Anyone know the dilution ratio of Epson PK to LK and LLK blacks?

[Ink stained Fingers]

I checked - I have 183 profiles active for the printers currently connected to power, that's variations with different inks, different driver settings, different papers with and w/o gloss opt. overprint etc.
And I have a profile archive with 454 profiles left from printers decommissioned in the meantime

 

[W. Fisher]

I need to clean house on my profiles. Maybe do l ike you and move a lot of them into some other storage place.

Anyhoo, back to more profiles and testing...

Here are the "Gamut color volumes" for the percentage ink load on the Epson Glossy with the dye ink and using BasICColor Catch 5:

+15% = 643,669
+20% = 643,295
+25% = 646,721
+30% = 661,029
+35% = 621,307

Seems the ink load of +30% is the best for me.

Now maybe I should try this +30% ink load with the x-rite i1 Profiler software and see if it improves since it was done with the default of 0% prior in the Epson driver...

Just finished the 30% ink load with the i1 Profiler above. Almost the same numbers as with Catch 5 and +30% ink load.
+30% = 662,574
Slight differences in the greens and blues with the 3D viewer in ColorThink Pro 3 between the two softwares, but not much.

Now for the print...

W.F.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

those ink load numbers are very specific to the paper you are using, you may do that check for another paper and may find that the coating gets to the limit and won't absorb the ink quickly enough giving you fuzzy edges and bleeding of one color into the other. And I don't think that differences in gamut volume from 643 000 to 661 000 would make a visible difference but just increases your ink usage (Epson would like that but you are not using their inks and you do refill...)

 

[W. Fisher]

those ink load numbers are very specific to the paper you are using, you may do that check for another paper and may find that the coating gets to the limit and won't absorb the ink quickly enough giving you fuzzy edges and bleeding of one color into the other. And I don't think that differences in gamut volume from 643 000 to 661 000 would make a visible difference but just increases your ink usage (Epson would like that but you are not using their inks and you do refill...)

True enough on changing of papers and ink will change the gamut numbers. What baffled me at first was why the two softwares made different images with same ink and paper.

The attempt with the increased ink load for the x-rite made it closer to BasICColor output image where I had increased the ink load as their chart was weak in color with 0% (Was hard for my eyes to tell in the smaller x-rite profiling charts.). Going up to 30% seemed best for the maximum color gamut in BasICColor, so my followup to increase x-rite's profiling to increase it to also 30% followed. Now they are almost in agreement and images should look identical - and they almost are.

Still, I get a bit better skin color and milder contrast with the BasICColor for some reason - but just a tad. It seems to favor the yellow/orange skin color a bit more than x-rite on the Epson glossy paper. That holds true in comparing the two 30% ink loads too where the BasICColr Catch 5 seems to push the gamut out a bit more there too.

The screen capture off ColorThink Pro below shows the large Adobe RGB (1998) as a smooth color and is the larger shape beneath it. The orange/yellow pixelated part sticking out are from the profiles I made with the x-rite and BasICColor which pushes beyond the Adobe1998 colors. The very fine black lines are the BasICColor profile and at the very tip around the 2 o'clock spot you can see where it pushed out a bit more than the pixelated x-rite beneath it favoring the skin colors a bit more - but just by a tad.

I added the smaller egg-shaped inner line (within them all) beneath on the inside which is the "Generic Epson-made" profile (with pigment ink) which is not only much smaller, but for some bizarre reason Epson uses the exact same profile with the same gamut volume for most all of their papers! All they do is change the name, yet the profile is the same gamut. It fits within the sRGB colorspace so maybe why they did it. I learned this trivia when I went to a color printing class at Freestyle Photo in Los Angeles where this Epson "One-for All" idea was shown and why the need to profile ourselves. It also drove me to buy the ColorTink Pro 3 software too.

What I got out of this endeavor was the feeling that BasICColor gives me better skin tones and less contrasty appearance which may be better for people photography. For landscapes, the x-rite might be a better choice for a bit more (non-skin) colors and contrast.

W.F.

 

[W. Fisher]

The image below is for your amusement and what I gleaned out of the Freestyle Photo seminar. It shows the Epson Premium Glossy, Premium Luster, and Premium Semi-Gloss factory-made paper profiles.

Notice, THEY ARE ALL EXACTLY THE SAME, RIGHT DOWN TO THE COLOR GAMUT VOLUME NUMBERS! The chances of this occurring with individual profiles is very slim - if not impossible.

W.F.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

the profiling software has some room for an adjusted color representation in the perceptual rendering mode which
may be the reason that Basiccolor and X-Rite give you a slightly different 'look', it is about the transition of colors close to the gamut limit - inside to outside. You rather may compare profiling software doing the prints with the rel. colorimetric rendering intent or the abs. col. intent leaving less variability for the software for these modes.

It shows the Epson Premium Glossy, Premium Luster, and Premium Semi-Gloss factory-made paper profiles.

That's quite possible - the glossy material is the starting point for the Luster and Semi-gloss papers - there is just one more production step running the paper through calendering rollers to press the resp. surface structure onto the paper.
I can show you the same effect with a Sihl gloss paper and their silk paper, both have the same gamut - within instrument and measurement tolerances.

 

[W. Fisher]

What bothers me is that Epson should have profiled their papers instead of using "One size fits all" profiling method because it doesn't. They got lazy to do it the way they did and what the class instructor was pointing out and the need to profile yourself and not trust their canned profiles. This was the class I attended which was by sheer accident as I went there to buy some paper but got sidetracked into the class for free by Eric Joseph - and it lasted about 6-7 hours. The "Guru of profiling" was also there (He makes professional profiles for businesses, but I forget his name.).

This is the class: https://www.freestylephoto.biz/inkjet/seminars


Anyway, below shows the wireframe and larger color gamut of their Glossy paper verses their Luster paper which is within the wireframe and shows a smaller 2D gamut as well. The colors are reduced by over 50K too which is to be expected. Same may be true by going with their Semi-Gloss too, and maybe another 50K loss verses Glossy. A 100K color gamut variance is quite large, but Epson's profiles says "They are the same" but they lie!

They really should have used an "actual profile" for their papers than doing it the way they did. Imho - and the class instructor as well - of course.

W.F.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

the problem is that you need to profile the papers by yourself to find out that they are equal or not. I cannot find the link anymore that even somebody from Epson U.S. was commenting some time ago that their standard profiles are not the best and most accurate ones so this is known by those who go into the details.
And I can confirm as well that I found several times that papers by the same manufacturer - glossy vs. silk/semi-glossy/lustre - had the same gamut (within small tolerances). I'm not doing multiple read passes on the same patch sheets to average them or even reading multiple sheets multiple times to average the results to reduce errors.