Posted by Tom Nevesely on November 21, 2008 at 1:37 PM
In the past couple weeks I've spent some time printing a bunch of my photographs from this past spring and summer.
All of my files are in ProPhotoRGB and I'm printing out of Photoshop CS4, on an Epson R1800 printer with Ultra Premium Presentation Paper Matte loaded. My monitor is properly calibrated and I am using Epson's provided ICC profiles.
My problem is that I can't the greens (and some blues) to reproduce properly. I softproof my images and if I look at the Gamut Warning sure enough, a lot of the greens are out of gamut (and on the print it's just a big blog of solid colour).
I've tried everything I can think of to get the colours back in the gamut- hue/saturation, selective colour, rendering intent. The only thing that works is if I turn the saturation WAY DOWN. But if I do this the print looks pretty bad.
Am I doing something wrong? Or is this just a limitation of the paper? Or something else?
And perhaps a silly question, but have you eliminated any technical concerns with the printer (clogged nozzles etc.)? I usually run a couple of consecutive cleaning cycles before trying to diagnose a colospace issue, just to be sure.
Do you have a way to visualize the printer's profile against ProPhoto? (if you're on a Mac, the ColorSync utility can do that) This will let you see what shades of greens are within gamut and you can try to tweak your image closer to that range.
In my classes I usually demonstrate how to gradually eliminate gamut warnings using curves and masks, working towards the closest colors available in the target space. It's not a precise methodology but works pretty well once you get the hang of it.
One more: are you using the latest drivers for your printer? Some older drivers defer to the OS for color management when an application tries to manage color outside the driver (I ran into this with CS4 recently immediately after installing it). Updating or reinstalling the latest drivers can often resolve this issue.
Guy
Posted by John Mumaw on November 21, 2008 at 2:14 PM
It may come down to your editing and the limitation of your monitor to 'see' ProPhoto RGB.
See 'ProPhoto RGB In Use' about halfway down in this essay titled 'Understanding ProPhoto RGB'.
"What should be obvious is that if you work in the ProPhoto colour space you have no way of seeing what the colours that you actually have available are, and likely no way or reproducing them. They're not going to disappear altogether, but they will be compressed into your printer's output profile space using the rendering intent that you specify."
Try printing a file in Adobe RGB and see if that makes a difference.
Posted by Tom Nevesely on November 21, 2008 at 2:33 PM
Guy, while my printer does clog very regularly I'm pretty sure it isn't now. I just did a clean and nozzle checks. I don't have a way to visulaze the color spaces but I remember seeing something about doing that on one of the Luminous Landscape DVD's. I'll try finding that DVD when I get home tonight.
Also, I don't know if I have the latest drivers for my printer but I will also investigate that tonight.
John, I think you may be right about my monitor not being able to display the ProPhoto colours. A while ago I noticed some banding in even areas like skies. Now that I think about it it started around the time I started using ProPhoto RGB. The banding didn't apear in my prints though. I'll try converting a banded image to AdobeRGB to see if goes away and I will also try printing from the AdobeRBG.
Thanks guys and I'll keep you posted.
Posted by Mel Ladewig on November 21, 2008 at 2:44 PM
Tom,
I own the 1800 too. I'm guessing that the presentation paper is like either Enhanced Matte or photo quality paper or somewhere in between. Hard to say as Epson changes paper names all the time. These matte papers just don't have a very big gamut with the R1800 in my experience. On top of that, the R1800 has a slightly weak yellow pigment which may be contributing to your limited range in greens. You might try printing on a glossier paper to see how that goes and if you absolutely need to print on a matte paper, the Velvet Fine Art performs much better than Enhanced Matte or Epson's "Photo Quality Paper" in deep saturated colors.
I use the photo quality paper in 11X17 size to print topo maps for my hikes, but I have only printed one photo with it at which point I decided it was not reliable for proofing.
I would try using ACE to convert to Adobe RGB via relative colorimetric like the others suggested and if all else fails, move it down to sRGB.
I think upgrading to the latest s probably a good start. You may have a double profiling problem that may be resolved with the upgrade.
Guy
Posted by Tracy Hope on November 22, 2008 at 11:02 AM
I had the same problem when I went to Vista. My printer (2400) wouldn't print correctly. I went to the Epson website and downloaded the "Pro" drivers and profiles. Now when I print I get the proper profile for printing and it works quite well. I am using the inkpress paper from the camerea store, and it seems to work for me.
Posted by Tom Nevesely on November 24, 2008 at 10:30 AM
I did some testing and experimenting on the weekend....
* My printer drivers were the latest version but I reinstalled them anyways. I also downloaded and reinstalled Epson's printer profiles. This didn't seem to change anything.
* With the matte paper, converting the image from ProPhotoRGB to AdobeRGB helped somewhat and converting it to sRGB helped a great deal. I had almost no colours that were out of Gamut.
* With Epson Luster paper, my other current paper, there were less colours out of gamut when the image was in ProphotoRGB and everything was absolutely perfect when I converted the image to AdobeRGB.
So it would seem that the Ultra Premium Presentation Paper Matte isn't the best choice for me.
Thank you all for your suggestions and your help!
Posted by Les Barstow on November 26, 2008 at 2:33 PM
My first recommendation is: don't use the Epson profiles, even the "pro" profiles. Get a custom profile made - it made a huge difference in printing to my R1800, especially in the "spring"greens, cyan blues, and dull browns.
Mel's note on the weak yellow ink is worth noting, too; in images where yellow-greens or light oranges are prominent, I tend to bump the saturation for "Yellows" and lighten them until I can get the printer to understand what I want.
That said, like most printers there are some colors that it just can't reproduce.
Posted by Tom Nevesely on November 27, 2008 at 10:27 AM
Thanks Les! I'm pretty much done with this Matte Paper but when I get a new paper I will look into getting a custom profile made.
Discussion
12 repliesAll of my files are in ProPhotoRGB and I'm printing out of Photoshop CS4, on an Epson R1800 printer with Ultra Premium Presentation Paper Matte loaded. My monitor is properly calibrated and I am using Epson's provided ICC profiles.
My problem is that I can't the greens (and some blues) to reproduce properly. I softproof my images and if I look at the Gamut Warning sure enough, a lot of the greens are out of gamut (and on the print it's just a big blog of solid colour).
I've tried everything I can think of to get the colours back in the gamut- hue/saturation, selective colour, rendering intent. The only thing that works is if I turn the saturation WAY DOWN. But if I do this the print looks pretty bad.
Am I doing something wrong? Or is this just a limitation of the paper? Or something else?
Any help would be most appreciated!
Thanks in advance.
Guy
Do you have a way to visualize the printer's profile against ProPhoto? (if you're on a Mac, the ColorSync utility can do that) This will let you see what shades of greens are within gamut and you can try to tweak your image closer to that range.
In my classes I usually demonstrate how to gradually eliminate gamut warnings using curves and masks, working towards the closest colors available in the target space. It's not a precise methodology but works pretty well once you get the hang of it.
Guy
Guy
See 'ProPhoto RGB In Use' about halfway down in this essay titled 'Understanding ProPhoto RGB'.
"What should be obvious is that if you work in the ProPhoto colour space you have no way of seeing what the colours that you actually have available are, and likely no way or reproducing them. They're not going to disappear altogether, but they will be compressed into your printer's output profile space using the rendering intent that you specify."
Try printing a file in Adobe RGB and see if that makes a difference.
Also, I don't know if I have the latest drivers for my printer but I will also investigate that tonight.
John, I think you may be right about my monitor not being able to display the ProPhoto colours. A while ago I noticed some banding in even areas like skies. Now that I think about it it started around the time I started using ProPhoto RGB. The banding didn't apear in my prints though. I'll try converting a banded image to AdobeRGB to see if goes away and I will also try printing from the AdobeRBG.
Thanks guys and I'll keep you posted.
I own the 1800 too. I'm guessing that the presentation paper is like either Enhanced Matte or photo quality paper or somewhere in between. Hard to say as Epson changes paper names all the time. These matte papers just don't have a very big gamut with the R1800 in my experience. On top of that, the R1800 has a slightly weak yellow pigment which may be contributing to your limited range in greens. You might try printing on a glossier paper to see how that goes and if you absolutely need to print on a matte paper, the Velvet Fine Art performs much better than Enhanced Matte or Epson's "Photo Quality Paper" in deep saturated colors.
I use the photo quality paper in 11X17 size to print topo maps for my hikes, but I have only printed one photo with it at which point I decided it was not reliable for proofing.
I would try using ACE to convert to Adobe RGB via relative colorimetric like the others suggested and if all else fails, move it down to sRGB.
http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?14@@.59b6cbeb/0
(and others)
I think upgrading to the latest s probably a good start. You may have a double profiling problem that may be resolved with the upgrade.
Guy
* My printer drivers were the latest version but I reinstalled them anyways. I also downloaded and reinstalled Epson's printer profiles. This didn't seem to change anything.
* With the matte paper, converting the image from ProPhotoRGB to AdobeRGB helped somewhat and converting it to sRGB helped a great deal. I had almost no colours that were out of Gamut.
* With Epson Luster paper, my other current paper, there were less colours out of gamut when the image was in ProphotoRGB and everything was absolutely perfect when I converted the image to AdobeRGB.
So it would seem that the Ultra Premium Presentation Paper Matte isn't the best choice for me.
Thank you all for your suggestions and your help!
Mel's note on the weak yellow ink is worth noting, too; in images where yellow-greens or light oranges are prominent, I tend to bump the saturation for "Yellows" and lighten them until I can get the printer to understand what I want.
That said, like most printers there are some colors that it just can't reproduce.