Have You Bought The Epson P800

[Ian Barber]

What other things could cause over inking apart from incorrect Media setting in the driver

 

[3dogs]

What other things could cause over inking apart from incorrect Media setting in the driver

Well one can do custom settings as an option to:
Increase/decrease ink density...increase/decrease print head travel and increase time between passes.

Example I could not get my Munki to read the initial patches made for a profile on 300gsm Canson Arches Watercolour.
Re reading an old post from Mike I got a piece of the puzzle. @jtoolman was using OEM harvested ink. I am using Cone...Mike suggested a difference in pigment density in some colours.(generic, not Cone)...
So on a hunch went into custom and made a custom preset print menu....took a couple of iterations but got a good Munki reading and have not looked back.
So now when I tell LR that I want the Canson Watercolour profile it auto selects my preset menu and my print output is sensational.

This post is programmed to self destruct 5 seconds after you read it.....so memorise as you read.

 

[Ian Barber]

A Bit off topic but whats your thoughts on how accurate this test is which I performed yesterday.

In Photoshop, I filled three shapes with black, middle grey and white. The values I used were L values so for Black I used 0, Grey I used 61 and White I used 100. The stroke around the white shape was just there so I could see the shape when I printed it.

I printed the document through the ABW driver onto some Lyson Semi-Gloss paper and then measured the patched with the Munki in Spot Mode to see how the values had changed and this is what I got.

I am assuming the white value of 95 has shifted because of the OBA in the brightness but I was surprised the black had shifted from 0 on screen to 9 in print, any thoughts on this.

 

[3dogs]

A Bit off topic but whats your thoughts on how accurate this test is which I performed yesterday.

In Photoshop, I filled three shapes with black, middle grey and white. The values I used were L values so for Black I used 0, Grey I used 61 and White I used 100. The stroke around the white shape was just there so I could see the shape when I printed it.

I printed the document through the ABW driver onto some Lyson Semi-Gloss paper and then measured the patched with the Munki in Spot Mode to see how the values had changed and this is what I got.

I am assuming the white value of 95 has shifted because of the OBA in the brightness but I was surprised the black had shifted from 0 on screen to 9 in print, any thoughts on this.

Not really, could be a number of things, interesting tho.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

that's a perfect match with the L=61 gray spot, it can't be any better, you are measuring the black level of your Ink/paper in combination on the black spot, and the white level of the paper on the white spot, you won't get anything else, those numbers are completely within normal range. You could expect, with other inks/papers, some small a/b values mostly negative when the black is not neutral but tends to the cool side, and you may see some slightly yellowish tones for the white level with other papers. I don't think OBA's are active, to see those active you would need some UV radiation contents from the spot illuminator in the Color Munki, I guess they don't do that. You have that with the newer i1Pro V2 Spectrometer which uses a separate UV led to excite the OBA's in the target paper.

When you look to the Aardenburg report of the P800, you'll find that they tested various papers and inks,
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com/news.html
and the reported Lmin numbers range from 3.9 to 13.2 .
These numbers appear all pretty small, and it is not so much the linear delta being still rather small but their ratio really counts.
When the Lmin drops from 12 to 6, you are gaining 1 complete f/stop of additional contrast range in the dark, and that is clearly visible in good images utilizing the complete contrast range in the first place, so high key images would not benefit from it, but clearly B/W prints.
And the same would apply of a Lmin change from 9 to 5, that is as well almost a F/stop improvement , and a Lmin black level of 9 is already pretty good. And why does it matter overall - with your camera you may have a total contrast range of 9 or 10 f/stops, with a good monitor probably 6 -7 , as long as the surrounding light is pretty dim, but with a printout you just may have a contrast range of 3 f/stops - 100% to 50% to 25% to 12% , and when you can get an Lmin of 6 instead of 12 it is vivisble and makes the image look contrastier for this additional f/stop gained.

 

[W. Fisher]

Ian, how did you get your a & b values at zero out of the printer? I never see that from print-to-print as mine goes for a walk in the a & b values of maybe +/-0.1 at least. I never see "0" values that much. Munki on some B&W reading mode only?

Will.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

probably some rounding to full numbers , and L=95 may be as well 94.7

 

[RogerB]

Ian, how did you get your a & b values at zero out of the printer? I never see that from print-to-print as mine goes for a walk in the a & b values of maybe +/-0.1 at least. I never see "0" values that much. Munki on some B&W reading mode only?

Will.

I was wondering that too. The 95,0,0 is actually paper white, and I've never seen a paper that is perfectly neutral. Of course if "Highllight Point Shift" was selected in ABW then some ink would be laid down but it's hard to see it being perfectly neutral.

 

[Roy Sletcher]

that's a perfect match with the L=61 gray spot, it can't be any better, you are measuring the black level of your Ink/paper in combination on the black spot, and the white level of the paper on the white spot, you won't get anything else, those numbers are completely within normal range. You could expect, with other inks/papers, some small a/b values mostly negative when the black is not neutral but tends to the cool side, and you may see some slightly yellowish tones for the white level with other papers. I don't think OBA's are active, to see those active you would need some UV radiation contents from the spot illuminator in the Color Munki, I guess they don't do that. You have that with the newer i1Pro V2 Spectrometer which uses a separate UV led to excite the OBA's in the target paper.

When you look to the Aardenburg report of the P800, you'll find that they tested various papers and inks,
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com/news.html
and the reported Lmin numbers range from 3.9 to 13.2 .
These numbers appear all pretty small, and it is not so much the linear delta being still rather small but their ratio really counts.
When the Lmin drops from 12 to 6, you are gaining 1 complete f/stop of additional contrast range in the dark, and that is clearly visible in good images utilizing the complete contrast range in the first place, so high key images would not benefit from it, but clearly B/W prints.
And the same would apply of a Lmin change from 9 to 5, that is as well almost a F/stop improvement , and a Lmin black level of 9 is already pretty good. And why does it matter overall - with your camera you may have a total contrast range of 9 or 10 f/stops, with a good monitor probably 6 -7 , as long as the surrounding light is pretty dim, but with a printout you just may have a contrast range of 3 f/stops - 100% to 50% to 25% to 12% , and when you can get an Lmin of 6 instead of 12 it is vivisble and makes the image look contrastier for this additional f/stop gained.

Not to be overly pedantic, because the logical conclusion is still good, but according to my reading, that Ardenberg report refers to the p600 which is a different printer.

Interestingly it also accuses the P600 of spurious or random cleaning cycles. Wonder if that is also a problem with the P800?

RS

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

The P600 and P800 both use the newly developed Ultrachrome HD ink, for which Epson claims a significantly better black level, and the link to the Aardenburg report is more a reference to the inks in use and their black levels than to the actual printer model, but thanks for the typo hint. I cannot comment on the spurious cleaning cycles of the P600 or P800, I don't know whether it's a problem, there are always customer reports considering cleaning cycles of Canon or Epson or Brother models unneccessary, aggrevating, ink wasting etc, I cannot judge whether the actual frequency of those is beyond technical necessity