16 bit printing with the Canon Pro 100

[peter D]

http://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=50045.0

Wow, that's a seriously interesting post and answers. Thanks for that.

 

[finepics]

If you Google Double Profile Printer it's surprising what comes up!!

 

[berttheghost]

@peter D ,
I'd like to humbly suggest that you get your fading issue under control before trying to fix your magenta cast problem. The fading may be rapid enough to confound getting custom profiles. In any event, you probably don't want your custom profiles to be based on faded samples. I'm also concerned that whatever is causing such severe fading may be hard on lungs and other body tissues.

You might want to screen your abode for chlorine bleach and other powerful oxidizing agents.

Some ionizing air fresheners and electrostatic air cleaners emit ozone. Keep them away from your prints.

You might ask the local environmental monitoring folks about atmospheric pollutant levels. Local museums might also be taking steps to protect their collections. They should have a handle on local challenges.

Too much magenta could in fact be not enough cyan. Compare prints made in quiet mode vs normal. Does the color balance change?

I'm assuming, of course, that you're using proper proofing lighting. Some lights happen to be very weak in the cyan portion of the spectrum.

Happy hunting & good luck.

 

[peter D]

I'd like to humbly suggest that you get your fading issue under control before trying to fix your magenta cast problem. The fading may be rapid enough to confound getting custom profiles. In any event, you probably don't want your custom profiles to be based on faded samples. I'm also concerned that whatever is causing such severe fading may be hard on lungs and other body tissues.

Thank you for your interest in my posts.

I'm fairly satisfied that I'm not getting fading under all circumstance to any worrying extent. All the are stored in a stack on top of one another or in an album under plastic covers or under glass seem to be quite stable colour wise. My feeling is that my environment is quite free of atmospheric pollutants apart from salt laden air. When my house is wide open to this in the summer months then it's possible that unprotected prints could be affected quite badly. We do not have air fresheners, or any of the other chemicals that you mention used in the area that the prints are stored. The kitchen is close by in an open plan house but other than that nothing I can identify. The print made on Ilford fine art paper that my friend had severe fading issues with was hanging unprotected in a kitchen area and I doubt that a range hood was being used either.
I've purchased some spray on art work protectant made by Helmar and will try that against unprotected control prints just as soon as I'm confident the printing issue is under control.

The lighting I use is not perfect yet ( cool daylight florescent) in the monitor area (calibrated IPS monitor) but I do take the prints out into the sunshine to check them, in this case the colour shift is obvious whether the print is viewed under incandescent light, florescent, or sunlight. As I remove the magenta in manual adjustments then at some point a green cast creeps in on the finished print.
My soft proofing result is invariably different than the printed result so I have to guess how much magenta to remove if I'm going to get a print that is reasonably accurate. I suppose this could be a clue as to the source of the problem.

 

[gscotten]

You can use the 16-bit XPS driver in Windows from ANY application. 16-bit printing has been available in Windows since the release of Vista. At that time Microsoft also released patches for XP and Server 2003, so if you are using any version of Windows since 2001, you have 16-bit support. That is not to say that every printer manufacturer supports those older versions.

 

[finepics]

Try using the Canon Print Studio Pro app and select to print a Pattern Print on some A4 of the same paper. It's a very useful option for fine tuning colour casts and is really simple as each tile it prints shows what adjustments to make.

 

[peter D]

You can use the 16-bit XPS driver in Windows from ANY application. 16-bit printing has been available in Windows since the release of Vista. At that time Microsoft also released patches for XP and Server 2003, so if you are using any version of Windows since 2001, you have 16-bit support. That is not to say that every printer manufacturer supports those older versions.

Well that's enlightening.
I was depending on the accuracy of a statement by Scott Kelby on his 2011 book "The Adobe CS5 Book" in the printing section P358, where he says regarding 16 bit printing using Adobe CS5 (he is teaching printing with Photoshop managing colours)- "but at this time, this feature is only available for MAC OX X Leopard or higher users (this is a limitation of the Windows OS, not Photoshop).
I'd assumed reading Canon's manual for the Pro-100 that the 16 bit printing feature may only have been made possible due to a workaround achieved by the Canon Print Studio Pro software.

Can you comment on the limitation of using Adobe's CMM with a 64 bit OS.
This is what the Canon manual has to say about it:
"Select Adobe CMM when you want to print in the same colour tones as when printing directly from Photoshop or other products of Adobe Systems Incorporated.

- To use Adobe CMM, you need to install "Adobe Color Management Module (CMM)." Download from the Adobe Systems Incorporated website. There are some restrictions on the usage environment; see the Adobe Systems Incorporated website for details.

- Adobe CMM can be selected only when using 32-bit OS.

- ICC profiles provided by Canon are designed to allow you to obtain appropriate print results when not using black point compensation. Therefore, it is recommended that you deselect the Use black point compensation checkbox of Color Management when printing"

My understanding is that this may only be a problem for those of us using Windows 7 64 bit OS and printing with CS5 in the "Photoshop manages colors" mode. The Windows 7 OS should have its own CMM that is accurate and would be applied when printing from the printer driver or the likes of Canon Print Studio Pro or am I wrong on this point.

 

[peter D]

Try using the Canon Print Studio Pro app and select to print a Pattern Print on some A4 of the same paper. It's a very useful option for fine tuning colour casts and is really simple as each tile it prints shows what adjustments to make.

That's a really good suggestion of where I need to go next before adopting custom profiling.
I've approached the problem as a two stage process and I'm currently nearing the end of the first stage which was to determine whether there was a difference in the way PC's profiles were treated if printing using the printer driver, or from Print Studio Pro or from CS5 with Photoshop managing colours because of an apparently well researched article which basically said any profile can be made specifically for either the printer manages colours or the application software manages colours" and hence my efforts to test out PC's EZ ICC method for printing and compare it with results from PSP (Print Studio Pro). In short I'm trying to nail down whether there is a software problem with the driver or the firmware or the application software as distinct from the differences between individual printers of the same model.
If what Mike at PC's is correct with his assertion that his new Pro-100 ink set is very close in colour fidelity to the OEM ink set then provided there is not a software problem then it must come down to the particular printer that I own. This may mean that the some evidence problem existed when I used the OEM ink set because I have tried using the Canon profiles supplied with the printer together with PC's new ink set and the result is no better. I was just learning about photo printing back then and would have put down the need for manual colour adjustment with the odd file to the learning process, however according to my records most of my photos printed back then where satisfactory at default colour settings using Canon profiles. Up until this investigation process was started I've always used Canon PSP to print with.

For the 2nd stage of the process I'm working through and Canon's PSP is not the problem then will adopt your suggestion regards the pattern printing feature offered with that software as the way forward before adopting custom profiling.

Custom profiling for me is on hold until (a) stage one is completed and (b) I transition completely to PC's new Pro-100 ink set rather than the bridging set for users of Mike's (@PC) old inset which replaced just the black and two magenta inks.

 

[gscotten]

Peter,

Here's an article by Adrian Ford of MSDN from 2008 that covers the 16-bit printing question pretty well. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/adrianford/archive/2008/10/22/16-bits-and-more-printing-on-windows.aspx I do know that Epson didn't provide any 16-bit Windows drivers for quite a long while, but it wasn't an OS limitation. I personally can't see any difference whether I am using the 16-bit Canon XPS driver or the standard driver, but I always use the XPS driver JIC. I am on Win7.

 

[finepics]

Here's my thoughts on this. Firstly I'm fairly certain that the linearity between the same printers is far closer with modern manufacturing techniques these days so I'm not so sure your printer is at fault (although that's not impossible). Secondly I'm not so sure that the claims for the PC inkset as being close to OEM is true as the same claim was made with the original inkset I bought (which is sitting in my cupboard unused apart from the first carts I filled) yet the results using the Canon profiles were a mile off, and as soon as I switched back to Canon ink problem gone. And it's the inks which would seem to be the biggest variable in your results so far, so I would have to point the finger at them being the likely problem (especially since there were three inks changed from the original set - M, PM and BK). It might be that the new inks are a completely different animal and sort your issues out.

I've been reading the EZICC page and this method seems to be a way for people who don't have Photoshop or Lightroom to still be able to use ICC profiles to print straight from Windows, e.g. Picture Viewer, with a profile managed output. Since you have CS5 I don't think you should be using this approach. Previous to buying the Pro100 I'd always used Photoshop print module to print but Canon have actually gone to a great deal of effort with the PSP app and whilst I'm perfectly happy using Photoshop to print I'm finding the simplicity of PSP (especially the easy way to store all the setting for a given paper as a custom preset) that I don't bother with Photoshops print dialog at all now. One thing I'd suggest is uninstalling all the drivers and reinstalling from scratch and leave it setup with default settings then try again using PSP.

If you're going to continue to refill your carts then ideally a set of custom profiles is needed (unless you find an easy fine tune result with the Pattern Print option - incidentally that's very customisable to give a small, medium or large spread of variations between colours). I'm hoping that there's less of an issue with the PC pigment inks as I've actually just sold my Pro100 and purchased the Pro10, and given how simple it is to refill the Pigment carts vs the dye carts it's likely I'm going to purchase them. Again this is not a criticism of the PC inks or Mike, just that my first use of them wasn't what I expected and I haven't upgraded them!

Fortunately (or not) I'm on MAC so the install and setup process is pretty simple and I can print in 32bit should I want to (although it massively increases the file size).

There's an excellent book that was revised in 2013 from Rocky Nook by Uwe Steinmueller and Juergen Gulbins (from Luminous Landscape) called "Fine Art Printing for Photographers" which has a lot of Canon related information in it. However the one printer they don't include, but do refer to, is the Pro100 simply because it's a dye printer and they don't consider dye to be archival!