Do Hp printers have metamerism problem?

[MichaelKnight]

I wonder if Hp printers have metamerism or colors shifting under different lights problem(especially grays).I searched on Aol's search page but couldn't find much info(maybe I used wrong keywords).

So I want to ask Hp users here if they have metamerism problem with their Hp printer or not,especially on gray colour.

 

[ThrillaMozilla]

Sorry I didn't notice this before. The answer is maybe. I have a PRO-9000 with blue-grays that are almost the color of an eggplant when first out of the machine, but settle down later. Still, when I try to adjust the color, it's hard to get it just right so it's satisfactory in both tungsten and daylight. In tungsten (or LED) light it's much to red or magenta. One person I talked to thought the problem was with the cyan ink.

To some extent this may be a widespread problem with other printers as well. I just got some calendars back from the camera store (Minolta printer?--not sure what medium). They have a slight problem with magenta or red cast as well with LED or tungsten halogen. But at least it's not bad.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

The effects in question - bronzing and gloss differentials - are not so much specific for HP printers but are much more an effect of pigment inks in combination with the paper coating viewed in reflecting light. Bronzing indicates an effect that darker colors - mostly cyan, but as well blacks , suddenly change their color to a violet tone or a kind of bronzing color. And there are gloss differences between different colors against each other, differences between more or less saturated colors and the gloss of printed areas vs. the gloss of the paper itself in unprinted areas. Companies are using different measures to counteract these effects - one is the use of a gloss optimizer-Epson/Chroma Optimizer-Canon, and I think HP is using something similar as well. And companies try to work on the color pigments directly as well, coating, density control . Pigment inks undergo upgrades in this respect to reduce such effects further.
And you are addressing another effect - color balancing under different light conditions - artificial vs. daylight.
A digital camera does something automatically, in most cases, the auto white balance to counteract such issues with different light conditions. But once you did your print you cannot change the color balance anymore. When you do icc-color profiles you get to the point that you need to enter a particular value for the assumed color temperature of the viewing conditions which directly indicates that you can do it only for one viewing condition but not for all of them. You can try to find an average balance which still makes your prints look pleasant in most conditions - you typically do it
for daylight first since your brightness it typically higher and 'wrong' colors are more prominent. Prints adjusted this way get a warmer look under tungsten light which is visually accepted.

 

[ThrillaMozilla]

No, metamerism, more properly called metameric failure ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamerism_(color)#Metameric_failure ) is a different phenomenon. "The term illuminant metameric failure or illuminant metamerism is sometimes used to describe situations where two material samples match when viewed under one light source but not another."

It can be extreme. The gemstone alexandrite, for example, is red in tungsten illumination and green in daylight. Prints from Canon printers are not quite that bad, but when you see that eggplant color you will wonder.

 

[stratman]

The gemstone alexandrite, for example, is red in tungsten illumination and green in daylight.

Cool! An interesting historical gemstone.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

that's a crystal with particular diffraction characteristics, I wouldn't call metamerism a failure, it is a combined optical effect of diffraction, absorption and interference of particular wavelengths. But back to HP pigment inks - I wouldn't see a reason why HP inks would exhibit such effects stronger than other inks.

 

[ThrillaMozilla]

Alexandrite does show metameric failure, and diffraction has nothing to do with it. (I used to teach mineralogy and optical mineralogy, and I've done lots of x-ray diffraction.) Most people call the phenomenon metamerism, but persnickety people on the web say it's supposed to be called metameric failure, and I suppose that's right.

Wikipedia has this to say about it: "Alexandrite, a strongly pleochroic (trichroic) gem, will exhibit emerald green, red and orange-yellow colors depending on viewing direction in partially polarised light. However, its most distinctive property is that it also changes color in artificial (tungsten/halogen) light compared to daylight. The color change from red to green is due to strong absorption of light in a narrow yellow portion of the spectrum, while allowing large bands of more blue-green and red wavelengths to be transmitted. Which of these prevails to give the perceived hue depends on the spectral balance of the illumination. Fine-quality alexandrite has a green to bluish-green color in daylight (relatively blue illumination of high color temperature), changing to a red to purplish-red color in incandescent light (relatively yellow illumination).[7] However, fine-color material is extremely rare. Less-desirable stones may have daylight colors of yellowish-green and incandescent colors of brownish red." There's more explanation later in the article.

I know little about other printers and other inks. I just know that that ink gave me a huge amount of trouble with one particular print that was dominantly blue-gray. There are mentions of it here and there on the Web.

I did a little looking, and found a discussion by Jose Rodriguez here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh-Y1LIrzlA . Go to 14:38. I didn't listen to all of it, and don't know what printer. At about 16:30 he suggests using paper with no optical brightener. That's an intriguing suggestion, but I can't vouch for it personally because I don't know (I think my paper has some OB but not a lot).

Jim Kasson has a discussion here: https://blog.kasson.com/the-last-word/metameric-failure/ . Read it and weep.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Let me show you a typical effect with pigment ink on glossy surfaces, and even more prominent on silk/satin type papers. I have printed a set of 4 color bars from a blue with a tint to magenta, red , yellow and to a black and took a photo of it against reflecting artificial light , it is printed on a P400 with some Chinese pigment inks on a silk type paper

It is directly visible how much the blue bar changes its color to a red almost as bright as the red bar. The black area with this ink turns to gray but does not change the color very much. This can be quite different with other inks. This print was done with the gloss optimizer option turned off.

I did an overprint with the GO over the middle part of the test sheet

You directly see the benefits of the GO overprint - the blue remains blue, red stays red and the black bar gets even darker.
I did more of such testing about 2+ years ago with an R800 at that time, the strength of these effects vary with the paper type you are using and the inks as well.
I did not test a genuine HP ink but a HP 907 pigment refill ink by InkTec as claimed by the seller, the visual effects of
bronzing and color change are about similar to the Chinese ink above, I tested as well some CLI72 Canon compatible pigment ink with the same outcome, about all inks are prone to these effects. These color/shift related effects are one part of the evaluation, inks differ as well in their gloss between saturated and less saturated areas and the gloss between cyan and magenta and yellow. Yellow is the glossiest in most cases.
I'm getting the best overall performance for these criteria combined with the Epson genuine HighGloss 2 inks coming with the printer, but those are used up now and too expensive to get replaced. It's all a visual judgement comparing prints side by side and under different light conditions, and I'm creating icc profiles from target sheets.
As shown before with the R800 printouts - the GO overprint has 2 effects - it widens the gamut, colors get more saturated, and the black level of a particular ink/paper combination improves significantly and visibly in printouts.
The photo shots are done under lamp light, that would not activate any OBA at all, these reflection effects do not depend on the OBA. I did a test as well on a HP Premium Plus Photo paper which does not carry any OBA's, the results are the same. The reflection effects and the colors may look somewhat different under daylight with quite a different spectral density distribution and some blue sky polarized light. But here as well - an overprint with GO takes away most of those irritating effects and reduces them significantly.

 

[stratman]

the blue remains blue, red stays red

I do not see much blue or red in either image, much more magentas and oranges.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Isn't it amazing that it is still a red - or orange - coming out of all of that - printing w/o a profile, taking a photo shot with an ad hoc automatic white balance and viewing all that on a non-calibrated monitor .?