Dark prints with Argyllcms printer profile

[JJ34]

Well as said before I am not a printing newbie, even though I do not print a lot, I have been printing pictures for the past 15 years at least, the 3880 I have now is my 3rd true photo printer so far, I still have some nice photo prints hanging on my walls printed with my previous R1800.
You may have seen some of my posts in DPreview ("JJ Winkel" since 2003) one where I modified my too large 3880 IR I-refill carts to a more reasonable size, by the way they are still in excellent condition since 2 1/2 years now ...! Jtoolman may remember me
Only to say that I know about double profiling, BUT an error is always possible so I will do the whole process again just in case.

To print my profiling targets I use PS and an old workaround to enable PS to print without profile as I hate UDPS which is unuseable with Pharmacists procedure to print targets on only one A4 sheet.
But as it is I do have Qimage too, never thought about using it to print those targets ... Is there any special procedure to print profileless targets ?
I do not like Qimage so much as its UI is far too complicated and not user friendly at all, but I do appreciate its printing quality, nevertheless I am quite good with PS (I am shooting raw) so I use it almost exclusively.

 

[JJ34]

When starting to make your first profile with any of these profile applications would the printer not have to be re-set to default, printer handles the colour first. ?

I am not sure I understand your question, printer profiles can be used in one of two ways, either the printer "driver" uses the profile or the application does, but not both at the same time ( = double profiling ).
As PS handles the profiles better than the printer driver, one usually tells the application to use the profile and you must tell the printer driver not to use it ==> option ICM = OFF.
Only high end pro printers can be "calibrated" ( not profiled ) natively, but that is another story.
Was that your question ?

 

[The Hat]

@JJ34, I am curious about you printer pictured above, it looks to be using dye rather than pigment inks, is that correct or are my eyes deceiving me ?

Was that your question ?

I understand the principle of double profiling but if you haven’t made your first profile, isn’t it better to let the printer do all the colour handling at the very start ? (Default)

 

[JJ34]

@JJ34, I am curious about you printer pictured above, it looks to be using dye rather than pigment inks, is that correct or are my eyes deceiving me ?

Your eyes are not deceiving you, it is indeed dye ink ( Vermont Inkthrift Pro ), I decided some time ago to try dye inks for several reasons : one being that with my old R1800 pigment inks I had too many clogging problems that eventually led the printer into the dust bin (replacement head then costing as much as a new printer), also I temporarily had a Canon Pro9000 and I loved its bright dye colors but I was also always worried with the dye fast fading problem, thus when my 3880 OEM carts needed replacement and John Cone offered the encapsulated Inkthrift Pro dye inks I eventually decided to give it a try. Very nice bright colors but the fading was still there, not as fast obviously but still there ( presentation charts I printed are slowly fading inside workbooks in drawers ). I currently still use them but for non durable non photo work (reason why I still havn't switched back to pigments ...)
On the other hand, as said before, I have some years old pics nicely hanging at home, but printed with R1800 (not even OEM) pigment inks ( they were from IR Republic origin).

I understand the principle of double profiling but if you haven’t made your first profile, isn’t it better to let the printer do all the colour handling at the very start ?

at the very start ? Well for me the very start was some 15 years ago, too late now !

Isn't it better ? Short answer = no, letting the printer "driver" ( I insist as it is not the actual printer that does the work in this case, but it is the printer software aka printer driver executing in the PC that does the picture color manipulations before sending the manipulated data to the printer hardware) is only a crude shortcut for non enthousiasts to get acceptable photo prints, not mentioning all the non photo works that ink jet printers are used for, I guess home photo printing is probably only a little percentage of total home printing. In that case you can use "canned" profiles provided either by the printer or by the paper manufacturers.
This does not take into account any printer hardware manufacturing variation ( remember only high end pro printers have a real built-in hardware "calibration" facility), nor does it account for paper and inks variations (nothing is 100% similar time after time) and of course what about using non OEM inks, but this is probably not relevant in that case.
One more point is that the printer driver algorythms are far less sofisticated then what products like PS or similar (Qimage I guess) are capable of.

Snæfjallaströnd in the North West Icelandic Fjords (panorama)

 

[The Hat]

@JJ34, I will stick with the crude printer colour driver because I find it more than adequate for my point and shoot photos that don’t get any editing before outputting.

Your photo Snæfjallaströndabove really looks amazing and nothing I have could possibly print that size in length, nor would I have a spare wall to hang it on..

 

[JJ34]

I have done the whole chain again and I think I found the problem, the target print was OK (not tagged with a profile) and read properly, by the way I increased the number of patches from 475 to 540, but the error was that inadvertently I then printed the test picture using the saturation colorimetric setting, thus the picture being a bit on the dark side printed even darker as too saturated.
I now use the relative colorimetric setting, the colors are spot on and brightness is what can be expected with a matte paper, could be a tad brighter but I will have to try with glossy paper later and also with one of the canned reference pictures that are not monitor dependent.
My test picture :

Mary Ann Falls, Cape Breton Highlands National Park, Nova Scotia

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I have done the whole chain again and I think I found the problem,

That's good to hear, thanks for the response. Using a few more color spots may increase the accuracy overall but not fix the brightness issue. Everything beyond this is a matter of personal taste and the actual viewing conditions - just take your print and view it in sunshine - colors get even more saturated etc.