Canon Pro9000 ll colour shift noticeable in greys

[Emulator]

Hi Roy

I have printed out the standard profile with the display environment colour temperature control set in:

1. In the fully 'cool' i.e. 'brown' postion.
2. In the half 'cool' or half 'brown' position.
3. In the fully 'warm' i.e. 'grey' position.
4. In the half 'warm' or half 'grey' position.

Rather confusingly, the descriptive terms represents the environment not the effect.

Looking at the results, they are as one would expect. The single contol does exactly what is needed, instead of having to play with multiple adjustments.

Viewed in bright sunlight, I think I would be using the fully 'warm' setting which gives the sort of result that I would judge 'neutral'.

If it were possible I would shift the whole range half to the warm direction. This rather bears out the thought that the initial profiles are too warm, (clearly designed for Rod's environment).

I think the description of the controls as a means to compensate for the display environment, led to my ignoring them at this stage, but they will be very useful in future.

Looking at the colours in the test photo images, they remain good.

I can still see my colour shift in the grey, although if I was looking at the corrected print for the first time, I might not notice it. It has however extended over the length of the print instead of the first half inch. I don't know what to make of that.

Regards
Ian

 

[Roy Sletcher]

I have printed out the standard profile with the display environment colour temperature control set in:

1. In the fully 'cool' i.e. 'brown' postion.
2. In the half 'cool' or half 'brown' position.
3. In the fully 'warm' i.e. 'grey' position.
4. In the half 'warm' or half 'grey' position.

Rather confusingly, the descriptive terms represents the environment not the effect.



Hi Ian,

Having a trouble following your colour explanation above. Because I make my profile adjustments in the Datacolor, SpyderProof - Edit window, I cannot reconcile your adjustments mentioned below with the screen shots I see when adjusting. Sliders I see are all conventional CMY or RGB with a warm-cool slider and a dim-bright slider.

Bottom Line: If you can adjust to get good profiles, then all is well.

Of couse I am looking for repeatable and predictable colour reproduction, not the lucky guess which was how it started a few years back. The third party ink is cheap, but good paper still costs a bit.

A previous poster raised a point I think may be valid. Are you printing from a software utility that recognises the third party profiles you are making? His point was that your proprietary Canon printing software MAY not be properly recognising your non-Canon profile. May be worth checking.

Also I have found that a fresh print with Image Specialist ink takes a small amount of time to stabilise, and changes colour for the first few minutes after printing is normal. At least on the Ilford and Red River paper I use.

Gradually getting it all under control.

Roy in Ottawa

 

[Emulator]

Hi Grandad35 and Roy

First, Grandad35, This is true with regard to Canon EasyPhoto Print, i.e. no external profiles, but it is not true about Canon EasyPhoto Print Pro which will use custom profiles. The rendering is restricted to Perceptual and Relative Colormetric, however.

Roy, the controls to which I am referring are those discussed by David Tobie in the blog link which you referenced!! This is what set me off testing the effects. Perhaps you have not read the blog yet. They are the PreciseLight Brightness and the PreciseLight Color Temperature sliders. They are described by Datacolor as controls to adjust prints to specific display or exhibition lighting environments. That is why I had ignored them until now.

Regards to you both
Ian

 

[stratman]

Canon EasyPhoto Print Pro which will use custom profiles.

Never heard of this app before. Sure enough it can utilize custom ICC profiles. Is this a free application from Canon that can be used on any of their inkjet printers?

 

[rodbam]

I only use easy photoprint pro plug in for printing colour cast free B&Ws, it takes about four times as long to print than it does with colour & produces excellent looking B&Ws from the pro 9000 that has only one black ink to work with. Canon have written up something special to gets B&W prints this good out of a dedicated colour printer.

The Easyprint pro plug in came with the software disc for the pro9000 Stratman, it automatically puts itself into Photoshop & seems to have no relationship to the EasyPrint stand alone program.

I'm glad you blokes brought up the brown colours of our little continent because I was starting to think all my prints had a brown colour cast. The only patchwork look I get in my landscapes is the brown cracked earth but we do get a few specks of green where blokes have had a pee

 

[Roy Sletcher]

Hi Grandad35 and Roy

First, Grandad35, This is true with regard to Canon EasyPhoto Print, i.e. no external profiles, but it is not true about Canon EasyPhoto Print Pro which will use custom profiles. The rendering is restricted to Perceptual and Relative Colormetric, however.

Roy, the controls to which I am referring are those discussed by David Tobie in the blog link which you referenced!! This is what set me off testing the effects. Perhaps you have not read the blog yet. They are the PreciseLight Brightness and the PreciseLight Color Temperature sliders. They are described by Datacolor as controls to adjust prints to specific display or exhibition lighting environments. That is why I had ignored them until now.

Regards to you both
Ian

Hi Ian,

OK now I get it. I had read the blog superficially but had not had time to digest the specifics. Because I am busy with our local camera club activities right now (AGM Coming up) I have not had time to practice. From what I am reading is is the exact information I needed to understand the adjustments to correct a profile. I does not answer why the profile is not correct first time, but the CM version was.

However if it solves the problem this it will be OK for me. Will have some time tomorrow - Wed to experiment and see if I can get things better. In all honesty I should mention I am being rather picky because despite my complaining the profiles I am getting with the Spyder are better than the generic Paper profiles supplied by Ilford and Red River papers.

By the way Ian, which of the targets do you print out. For the longest time I was using the 729 patches on four sheets which was expensive and time consuming. Now I am using one sheet plus back (Total 2 sheets) resulting profile seems about the same.

Late here in Ottawa, will check this thread in the morning.

 

[Emulator]

Hi Roy

I think we have solved our brown colour cast problem. It seems the colour temperature control should be left set on "warm" rather than the standard 'middle' setting, to give a cold print (sounds ridiculous doesn't it!).

I am using EZ High Quality 225 Plus Grays - 4 sheets. I thought it might improve the grey issue, but I am not so sure. I think there may be more to discuss regarding the effect of high gloss micro porous paper on the spectros readings of lighter colours, but that is for the future.

My thoughts on the original topic "colour shift in greys" are that mid to light greys, created from mixing colours, as opposed to black inks, are extremely sensitive to any slight variations in ink flow and we probably have to live with the results on the 9000 ll. Undoubtedly the colour shift is much less noticeable now we have sorted out the warm image problem.

One or two comments on the Canon Easy PhotoPrint Pro as questions have been raised. This plug-in installs automatically in Photoshop Elements and Canon's Digital Photo Professional and can be optionally used in either. There is a recent upgrade available you can down load from the Canon site. This has now introduced a high resolution, full screen image display in the crop mode among other things. I like to use it for its easy to control print sizeing and positioning mode.

And a question to Rod, where can we see some of your photos, it will make a nice change from all this green?

Regards to all
Ian

 

[paulcroft]

Hi Grandad35

Not so Sir, at least not to my knowledge.

I have a Pro9000 II, I use a ColorMunki photo to make my printer profiles (using Epson papers and Octoinkjet inks). and I print via both Photoshop CS5 and DPP EasyPhotoPrint Pro depending on what I'm doing. I rather like the ease of use of EasyPhotoPrint Pro and am very happy with its output. When using EPP Pro I select the profile I want to use through the EasyPhotoPrint Pro Color Adjustment tab and I've found no reason to suppose it's not using the profile I select.

HTH

Paul

 

[stratman]

I only use easy photoprint pro plug in for printing colour cast free B&Ws, it takes about four times as long to print than it does with colour & produces excellent looking B&Ws from the pro 9000 that has only one black ink to work with. Canon have written up something special to gets B&W prints this good out of a dedicated colour printer.

The Easyprint pro plug in came with the software disc for the pro9000 Stratman, it automatically puts itself into Photoshop & seems to have no relationship to the EasyPrint stand alone program.

Thanks for the info, rodbam. The software is not offered with my MP830. It's only for you big spenders.

I had some issues printing B&W images until using one of Mikling's profiles and QImage (Ultimate trial version), which worked better for me than PhotoShop.

 

[Emulator]

Guys would you not consider taking a leaf out of Rodhams book and give his way a try just once.
He has always said that his inks work great for him without too much profiling at all.

I tend to go along with his principal of letting Photoshop and printer handle the colours and
just tweak it a bit if its necessary to get that extra Wow factor.

I thought I might give it a try, just in case.

I switched off the profiles and let the Canon printer software take control with Linear Tone etc.

I printed the Evaluation image tif and

Low and behold the colour shift from grey to brown grey in the image border disappeared, it remained the uniform grey.

Well I'm blowed, speechless, after all this messing about. So what was the cause??

Many thanks to The Hat.

Now I've got to find out why.........

Regards Ian