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Epson r800 heavy matte printing
mmroden
Registered Users Posts: 472 Major grins
Hi guys,
This is just a thread to let you know what I've learned trying to get matte prints out of my epson r800. I'm printing all the same image, this one:
So, just a black and white, nothing fancy. It'll print 5x7. I chose this image because a friend of mine says she can sell a few in her store.
First few things:
1) to print in photoshop to this printer, make sure to turn off ICC profiles in the printer itself. That is, select heavy matte if using a heavy matte (all these papers are), and then on the right hand side of the printer properties dialog on the advanced side, change to ICM profile and turn them off. That way, photoshop will determine the colors, and it will be much closer to a black and white print.
2) This printer is TERRIBLE with very heavy paper. Most of the Hahnemuhle papers won't load without careful manipulation of the paper itself. So be warned, a large print run will have to be babysat.
3) From photoshop, all prints were made with adobe 1998 color profiles.
4) I did not use custom profiles, just the heavy matte profile.
5) I did have to do the green correction, as described here:
http://www.outbackphoto.com/printinginsights/pi029/Epson_R800.html
Of the www.inkjetart.com H paper sampler, all of them were a pain, and had to be individually fed to the printer. They all either exhibited a magenta cast or a green cast, regardless of the correction step used in #5.
There were a few places I was looking at closely after color was an issue: the doorframe on the side, the lower hand, and the hand blocking the face.
Museum etching: definitely the worst with the lower hand. kind of smeared it a little, very little definition there. Magenta cast. Upper hand ok, doorframe ok, texture is interesting if that's part of the goal.
Natural Art Duo: Better lower hand than the museum etching, still kind of meh. Green cast.
Photo rag: second best hands and doorframe. green cast, not as bad as the natural art duo. Hard to feed; upper left corner kind of crushed by the roller.
German etching: first sheet got eaten by the machine. Second sheet is brighter than the photo rag, magenta cast Hands did as well as the photo rag.
Photo rag satin: best hands and doorframe, not too much of a color cast either. This is the one I'd use.
Photo rag bright white: kind of munged the lower hand, otherwise fine.
Epson enhanced matte: also had feed problems, so maybe the printer doesn't like single sheets. Greenish cast. Lower hand is not as nicely done as the photo rag satin. Contrast on upper hand isn't that great, doorframe contrast is better or as good as photo rag satin.
So, photo rag satin it is for me.
Any other experiences you want to share? I'm going to try a bit of color next...
This is just a thread to let you know what I've learned trying to get matte prints out of my epson r800. I'm printing all the same image, this one:
So, just a black and white, nothing fancy. It'll print 5x7. I chose this image because a friend of mine says she can sell a few in her store.
First few things:
1) to print in photoshop to this printer, make sure to turn off ICC profiles in the printer itself. That is, select heavy matte if using a heavy matte (all these papers are), and then on the right hand side of the printer properties dialog on the advanced side, change to ICM profile and turn them off. That way, photoshop will determine the colors, and it will be much closer to a black and white print.
2) This printer is TERRIBLE with very heavy paper. Most of the Hahnemuhle papers won't load without careful manipulation of the paper itself. So be warned, a large print run will have to be babysat.
3) From photoshop, all prints were made with adobe 1998 color profiles.
4) I did not use custom profiles, just the heavy matte profile.
5) I did have to do the green correction, as described here:
http://www.outbackphoto.com/printinginsights/pi029/Epson_R800.html
Of the www.inkjetart.com H paper sampler, all of them were a pain, and had to be individually fed to the printer. They all either exhibited a magenta cast or a green cast, regardless of the correction step used in #5.
There were a few places I was looking at closely after color was an issue: the doorframe on the side, the lower hand, and the hand blocking the face.
Museum etching: definitely the worst with the lower hand. kind of smeared it a little, very little definition there. Magenta cast. Upper hand ok, doorframe ok, texture is interesting if that's part of the goal.
Natural Art Duo: Better lower hand than the museum etching, still kind of meh. Green cast.
Photo rag: second best hands and doorframe. green cast, not as bad as the natural art duo. Hard to feed; upper left corner kind of crushed by the roller.
German etching: first sheet got eaten by the machine. Second sheet is brighter than the photo rag, magenta cast Hands did as well as the photo rag.
Photo rag satin: best hands and doorframe, not too much of a color cast either. This is the one I'd use.
Photo rag bright white: kind of munged the lower hand, otherwise fine.
Epson enhanced matte: also had feed problems, so maybe the printer doesn't like single sheets. Greenish cast. Lower hand is not as nicely done as the photo rag satin. Contrast on upper hand isn't that great, doorframe contrast is better or as good as photo rag satin.
So, photo rag satin it is for me.
Any other experiences you want to share? I'm going to try a bit of color next...
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Comments
I just wanted to jump in to perhaps clear up a little possible confusion. It sounds to me like you set things right, but maybe aren't saying it right in your post. Could be just semantics, but here goes:
<<< 1) to print in photoshop to this printer, make sure to turn off ICC profiles in the printer itself. >>>
Actually, you are using an icc profile. You do NOT want to "turn them off". The thing you want to turn off is color management by the printer driver. You want to turn ON ICM (Independent Color Management), which is saying to the printer driver that you want to color manage with an icc profile. So, ICM gets checked and No Color Adjustment gets checked. (Turning OFF color adjustment tells the printer driver to get out of the way, we won't be needing it)
<<< That way, photoshop will determine the colors, and it will be much closer to a black and white print.>>
Well, whether or not it's gonna turn out to be much closer to b&w has to do with the conversion from color to b&w and also with your printer. Until a couple of months ago, I had an Epson 2200 printer, which was not real good at printing neutral b&ws. (Now I have the 2400, which is much better)
Actually, on the 2400, Epson's printer driver is pretty good at converting to b&w or sepia, and is a viable choice now.
<<< 2) This printer is TERRIBLE with very heavy paper. Most of the Hahnemuhle papers won't load without careful manipulation of the paper itself. So be warned, a large print run will have to be babysat. >>>
Which weight of Hahnemuhle are you using, 188 or 308? But I agree. I have just been feeding 7x10 Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308 into my 2400 all week, and it needs a little assist from my hand or else it just won't always grab the sheet. However, once I got the hang of it, it works fine every time. Also, I found out that (after 3 calls to Epson and much testing) the best infeed to use for thick matte (8.5x11 or smaller) on the 2400 is the top feed, not the front or rear. The front won't take smaller than 8x10 (plus ink get sprayed on your print by mistake) and the rear is for large (larger than 8.5x11) thick stiff sheets only. Babysitting needed, yes indeed.
<<< 3) From photoshop, all prints were made with adobe 1998 color profiles.>>>
Actually, Adobe RGB is a color space, not a color profile. But I agree it's the right one for printing on an inkjet.
I appreciate your post, as it is helpful for others who are about to go through this. Hope I haven't misunderstood your post. I just wanted to add to it, hope you don't mind.
Jim
I don't want the cheese, I just want to get out of the trap.
http://www.jimwhitakerphotography.com/
Thanks for the clarifications.
For the first point, I actually turned ICM off, so that photoshop determined colors. To do that, in the driver, I went to the advanced tab, and then on the right hand side under 'color management' I chose 'ICM' and changed the selection to 'off'. That might not be the way to go, but it's what I did. If you're doing something else, what is that something else? Which profiles do you use if you keep ICM on? I have a blank list there under my driver.
As for point number 2, the hand-feeding, I did see the trick after a bit. Just put your hand on the top of the sheet as the printer loads; it's enough downward force to get the paper into the feeder; without it, you'll have issues. There's only the roll feeder and the top feeder on the r800, so no other feeders to worry about.
I did print one color print on the photo rag satin, and I have to say, it was the best matte color print I'd seen, far better than epson enhanced matte. I have to do a monitor calibration and probably a printer calibration to have it all work nicely with skin and so forth, but of the various papers, I liked that one the best.
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Wait, we're getting messed up here. Are you Mac or PC?
If the ICM button is filled in (chosen), then you turned it ON, not off. ICM means you're gonna let PS (which will use a custom profile) color manage, independent from the printer driver. (or at least that's my understanding) Again, this is semantics. Below that, where it says OFF (No color adjustment), if there's a check mark there, then you've turned OFF color management by the printer driver. So, you are turning off the print driver's color management, because you intend to let PS color manage the print by using a custom profile.
If you use a custom profile AND let the printer driver color manage also, then the printer profile settings will override your profile settings.
The custom profiles are available from at least two basic sources. One, you can download them for free from Epson or the paper manufacturer. Or two, you can build them yourself by using a spectrophotometer (or is it photospectrometer?) such as the Gretag PhotoEye One, as I do. However, I must admit that lately, the free profiles from Epson & Hahnemuhle work as well as my custom made ones.
<<< If you're doing something else, what is that something else?>>>
I apply a custom profile (in the print preview dialog), then check ICM, then check turn off (printer driver's) color management.
<<< I have to do a monitor calibration and probably a printer calibration>>>
A printer calibration?? That's making a profile, which would be not only specific to the printer but also the paper.
Hope I haven't made it worse.
I don't want the cheese, I just want to get out of the trap.
http://www.jimwhitakerphotography.com/
Yes, that's correct.
Which is why I turned it off-- I like the colors out of photoshop better than off the printer itself.
To use these profiles, are they printer profiles, or photoshop profiles? Because I see no profiles in the ICM selection anyway, but it does seem to make a difference when I turn the ICM off. If I download a profile from the paper manufacturer (not sure that they have one for photo rag satin for the r1800), how does that work?
I believe you just answered my question.
Right. Because I want it to be as accurate as possible; I'm sick of corpse-like skintones.
Not at all. This thread was mainly to illustrate how to print nicely on the r800; I'm learning quite a few tricks on this myself.
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I've been trying to print this photo:
And have run into a host of issues.
First of all, the epson enhanced matte paper on this is just plain wrong. details are gone, saturation is gone, brightness is gone, it's just a mess. Not what I'd expect from a top-of-the-line printer.
The Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Bright White, surprisingly, is not much better. (I'm running out of papers in my sampler, so I can't be completely consistent in the testing).
The top third prints beautifully, as does the bottom third, but the middle portion, with the leaves, is just mealy. I'm sure other people will think it's the bees knees, but I just see green blobs and a real lack of definition. It's completely strange; I can see bushes on the mountains in the background of the print, count the panes in the windows, and see leaves in the foreground. But the shadow detail on the vineyard rows is lost, both on the leaves and on the ground. It's like it just immediately shot to black with very little tonal range in that section.
Has anyone else seen what I'm talking about? What could this effect be the result of? Could I have lost too much bit depth by dealing with a jpg? Am I being too much of a perfectionist here?
I used the H profile from their website, turned off printing profiles, and printed as if it were a heavy matte paper.
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<<< Am I being too much of a perfectionist here? >>>
No way. If that’s your shadow detail, you should get to see it. Keep going and keep the faith. You can open those tones, even on matte.
On Hahnemuhle website, I can’t find an icc profile for your printer (R800), but maybe I missed it. Are you sure it’s the profile for the 800?
If you’re shooting fine jpegs, that’s plenty. You don’t need to shoot RAW to get that shadow detail.
These profiles are sometimes just gonna get you in the ballpark. Fine tuning is often required. If needed, make a curve and open up those shadow tones as needed. Curves have been the answer for me to get good results on matte.
I come from the cmyk catalog printing industry, and everybody wants to give printers densities of 300 to 340 and higher, which is normally wonderful if the press prints well enough and if the paper can hold out the ink (meaning the ink will sit up on top of the coating). But if the paper is matte, then the ink will not hold out, will not sit up because there is NO coating to sit up on. So the ink just soaks down into the paper like a blotter. Same thing is happening here. We found that when printing on matte, densities of 280 would reproduce browns and purples and dark greens much better. Less density and less saturation will help keep those shadows open. So a curve to open up those tones is appropriate.
Finally, one more story re “the matte effect”. Customers would see other catalogs on matte paper and say “We want matte paper, we love the look.” We always warned them, and asked them to consider a “dull” coating instead (because at least “dull” coatings have a coating for the ink to sit up on, while matte does not). No, they said, we want the matte look. Six months later when we went to press, invariably they would say “hey this looks flat, where’s all my pop? Give me more ink.” This was because when they chose the matte paper, they hadn’t seen THEIR images on matte yet. So keep in mind that matte takes getting used to. It’s supposed to look flat and soft, as compared to coated paper, and if you want the best tonal range and sharpest deliniation between similar tones, don’t use matte.
Hope this helps. FWIW, I think that’s a great image to test papers with.
Jim
I don't want the cheese, I just want to get out of the trap.
http://www.jimwhitakerphotography.com/
Thanks for the help, I appreciate it-- it was pretty clear to me from the start that you knew what you were talking about
As for the profile, I'm just using the r1800 profiles, as I do believe they're the same printer, just that the r800 is smaller.
I hear what you're saying about 'pop', but here's why I still hold out hope: the rest of the picture was great. As I said, the top and bottom had really fine details. Maybe it's because those details weren't across colors; the browns and the greens were having some serious issues, but between brown and blue, no problem.
I did some extra post processing on the picture, which is why I wonder if I just trashed the fine detail:
1) I added a multiply/blur layer (ie, duplicated the image in a new layer, blurred with a gaussian at a radius of 20, and then blended the two via multiply with an opacity of 33% or so)
2) brightness/contast
3) curves (medium contrast)
4) desaturation layer on the blue a bit in order to make the mountains a bit less hazy
5) adjust rgb color to have a bit more shadowiness (ie, bring up the bottom to 7 from 0, because there was nothing in that range)
I'm a bit concerned that all these manipulations dropped my shadow detail. Looking over my epson proofs again, they have that detail, but no pop. The H paper, the pop, no detail.
It may be my monitor, which isn't matte, but is glossy, and appears to display colors reasonably correctly but the brightness seems off... I'll have to experiment a bit more...
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Why? Blur will reduce detail, and your problem is too little detail. Do you have a specific and necessary reason to introduce blur?
<<<brightness/contast>>>
How?
<<< curves (medium contrast) >>>
Redundant. Brightness/contrast can be handled with one curve.
<<< desaturation layer on the blue a bit in order to make the mountains a bit less hazy>>>
Local or overall? If you desat the blue only overall, it could cause more trouble than it solves.
<<< adjust rgb color to have a bit more shadowiness (ie, bring up the bottom to 7 from 0, because there was nothing in that range) >>>
How? Sorry, I don't know what you mean when you say "adjust rgb color".
<<< It may be my monitor, which isn't matte, but is glossy, and appears to display colors reasonably correctly but the brightness seems off...>>>
All our monitors are "glossy".
Some thoughts:
What you're doing, what we're all doing when we try to problem solve this stuff, is trying to isolate problems and then solve them one at a time. So, you really want to reduce your variables. It sounds to me like you have too many variables. Pick one paper and one file (image). Get rid of all those funky corrections. Start with a background layer and a background copy layer. Then build an adj layer curve. With the curve dialog box up, get to know your negative (er, I mean, file). Hover that mouse, click it, and learn where your tones fall on the curve. Where are the sky tones on the curve? Where are the dirt tones? Where on the curve are the green bushes etc.? Don't do any manipulations until you know those tones, until you know what you're changing, and why.
And don't bother with all this fine tuning unless you have a calibrated monitor. That way madness lies. As Sam said, :bash
Just my two cents Mark. Good luck.
I don't want the cheese, I just want to get out of the trap.
http://www.jimwhitakerphotography.com/
I've been fighting with this damn thing for 30 minutes, trying to get it to feed a single sheet of paper. it just won't freakin' take, even normal paper! I'm so close to determining the aerodynamic properties of the printer by lofting it into Epson headquarters.
Jim, I did something pretty cool with the blur:
copy the image to a new layer
blur it completely (radius of 20 or somesuch)
change the blending to multiply
scale back to 25% opacity or so
This makes the images really vibrant, I think, without a real drop in detail.
Absolutely true. I'll try to remove one of the variables.
Interesting point. I'll try to limit the desat to just the mountains then.
Looking it, I think I went completely overboard, using the three functions that could all be done with just a contast/brightness adjustment.
OK, so that's not a factor.
I wish I had the paper and the budget for the ink to be able to do that kind of test. But, perhaps more importantly, I wish it just worked. I understand what you're saying, and I do agree, the scientific method is the pure application of awesome. I guess I'm just completely frustrated that it's taken this long to figure this out-- that's probably why people can make a living doing this, because it's so freakin' painful.
True. Monitor has been calibrated with a colorvision spyder 2. I've learned that lesson
Now, I see that I'm glad I used only one sheet of this stuff for the image I've been trying for 30 minutes to print, as the rollers have left an impression. the resulting print will probably be unusable, if it's ever produced.
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It turns out, the r800 has a single roller that does most of the work for the paper feed. That roller has a sticky rubber coating, and if you print with thick papers, sometimes paper rubs off on the roller. Once this happens often enough, the roller can't stick to the paper. To fix this problem, just rub the roller with your finger as it goes around, and you'll remove the paper dust and the sheet will feed through.
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