Prograf with Red River Paper Polar Gloss Metallic

[Sotalo]

It may be better for you to test different papers on a smaller - e.g. A4 format - printer with pigment inks to get a good impression of the look before you decide for a specific printer and paper.

Yeah, I printed an 8x8 test sheet dye, I'll try it with the Canon.

And if you are interested to look for larger formats you may even use an Epson T3100x - 24" - with a tank system and already running with dye inks.

Hm... you don't foresee any issues using a dye ink in a pigment printer? I don't know how to create ICC profiles myself, I think this option would require a lot more than what I know.

I don't know which papers you tested on an HP printer, if colors are off you most likely need a icc color profile to correct that, or it was an unsuitable paper you used, uncoated papers don't deliver much color saturation like simple copy paper. And it could be that driver settings did not match your photo quality requirements but were adjusted to deliver fast print output which is quite typical for copy/print shops so there are more variables in the game.

It was actually the PD office for the school board. They used that printer to make posters, and I made sure the settings matched the paper, though I can't confirm the profiles matched the paper 1:1. It was thin paper, I swear it was coated, however thin it was. I've felt uncoated raw paper before, it definitely wasn't that. And I always chose higher quality settings. The clarity was always great, but the colors were really not. Sentiment was echoed by some other teachers I had with print experience, plotters are designed for large size and clarity, not photo quality colors and rendering.

The simplest answer is to not accept delivery of the printer and send it back without opening it, then try some of the options that @Ink stained Fingers suggested..

Well, the ProGraf seems to be by all accounts the greatest printer ever. I will definitely be able to sell wide-format art prints with it. But I was hoping at the very least to offer some 16x20 metal paper prints. If the only other options are using a plotter which I know doesn't handle colors very well or using dye in a pigment tank and creating custom profiles for everything (which I don't know how to do or trust myself doing), I'd much rather print with the ProGraf.

If so, then Red River states this paper is compatible with the Canon Pro 1000.

Yes, but several different professional printers are reporting pigment not working as well as dyes for this paper. The lady at the print shop took my metal print and started holding it up in the light and it baffled her. She was amazed by the quality I was getting on a $300 Epson at home. Meanwhile, she uses large format pigment printers costing in the thousands every day. Knew about RRP's paper profiles, she actually told me everything I needed to do to get this result. The only difference was the printer. It's also possible she's just not used to my style of work, combining vector and bitmap prints and just using strong colors that happened to work very well with metals.

Ultimately, I won't really know how good the Canon is unless I try. Worst case scenario, I can always sell the printer slightly used.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

It's pretty simple with Epson printers - the printhead can handle both dye and pigment inks - it's mainly a matter of the solvent and some proprietary additives to keep the pigments afloat and not coalgulating - there is a range of printers which either run on pigment ink - office-workforce models - or on dye inks - home /premium - with the same printhead. Pigment inks need some more constructive attention to the cleaning unit to get a away with ink/pigment deposits. The Epson T3100 runs with cartridges on pigment inks - and runs with dye inks in the T3100x model as an Ecotank model which makes refill easily possible with inks with a better longevity than the original dye inks - at about the same price.

The look of pigment inks on glossy papers including metal types can be different to the look of dye inks on the same paper but this does not imply that one looks better than the other - there are various aspects - a personal preference and some differences in the gloss appearance or pigment inks may be darker/not so dark as dye ink prints which can impact the perception of contrast - and here we are back at the personal preference. And there is another difference - you may get more different looks with pigment inks on different papers than with dye inks which leads me to recommend you to do some tests - it may look great on a brand A paper but strange and non-appealing on a brand B paper.

Color profiles are quite easy - you can get them via various service providers in your country - pricing may range from about 20$ to 100+$ depending on the size of the target test sheet.
Or you do them yourself - you can get a used ColorMunki package or the updated i1Studio package - with the necessary software and a spectrometer. Don't be afraid - handling would be easy.

 

[Sotalo]

This process seems very involved...

I have a DataColor SpyderX Pro and DisplayCal for monitor calibration. I'd need a new package meant for that... but that is good to know it exists! I'd be able to calibrate any paper I want to! Thanks!

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I'm not familiar with the overall quality of the display calibration with the DataColor modules but can only warn you to use DataColor to profile your printer - you may get a correct profile but there is a chance that you get a very screwed up profile - completely unusable - but you don't have a method to find that out - the i1Studio package by XRite is the only entry level print profiling package I'm aware of which delivers reasonable/usable profiles - or the predecessor ColorMunki which you still can get used via Ebay etc.

 

[Sotalo]

From Red River Paper themselves!:
________________________________________________________

My gut reaction is that you'll like it just fine. Both the PRO-1000 inks and Polar Gloss Metallic are sophisticated tech. Pigment inks "laying on top" of paper was definitely a thing in the past but not really anymore. The Chroma Optimizer the PRO-1000 sprays onto all prints evens out any of that effect and mitigates gloss differential. It's gloss diff that people found objectionable in the past.

Of course, this can be subjective so take my opinion with some salt. However, most of our customers use pigment ink and use sell a LOT of Polar Gloss Metallic.

Please reply with any questions.
Sincerely,

Drew Hendrix
Red River Paper

 

[Sotalo]

And... furthermore... the printer has arrived TODAY! I'm looking forward to trying it out!

 

[stratman]

Let us know your impressions after you've done some prints.

 

[Sotalo]

I disabled the printer profile colors, set the appropriate profile from the app, used RRP's recommended settings (custom quality level 2, highest), and printed on both the Epson WF XP 830 and the Canon imageProGraf 1000. The colors were messed up on both. I'm not sure what's causing that issue, but they both turned crazy warm. The XP-830 somehow turned blue orange...

The good - Colors are straight, clear, and VERY high resolution. The "laying down" is perfect. I do have that iridescent sheen consistent throughout the page, and it looks technically very accurate. While colors do sink into the dyes more, the clarity is no where near as good. There is visible fringing on the XP dye, and a somewhat softer edge around anything that isn't a black line. So, Canon wins the resolution/clarity test in spades.

The bad - It prints a LOT warmer and duller than what I see on my monitor. I have two calibrated displays, and the deep cyan and in the sky looks excellent on both. But when printed on the Canon, it turned into a very dark and desaturated, sad blue. Conversely, the light orange became a traffic cone. The bright green got toned down and made darker as well. But neutrals and whites look spot on.

Canon is definitely better... but flat colors might not have been the best test. My major worries have now been replaced by a new worry - how do I get the look I want when colors between my displays, the artwork, and printers aren't even in the same universe?

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

how do I get the look I want when colors between my displays, the artwork, and printers aren't even in the same universe?

Monitors and printers don't know about each other and how they display and render colors - getting them in sync - within the constraints of pretty different color spaces, illumination - viewing conditions - display settings - brightness - is all called color management - all output devices need to be tuned/calibrated/profiled to the same standardized color output. Plenty of books have been written, lots of publications and 'how to' guidelines - instructions are published on the internet so it is difficult to recommend just a particular document - and it all depends on already prior user knowledge about this subject.

I'm not surprised about the color variations of your images above at a first printout on different printers.

Where should you start - getting the color rendition of your color monitors in sync - you mentionend that you have some equipment available to do that.
I recommend to use standard test images - not your own because to think you know how they should look, the use of test images are discussed in good detail here

http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/printer-test-images/

with many more guides and videos and info about color mgmt by Keith Cooper here

http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/commercial-photography/training/colour-management/

 

[The Hat]

I disabled the printer profile colors, set the appropriate profile from the app, used RRP's recommended settings (custom quality level 2, highest), and printed on both the Epson WF XP 830 and the Canon imageProGraf 1000. The colors were messed up on both. I'm not sure what's causing that issue, but they both turned crazy warm. The XP-830 somehow turned blue orange...

I can see this thread going into infinity, the first sentence in the post above says everything, because when you get a new printer, the first and last thing you should never do is disable the printers own colour management and use your own..

The best advice I can give is:- Let the Printer Handle the Colours.. Till you know what you got..