The Glossy Photo Paper is back at Lidl...

[The Hat]

I don’t have an Epson printer but if I was testing out a new photo paper I wouldn’t have started with the setting you just used.

Try letting the printer take control of colour management and set the media for photo glossy paper and print at standard quality, that’s one down from highest quality, and see what you get and take it from there...

 

[te36]

The notion of puddles made me remember something i never managed to figure out:

If the printer driver/vendor has multiple versions of glossy, such as glossy, more glossy and super glossy, would i expect that the driver tries to cram more and more ink into the paper, the more glossy it is ? As in - the more glossy paper supposedly has a thicker coating with the absorbing materials ?

Ff more ink is the answer, i wonder if i do get enough in return. Would it take longer to fade ? Would it give a few % higher saturation of primary colors ?

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Would it give a few % higher saturation of primary colors ?

Not necessarily - it depends as always, on the paper and the ink , but you can assume that the driver goes to the limits already, and you can observe an effect of saturation reversal - more ink can result in effectively less color saturation , your gamut gets smaller when you try to run with the most ink amount possible when running prints for profiling.

 

[martin_k]

Ink stained Fingers, The Hat – thank you for your support.

So I have used The Hat’s suggested setup – lowering print quality + printer manages colors:
LR – printer manages colors
Printer driver:
Color management – Automatic – AdobeRGB (gamma 1.8)
Print quality – superfine (4) – 1440x720dpi
Media type – premium glossy photo paper

Result:
– washed out colors with no life
- absolutely horrible ink puddles
- never seen such a awful picture
- lowering print quality was destructive


So I have printed another sample with same settings except print quality
Print quality – superphoto (5 - highest quality) 2880x1440dpi

Result:
– washed-out colors with no life
- ink puddles are minimized, but still visible
- even if colors wouldn’t be washed-out, print would be unusable

@The Hat
– lowering print quality made ink puddles even worse
- printer manages colors was improvement in ink puddles, but colors were washed-out (still don’t know why???)

Here is comparison:
Print quality – superphoto (5 - highest quality) 2880x1440dpi
Media type – premium glossy photo paper
Top picture – LR manages colors with Epson pro3800 PGPP
Bottom picture – printer manages colors – AdobeRGB

 

[martin_k]

Here is comparison of 3 samples:
Top left (epson premium photo glossy paper) @ bottom left (lidl/sihl 0769 paper):
LR – printer manages colors
Printer driver:
Color management – Automatic – AdobeRGB (gamma 1.8)
Print quality – superphoto (5)
Media type – premium glossy photo paper

Top right (lidl/sihl 0769 paper):
LR manages colors –pro3800 PGPP
Printer – no color mgmt
Photo quality – superphoto (5)
Media type – premium glossy photo paper

@Ink stained Fingers suggested to change media type
So I have tried to use Premium Semigloss Photo Paper with
LR manages colors –pro3800 PGPP
Printer – no color mgmt
Photo quality – superphoto (5)

Result:
- no visible difference in color saturation compared to premium glossy photo paper
- slightly worse ink puddles (5-10%)



Any suggestions what to try next?

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I think you have reached the point to finish your tests here, this paper is by far not compatible with your printer for whatever reason.

 

[PeterBJ]

Maybe the problems are caused not by the printer, ink and paper but instead by the used test picture? I have had problems with that test picture under Windows 8 and newer. With Windows 7 and older the picture works well. The links in that post don't work any more but here is a post with links to both the 40 MB tiff test image, an instruction and a 6.8 MB jpg version of the test image that works well with windows 8 and newer. And here is my guess to what might be the problem with the 40 MB tiff version of the test image.

 

[CakeHole]

What happens when you alter the mode from CUSTOM to AUTOMATIC? Your first image shows you have it set to CUSTOM.

 

[martin_k]

AUTOMATIC and CUSTOM mode gives you basic color management settings of the printer

Basically, when you choose option “printer manages colors” then you can choose between these settings in automatic mode (or in custom mode except “no color management”)

 

[PeterBJ]

Have you tried printing this version of the test image? Right-click and save the image when it opens in your browser. This version might probably look much better than your uploaded prints. My prints of the 40 MB tiff version of the test image printed from Windows 8 looked very much like your uploaded prints, almost like a black and white image was on top of the colour image, making the colours dark and greyish.