Printer Colour Gamuts

[Emulator]

Has anyone seen a colour space chromaticity diagram showing the gamut of their printer?

We discuss printers, inks and profiling and compare test prints and express views on various products which aid achieving better results, but it struck me that we do not see the fundamental information related to printers and their OEM ink that shows the limits of their capability.

Without this information, which might for example, show that the printer was not capable of even reaching the limits of the sRGB gamut, what is the point of all the effort.

Why is this information not readily available from the manufacturers? Have you seen any examples?

These images copied with thanks, under free use from the Wikipedia - Gamut article, illustrate the type of display that would be helpful, if it had a printer's gamut added.

The CIE 1931 color space chromaticity diagram comparing the visible gamut with sRGB's and colour temperature

Comparison of some RGB and CMYK colour gamut on a CIE 1931 xy chromaticity diagram

 

[Roy Sletcher]

Emu said:
"Has anyone seen a colour space chromaticity diagram showing the gamut of their printer?"

My Reply:
Yes, but there are not many USEFUL tools that visually display the gamut available in the public domain. The proprietary tools that do display the gamut are outrageously expensive. I would really love to be proven wrong, and have somebody point me to a good, reliable, versatile gamut display utility for under $100.00


Emu said
"We discuss printers, inks and profiling and compare test prints and express views on various products which aid achieving better results, but it struck me that we do not see the fundamental information related to printers and their OEM ink that shows the limits of their capability.

My Reply:
If by this you are again referring to the printer gamut - The data would change for each printer model, paper type, and ink set because each of these variables will change the gamut. Your premise is desirable but it is difficult enough to get manufacturers to provide a GOOD profile of each paper they make without the complication of a gamut display.


Emu said:
Without this information, which might for example, show that the printer was not capable of even reaching the limits of the sRGB gamut, what is the point of all the effort."

Why is this information not readily available from the manufacturers? Have you seen any examples? "

These images copied with thanks, under free use from the Wikipedia - Gamut article, illustrate the type of display that would be helpful, if it had a printer's gamut added.

My Reply:
Those images are two dimensional, so not much use for effectively evaluating the Gamut which is better visually displayed in three dimensions.

See below for snip of my Pro 100 printer profile (wire outline) plotted against the sRGB colour space (solid colour) using L*A*B* colour values. When plotted this can be rotated, and you can see that there is not a simple description to describe the fit of sRGB into the printer profile or vice versa. I can print some colours outside and sRGB colour space, and not print some others.

 

[Smile]

The printer manufacturers :

1. do not want us to make our own profiles
2. do not want that we use third party ink and have good colors that ICC profiles makes possible
3. The Adobe does not want anything of the above as they have removed "no colormanagement" option used to print targets from their software, and no ACPU does no print correct.

However printer manufacturers want's us to:

1. Be stupid enough to be able to only choose paper presets matching paper names
2. Be stupid enough to use OEM expensive ink for everything, from museum quality prints to a vacation trip etc.
3. Buy new printers ever year they make them cheaper and designed for a failure.
(removed sturdy metal shafts (linear motion rails for print head) is clear evidence of this)

Why is all of this happening? Because nobody notices that cartridges from year 1999 to 2015 has decreased from 40ml to 10ml for black ink contained in cartridges. The tri-color is an insult to pay money for containing 3ml of each color. Prices have increased !

If nobody notices this then.... bye bye to easy to refill for example HP15 cart (no sponge), hello the ugly leaking chipped carts.

BTW did I mention anyone buying new printer should first research things like:

1. How much do compatible carts cost?
2. Are there refillable carts available (are they sponge type, or sponge free)?
3. Is re-setter available?
4. Are ARC chips available?
5. Are compatible inks available?

This needs to be done bfore buying any printer that anyone plans to use ! Not to keep as door stop.

 

[Emulator]

I use GamutVision $100. Works very well and tells you a great deal.

But as I suspected you both buy a printer without a manufacturers specified gamut coverage. I see your printer doesn't cover sRGB.

 

[RogerB]

Interesting proposition. Of course for anyone with the facility to view gamuts in 3D it's just a question of inspecting the manufacturers' profiles, or profiles provided by paper maunfacturers. For this job, like Emulator, I can highly recommend Gamutvision.

I think the biggest problem, as Roy points out, is that printer gamut is very dependant on the ink/paper combination. If anyone doubts that, take a look at these 3D gamut plots (Gamutvision, of course) for two different printers on two different paper types. In each case the wireframe is Printer A and the solid is Printer B. The plot on the left is for Harman Gloss Baryta and that on the right is Ilford Premium Smooth Gloss. All profiles are for OEM inks.


Now, at the risk of starting a gamut war, which is the "better" printer? Anyone care to guess what the printers are?

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

It's not just the paper/printer combination driving the gamut, but as well different driver settings, you may find that with particular printers a higher quality setting in the driver increases the gamut somewhat or does not, or even shrinks it in some cases, more ink on the paper does not always result in higher color saturation. So some testing in that respect is recommended if you do your own profiles

 

[RogerB]

It's not just the paper/printer combination driving the gamut, but as well different driver settings, you may find that with particular printers a higher quality setting in the driver increases the gamut somewhat or does not, or even shrinks it in some cases, more ink on the paper does not always result in higher color saturation. So some testing in that respect is recommended if you do your own profiles

Absolutely. I have used profiles from the paper manufacturers for post, so I hope that they have taken this into account when generating their profiles..

 

[Roy Sletcher]

I use GamutVision $100. Works very well and tells you a great deal.

But as I suspected you both buy a printer without a manufacturers specified gamut coverage. I see your printer doesn't cover sRGB.

I looked at Gamutvision over a year or so ago. Seemed somewhat primitive for the price with limited documentation and no support. Was hoping to find something better, but so far no luck. Possibly time to re evaluate gamutvision.

"Emu said I see your printer doesn't cover sRGB" -
Not sure of the accuracy of the plot I submitted for the fine detail because it was from a public utility on a German website and I wanted to show the futility of two dimensional gamut displays where the luminance is not included. Also I could not understand the German instructions

Also guess we interpret differently. My take on the three dimensional display I posted was that the printer was less than sRGB in luminance values but exccced sRGB and at the blue green and rd, yellow end of the spectrum, but did not adequately cover some of the other colours. Intention was to show the simple 2D gamut display is not a good tool for evaluation.

The search continues. All these comments are good for the learning curve.

RS

 

[Smile]

Try the free 3d Gamut viewer:

http://www.tglc.com/Files/PerfX Gamut Viewer 3D WIN 1.9.zip

If anyone thinks Colorthink PRO is very good or overpriced take a look at MAIDOTEC, software on request, no fully functional trial etc. Their software blows Adobe photohop out of the water, because everything is 3D accelerated, you can plot gamut warning color maps with boundaries with delta E values etc. etc.etc.

 

[Lionel Wetteren]

http://www.coloris-app.fr

You can find a Gamut viewer on Coloris to compare ICC Profiles with other profiles or jpeg picture.
With this function you can check if you can print all picture's colors on your print.

It's free and you can download it on the following web site: Coloris | ArgyllCMS GUI

With Coloris you can create ICC profiles, Check Light, Read colors, Compare Colors, etc...
It's support ColorMunki Photo, I1 Pro et DTP20 -Pulse spectrophotometers.