP and profiler that has a larger
real-world gamut than "linearization-less" Colorbyte. I think I'll be waiting
for a while.....
>
I hear that the Epson drivers
don't lay down enough ink, which is also a problem with certain other
printers I'm told. This is very important and probably why ImagePrint will
fetch a vastly superior print than the Epson driver.
Colorbyte prints better because they don't have users hosing all of their hard
work with the linerization process and doing a CMYK profile so that the black
generation is wrong and peppering the highlights. The printer drivers are
optimized already, many parameters are already established that the user need
not screw with (just do a sweet little RGB profile). Colorbyte knows how to
make a given inkset work with given media, they don't just throw raw data
(sopping wet patches) at the printer and expect the end user to dial out any
bad behavior. Even with the production variation of say an Epson 7600
Ultrachrome engine, because the printer is well behaved thanks to the Coorbyte
print "recipe" (I did not say linearization), and the average delta e is
probably around an average of 3 for these printers, a quality ICC profile can
easily get everything right where it needs to be and you have not managed to
screw up the Colorbyte recipe. There is no need to have the user changing
parameters that they don't understand and have no way to measure
scientifically. Colorbyte uses proprietary software ( and a ton of experience)
to derive at these parameters, its doubtful that the end user is actually
going to make any kind of improvement. If it was going to help, Colorbyte
would have given you linerization options in the first place.
>
Other rip makers will
or should do the same.
Of course they should but they don't, the classic dilemma has been finding a
RIP that had more control than the Epson driver but had even decent dithering
patterns. Under a loupe most RIPs are inferior ( in print quality) to the
Epson driver to this day. It seems that Colorbyte is the only vendor who
actually owns a loupe, and realizes that people don't want to shell out $3000
for software that prints worse than the bundled driver.
>
What does the actual separation of the LC, LM (Blacks in the case of the
Epson Ultrachromes) then?
The software does all of this dirty work, witness the fact that the new Epsons
are still not supported by many RIP's to see that the Light black was not very
easy to throw in the mix.
Double snip>>
> As for a recent developer, Colorbyte has been around for years writing
the
> software for a lot of the hardware in the market. Umax scanners,
Howtek
> scanners, Iris printers.
>
Yes I know. Rather reluctant to adopt open ICC standards though. Will it
continue as before?
Uhhh, the color managent engine in Powercolor works better than any other
method I've ever used in scanning. The results are easily as good as
Silverfast. Their software is ICC savvy, it just doesn't calibrate to an IT8
target, the color engine is supremely smart. No reason to do it like everyone
else.
>
Too bad for anyone that doesn't meet an expectation of knowing what they're
doing.
John, Mark, Sergi, and Daniel are the nicest people you could hope to meet in
this industry. All that was meant by that comment is that Colorbyte (like any
other vendor) shouldn't be (in my opinion) liable to teach people about color
management, scanning, and everything that goes into making great prints. If a
user has a completely un-calibrated system, it is pretty easy for the entry
level user to blame the RIP for not matching the print to the monitor (I'm
sure that these are their favorite types of support calls).
Cris Daniels
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