R2400 questions/discussion

[atlcruiser]

Hi All,
I jsut got my R2400 and I am pretty thrilled so far.

A few questions.....
I am using LR2 from hi res film MF scans

All ink is new Epson

Using Epson paper

Calibrated monitor with Spyder 3

I have the ICC profiles from Epson and actually learned how to use them 🙂

I am still having a tough time with the color. I dbl checked and I am in sRGB and I have the ICM turned off in the printer properties box. AFAIK i am printing with the ICC profile only.

So far everything looks about a 1/2 stop dark and a bit hotter; maybe 10%.

What am i missing here?

Any tips or tricks would be great

thanks in advance

 

[Bob Michaels]

When you go to print, where you select the printer profile: Does that screen indicate "let Photoshop manage colors"? under the color handling options?

After you go to the next screen - Printer properties, do you have "ICM" selected in the color management box? And do you have checked "off" - (no color adjustment)

those are from CS2, I hope Lightroom gives you the same choices.

You just need to make sure that all color control is from Photoshop or Lightroom and that the printer is doing no color adjustments in the printer driver software.

 

[atlcruiser]

Yep....LR2 askes to let printer manage colors or to let profile manage colors. I turn profile on and ICM off in the properties box.

It seems better with different prints but still not quite right.....I am a grand novice with digital printing 🙂

 

[Bob Michaels]

Welcome to the world of "color management". But relax, it is not as complicated as Bruce Fraser's 582 page "Real World Color Management" makes it out to be. I do recommend the book as a reference however.

 

[atlcruiser]

that sounds as much fun as the phone book!

What is so ironic to me is that I went from film, to 1/2 ass digital, to whole ass digital, back to film, then to B+W wet printing, then to color darkroom printing now I am at film + digital printing + whole ass ++ digital 🙂

 

[wolfpeterson]

I printed on the R2400 alot at school and our setup was calibrated by technicians. Even following all the instructions, we would never get it completely right...

Part of it is ink. If you have bright and saturated magenta/orange/yellow, there will be some clipping. I don't remember the technical explanation but basically the printer cannot reproduce the same palette as a computer screen.

But you said that your prints come out too dark, and that is always what happened to us as well... All we would do is compensate and do 2-3 inch test prints. If you use photoshop, once you've setup your paper and printer profile you can press command-Y (proof colors) and it will attempt to show the colors that will come out!

All I can say is ... test print, test print, test print!

 

[aad]

Funny-I use a 2400 with a Mac, calibrated with the built-in Colorsync utility. What is on the screen is what comes out of the printer.

 

[mfogiel]

You should get results that are pretty close to your screen. Make sure that the paper choice is matched by the profile. For fine tuning the brightness, you can use the printer's options for quantity of ink. For checking if your screen is indeed calibrated, at least in terms of brightness, you can take one B&W image, and print with the printer managing the process in the advanced B&W mode - if it still turns out dark, then you have to recalibrate the screen.

 

[Bob Michaels]

I printed on the R2400 alot at school and our setup was calibrated by technicians. Even following all the instructions, we would never get it completely right...

Part of it is ink. If you have bright and saturated magenta/orange/yellow, there will be some clipping. I don't remember the technical explanation but basically the printer cannot reproduce the same palette as a computer screen.

But you said that your prints come out too dark, and that is always what happened to us as well... All we would do is compensate and do 2-3 inch test prints. If you use photoshop, once you've setup your paper and printer profile you can press command-Y (proof colors) and it will attempt to show the colors that will come out!

All I can say is ... test print, test print, test print!

Different things work for different people.

I never softproof and 98% of the time, my first print is what I want. Now I do have a working knowledge of color management from printing digitally for about ten years. All aspects (scanner, monitor, printer) of my system are color managed.

Almost all of what I do lately is from b&w film but I think that is actually harder than color to really do well. I still print enough color, scanned MF chrome and digital capture, to know that everything still works.

I just think it is a matter of having a basic conceptual understanding of color management and not just clicking here and there because it worked the last time.

As always, YMMV.

 

[KEH]

I used a 2400 for a few years and was pretty happy with it. I am a bit confused by one line in your post:

"I am still having a tough time with the color. I dbl checked and I am in sRGB and I have the ICM turned off in the printer properties box. AFAIK i am printing with the ICC profile only."

If the photo you are printing has been edited in sRGB then you will definitely have some gamut problems. But that doesn't explain the dark tone. This suggests that there may be a problem with your monitor calibration. But soft-proofing using the icm file for the paper you are using is also a useful step to see what is going on.

These issues can be really difficult to sort out. I never got Advanced B&W mode on the 2400 to work really well -- there were almost always big differences in brightness between the screen and the print.

Cheers,
Kirk

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Most monitors are calibrated too bright. The instructions for the Eye-One display say to calibrate an LCD to 120 cd/sq in, but 80 is more accurate to the way printers behave, and this applies to press work too. Mine is set to 80 and my prints on my 2400 match as do commercial projects I have done by printing companies. Also your screen should be set to 6500K color temp and 2.2 gamma.

 

[atlcruiser]

It is getting better. I set the ICC to epson lustre paper (that I am really using) and the quality and color got much better.

I had a lot of trouble with a neon yellow truck I neede dto print for a customer. The color would jsut not even get close. I felt bad abotu ti but hey...it was free. They never even noticed 🙂

I am making sure all work is done in the same color space from scanner all the way to printer.

Here is the next strangeness:
MF scans from both my Canon 8800F and from Noth Coast Photo come out MUCH more accurate then raw files from the M8. Thoughts?