R2000 - any linux users?

[racing_green]

I'm having problems establishing good printing work flow. I have calibrated monitor (Agryll + ColorHug), but I'm struggling with gutenprint/cups. The problems are:
- red goes pink, even with all profiles/correction switched off
- heavy banding (*) on blue (also green, but that's probably from blue) - middle of the test strip i the darkest point!

I tried RGB and CMYK in print window with mixed results. CMYK gives less banding, but producess green tint.

I also tried Epson drivers, but the number of options is so small that it defeats the purpose,. I can't even change resolution. This drives gives better red, but produced very dark blue.

I use fedora linux, but I think it' will be roughly the same on other distributions.

(*) I don't think I used the word correctly. I wanted to say that blue gradient going from full saturation to white has a glitch in the middle.

 

[The Hat]

I'm having problems establishing good printing work flow. I have calibrated monitor (Agryll + ColorHug), but I'm struggling with gutenprint/cups. The problems are:

To be perfectly honest, if that’s the quality your getting from your printer, then I reckon you’d be better off dumping your software set-up and using Mac or Windows which would allow you to use the proper print drivers, or get out of home printing altogether.

Colour printing is not supposed to be hit and miss, and you should be able to get great quality prints by just using the correct print driver by not interfering with any colour profiles yourself but just allowing the printer to control everything for you.. In my opinion..

 

[ninj]

I use Fedora with a Canon photo printer (iP8750) with (to my eyes) very good results. However, I never had any luck with the the Gutenprint/CUPS drivers - the dithering algorithm just didn't seem to be up to it, similar to what you're getting. I had to resort Turboprint, which is a commercial product. I would prefer to use open-source, but in this case there seemed to be no good free alternative. I also use a Colormunki Photo to make my own profiles with ArgyllCMS, as well as profiling my monitor. The colour match is close enough to satisfy me.

Another option is to set up a virtual Windoze machine (eg with VirtualBox), install the Epson driver, and use it as a print server.

 

[racing_green]

Thanks for the replies, and please do not judge my setup by this print Win/mac are not options for me - I use only open source software. That sample is from the same driver (cheap paper, quick print):

Right now I'm trying to how it works and what doesn't work.

@ninj, I might give the epson driver another shot if you were disappointed with gutenprint
@The Hat, what wxactly do you mean? No profiles? Or upload them and leave the rest for the driver?

 

[The Hat]

@The Hat, what wxactly do you mean? No profiles? Or upload them and leave the rest for the driver?

I was referring to the official Epson drivers, but I do know things are not that simple when running Linux, and I don’t know if Epson supports Linux at all.

It occurred to me that you were struggling to get decent quality and my suggestions were only meant as advice and not criticism, my methods only work if your using Mac or Windows, so please disregard them as been out of order..

 

[racing_green]

OK, it's all relatively new for me, so Il appreciate all comments, advices and points of view
Epson supports linux - I'm testing the official driver right now More info tomorrow.

P.S. Linux used to be for geeks, but it's not the case anymore in most cases.

 

[Ubuki]

Are you using a color profile made for your printer and paper? Your monitor may be calibrated, but that doesn't make any difference if your printer is not profiled to match your monitor! Without any color management I wasn't close to get any decent results with Gutenprint either. I got a Colormunky (works excellently in Linux with Argyll) and now I'm getting beautiful prints. It took some tweaking of a few parameters, but I'm quite happy.

Except maybe for plain paper, Epson drivers for Linux are pretty useless. Color management is not possible.

With Gutenprint you also get access to resolutions that aren't available with Epson drivers on any platform. Those only give the options "draft", "standard" and "high", while Gutenprint offers a lot of combinations directly in DPI. That can save a huge amount of time by choosing a good resolution that's actually undistinguishable from the top ones.

I personally haven't had any problems with dithering and I'm glad I don't need any features from Turboprint.

I don't know the R2000, but I read a comment from the programmers saying that Epson printers are RGB printers and you shouldn't be using the CMYK option, as the driver will convert everything to RGB anyway and you'll lose precision.

 

[racing_green]

Thank you very much - plenty of information!
I don't have any profile made for my printer yet - I was using profiles provided by Marrutt for their ink and paper type. There are at least 2 drivers from Epson - one is useless, the other looks better, but it's too early for me to tell if it's any good. I should be able to manage profiles using colormgr (command line) or gnome colour manager, but I don't know yet if the driver is going to use the profile. I read somewhere about the Epson/RGB, but I was trying all options. Thanks for info about Colormunki - I'll keep an eye if something shows up for a decent price (it's a discontinued product).

I need to fix that problem with few missing blue lines and ask Marrutt for a custom profile, probably for gutenprint/cups and the proprietary driver.

P.S. I just tried to check the "better" driver and all I see for quality/resolution: is "Speed" or "Quality" 8-0

 

[racing_green]

I'm back to gutenprint/cups. And I found something interesting:

I was using Standard option so far.

 

[racing_green]

I'm ~20 test prints later and the best results without any colour profile I'm getting with... CMYK colour model and Four Color Standard Ink type. When I use RGB colour model I get disastrous blue/green gradient and red is pink.
Please do not asses the quality - it's cheapest available paper and my printer still shows gaps in check pattern. The left side strip is Marrutt calibration check print.