Why the limited gamut?

[Colin]

This might be an elementary question, but as I've been printing off some of my photos lately, it occurred to me that my little Canon Pixma iP4300 desktop printer has a much better gamut than my Roland SP540i, yet both are just CMYK. Is the Roland's gamut narrower because the inks are solvent?

 

[sfr table hockey]

If you compare a solvent print and a waterbased ink print you will see that the waterbased is brighter and looks better even though they can be printed from the exact same printer (one solvent and one waterbased).

Depending on the file if it was Srgb or Adobe 1998 rgb you can see a difference in the color due to the wider gamut in Adobe RGB which I think you already know but I think its more to do with the waterbased ink in your desktop printer.

 

[Colin]

Hmmm, ok, thanks. I just bought five 16x20 frames which I'll fill with mat & photos, yet the print needs to be 10x14 which obviously exceeds my desktop printer, so given that I will use my Roland for those few very large photo prints (and most of those would be B&W), I'm thinking about a larger photo printer. Any suggestions? Epson 1400 / r2000 / r3000?

And while we're at it, what are the size jumps in printers over my 8.5x11? I know there's 13x19, but then what beyond that?

 

[P Wagner]

I would expect that the different paper is the largest reason for the differences in vibrancy that you see beteen the Roland and Canon. If you print on inexpensive, bond paper on the Canon, my guess is that the gamuts would be similar.

 

[Colin]

I would expect that the different paper is the largest reason for the differences in vibrancy that you see beteen the Roland and Canon. If you print on inexpensive, bond paper on the Canon, my guess is that the gamuts would be similar.

Good point. The little Canon gets glossy photo paper, which is whiter than the 54" roll of Rite Media matte paper for the Roland. Perhaps I should cut a piece of the Rite Media paper at 8.5x11 and run it through the Canon. And perhaps I should have bought gloss paper for the Roland?

 

[mopar691]

For me photos up to 13" x 19" go thru a Canon Pro 9000 with Ilford Galerie paper. Anything larger i also have a Espon Stylus 9000 with a variety of photo papers and canvas depending on desired finish output.
In my experience I have not seen anything photo reproductive in solvent. But I have never really tried either I just believe dye does a better job on the photo reproduction end of things.

 

[bob]

This might be an elementary question, but as I've been printing off some of my photos lately, it occurred to me that my little Canon Pixma iP4300 desktop printer has a much better gamut than my Roland SP540i, yet both are just CMYK. Is the Roland's gamut narrower because the inks are solvent?

Probably not the ink.

I hear the peanut gallery endlessly insisting that aqueous inks are ever so superior to solvent inks. Perhaps so but I've yet to see any noticeable difference, assuming that both printers are being operated by people who know and understand the machines they're wrangling as well as using like media.

Cyan is cyan, Magenta is magenta, yellow is yellow, and black is black regardless if they are water, solvent, or mayonnaise based.

A solvent machine is most certainly capable of photo quality work in spite of cries to the contrary from the giclee mouth breathers. Anyone that refers to a simple digital print by some affectation of a name is automatically suspect as being a pretentious ninny.

The thing is, you have to get to know your printer. Know it well enough that you don't need a library of profiles to make it play. One or two will do for everything once you get a handle on your tackle.

Moreover, you need to abandon the notion of intensely calibrating your monitor so that what you see is what you get. This path leads to madness. The inarguable fact is that what you get is what you get, regardless of what some monitor might show. What comes out of the printer is the truth, not what you see on your screen. Which is the reason you need to know and understand your printer.

Here's a quick start: With your favorite profile [mine is Oracal's profile for their 3651G] set your all of your rendering intents to "No Color Correction" or, failing that, to "Saturation" except for the rendering intent for bitmaps. Change that one to 'Perceptual'. This will give you about the widest range, or gamut if you want to use that term, but what you see on your screen is most definitely not what you're going to get. Unless you have the equivalent of Flexi's 'Soft Proof' on which tries to come close but the printer is still the truth.

Then print a Pantone chart. That's the master chart of what you're going to get. The truth as it were. Pick your favorite subset of colors and put them into your own palette. I used the Oracal 651 palette. I physically matched each 651 color sample with a color off the Pantone chart I just printed. Do this in indirect sunlight.

The point being that you cleave to your printer, do not try to make your printer cleave to you.

Now you're ready to rock and roll and at the same time give the finger to the legions of profile and calibration obsessed dipsticks...

 

[TyrantDesigner]

I've never seen a difference from inks that is from aqueous to solvent ... now actual printing surfaces is completely different ... I picked up a roll of canvas (for a rediculously low price .... and got what i paid for) .... well that roll of canvas printed completely different from my normal supplier ... it received the ink well, but it looked like it almost sucked in all the yellow and made it disappear completely ... did have some print bleeding but i think that was the cheap surface substrate. also had photopaper that from brand to brand received ink differently than the last one. not in a bad way mind you ... you just need to make sure you make a printing profile for that printing surface to make sure you get consistant results without wasting time and materials with test prints.

 

[Colin]

Thanks for that bob. As I've said before, I'm fairly new to the digi-printing party, and have much to learn, but I'm keen to learn and know that I don't know certain things (as opposed to those who feel that just hitting the print button is good enough). I'm comfortable with printing vector stuff for signs, as the Roland color palette works well for that. My head-scratching right now pertains to printing my JPG photographs, and in particular, achieving a good looking B&W.

After changing a color photo in Photoshop to B&W, I have come to learn the following things:

- Leave it as RGB. Changing it to Grayscale (Image > Mode > Grayscale) results in grainier prints, as it seems to utilize the K channel only on the printer when "Preserve Primary Color" (PPC) in VW is checked off. And as I possibly have one nozzle out on my K head, I get some fine banding too. See here. Leaving PPC checked "on" with a grayscale image seems to print the same as one not converted to grayscale. It gets the other colors involved and smooths it out.

- In Photoshop, under "Image > Image Size > "Resample Image" - On > BiCubic.

- In VW: Interpolation > BiCubic.
Color Management > Matching Method: Raster > Perceptual.

*I'm wondering what settings under "Simulation Target Profiles" ought to be. "Adobe RGB; Roland Sign RGB; sRGB. (?) And then there's a list of CMYK choices too. Or should those just be left alone as the defaults?

- For B&W, I've found that the best settings so far under "Color Adjustment" are: C-1 / M-1 / Y-1 / K+2. Otherwise it's way too green or pink.



If there's still other secrets I'm missing to achieving a nice B&W, I'm all ears.




Color photos are no problem.

 

[Colin]

And one other thing I failed to mention:

Any of my B&W photos will print wonderfully on my little Canon desktop printer, looking like a B&W should, but not on the Roland.

 

[JoshLoring]

The thing is, you have to get to know your printer. Know it well enough that you don't need a library of profiles to make it play. One or two will do for everything once you get a handle on your tackle.

This is not true at ALL.
Just because a profile looks decent does not mean that is properly saturating the material amongst other things. The wrong profile can lead to premature fading and failure or delamination.

Be sure to either 1: obtain the proper profile per media for your printer. 2: invest in calibration equipment and create your own profiles.

-I've consulted several shops using Factory Roland profiles on media that they weren't meant for and had wraps fading in 9 months. I went, created profiles and now they are pushing 4+ years on that same media with the correct profile.

 

[JoshLoring]

And one other thing I failed to mention:

Any of my B&W photos will print wonderfully on my little Canon desktop printer, looking like a B&W should, but not on the Roland.

This is an icc problem. Your canon is default srgb. Your PC is srgb. Your Roland is confused as its pc is srgb and it's icc render is whatever joke you've been told to set it.

You need to default your pc to adobe1998 by installing the profile. Then, default your printer PC to the same ICC. Adjust your Roland to custom adobe 1998 and perceptual.
Then.. Set your color settings in adobe bridge to adobe 1998, and sync all adobe programs.
Then. Open your canon default print settings and set the profile to your newly installed PC adobe 1998 icc.
All fixed..

 

[bob]

...My head-scratching right now pertains to printing my JPG photrographs, and in particular, achieving a good looking B&W.

After changing a color photo in Photoshop to B&W, I have come to learn the following things:

...deletia...

If there's still other secrets I'm missing to achieving a nice B&W, I'm all ears....

You can't do a black and white image with a large format printer and a conventional profile. It will always translate into CMYK, not monochrome black and white using just K or whatever it is you're using for black.

You can get away with the odd gray that really isn't gray [and it seldom is] in a color image, you can't in what is supposed to be a black and white image. The reason your desktop printer does it is because it actually prints the image in K only. This is probably because the thing is set up to regularly do black and white documents anyway.

Unfortunately this is a need unaddressed by your RIP and whatever profile you might be using. It insists on doing color.

If someone should want a black and white image I generally refuse the job. I tell them I can do them a nice sepia duotone but I'm not set up to do monochromatic black and white. It's simply the nature of my gear.

 

[bob]

This is not true at ALL.
Just because a profile looks decent does not mean that is properly saturating the material amongst other things. The wrong profile can lead to premature fading and failure or delamination....

Twaddle. How could you possible know if one media or another is being properly saturated? What is the criteria for proper saturation as opposed to improper saturation? How could you detect the difference without esoteric lab instruments?

If the thing looks good, it no doubt is good. If your have a good grasp of your gear, you only need a profile or two. More than that is adding gratuitous complication to an endeavor that surely doesn't need it. The printer is the truth.

 

[Colin]

This is an icc problem. Your canon is default srgb. Your PC is srgb. Your Roland is confused as its pc is srgb and it's icc render is whatever joke you've been told to set it.

Bear with me, but could you clarify that last part?

You need to default your pc to adobe1998 by installing the profile. Then, default your printer PC to the same ICC. Adjust your Roland to custom adobe 1998 and perceptual.
Then.. Set your color settings in adobe bridge to adobe 1998, and sync all adobe programs.
Then. Open your canon default print settings and set the profile to your newly installed PC adobe 1998 icc.
All fixed..

Oy. I'd need to be hand-held through all of that; and might it cause grief in other areas? Would it effect the use of the Roland color palette system?

Link.





.

 

[Colin]

You can't do a black and white image with a large format printer and a conventional profile. It will always translate into CMYK, not monochrome black and white using just K or whatever it is you're using for black.

Unfortunately this is a need unaddressed by your RIP and whatever profile you might be using. It insists on doing color.

But can't it be done in the way I did earlier by changing it to Grayscale in PS (Image > Mode > Grayscale) and "Preserve Primary Color" (PPC) in VW checked "off"? Unfortunately as I possibly have one nozzle out on my K head, I had unsatisfactory results. So if it weren't for that, couldn't one print in that fashion with a LFP and get similar results as our little desktop printers?

Is there really no hope for me to get good B&W photo results with my SPi?

There is that trick of bringing the B&W photo into Illustrator and applying a Roland spot color to it like BK22A or BK21A, and then exporting it as an EPS. The Roland spot color is then recognized in VW. I'll have to revisit that tomorrow with some test prints.

Thanks for all of the comments so far. Who ever thought printing would be so much fun! :Big Laugh

 

[Colin]

Hmmm, I'll have to try this tomorrow too.

 

[JoshLoring]

You know what. I'm going to blog about this. To many people have no idea how to setup correct ICC profiles. I'll try and make a step by step next week.

 

[Colin]

You know what. I'm going to blog about this. Too many people have no idea how to setup correct ICC profiles. I'll try and make a step by step next week.

Cool.......thanks. I haven't the foggiest idea of where to start.

 

[HulkSmash]

Probably not the ink.


The thing is, you have to get to know your printer. Know it well enough that you don't need a library of profiles to make it play. One or two will do for everything once you get a handle on your tackle.

Bob.. i have a feeling you only print on 2 different materials.


This advice is terrible.

Every profile has different heat settings, ink coverage, different printing speeds, and different coloring.