Re: Color of large prints
Sorry I but I have not been keeping up with this post. The bottom line is that when it works your Epson printer is a decent printer. When it doesn’t it’s a near useless except to burn ink and paper, which equates to money. If I were you I would consider carefully if you need a printer this size. For very reasonable money you can get some awesome 24” printers. If you want to really try and make this printer work you need to take a completely different approach.
First off file sizes are not your problem. I have set 4GB files to a Epson 9800 series printer. Any issues I had (to included inconsistent color shifts) were not because of the file size. There may be a problem with the print head itself. If that is the issue than I would junk the printer. You won’t fix it for less than $1000. What I would do is decide on one really good fine art paper that you want to use. Contact Eric Joseph at Freestyle Photographic and give him your history of printing problems. Tell him you spoke with me through the forum. If he thinks the problems printing are not a print head issue have him make a custom profile for the one fine art paper you chose. Custom profiles are $100 and you will save far more in paper and ink than the $100 you will spend on it.
I could bore you to death on paper profiles and ICC standards and totally nerd out on printing. But I will spare you that torture. Eric does some amazing lectures on printing (one is this Thursday at the college I teach at http://www.freestylephoto.biz/inkjet...ing-open-house) and anyone who cares about printing on fine art inkjet printer should attend at least one of his seminars. They are usually free.
Hope this helps.
-Joshua
Re: Color of large prints
Seems like stray electrical noise from somewhere. Check your USB, or ethernet, and power cables, try new ones perhaps. This also does the age old power on-off for unknown bugs.
Re: Color of large prints
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Joshua Dunn
Sorry I but I have not been keeping up with this post. The bottom line is that when it works your Epson printer is a decent printer. When it doesn’t it’s a near useless except to burn ink and paper, which equates to money. If I were you I would consider carefully if you need a printer this size. For very reasonable money you can get some awesome 24” printers. If you want to really try and make this printer work you need to take a completely different approach.
First off file sizes are not your problem. I have set 4GB files to a Epson 9800 series printer. Any issues I had (to included inconsistent color shifts) were not because of the file size. There may be a problem with the print head itself. If that is the issue than I would junk the printer. You won’t fix it for less than $1000. What I would do is decide on one really good fine art paper that you want to use. Contact Eric Joseph at Freestyle Photographic and give him your history of printing problems. Tell him you spoke with me through the forum. If he thinks the problems printing are not a print head issue have him make a custom profile for the one fine art paper you chose. Custom profiles are $100 and you will save far more in paper and ink than the $100 you will spend on it.
I could bore you to death on paper profiles and ICC standards and totally nerd out on printing. But I will spare you that torture. Eric does some amazing lectures on printing (one is this Thursday at the college I teach at
http://www.freestylephoto.biz/inkjet...ing-open-house) and anyone who cares about printing on fine art inkjet printer should attend at least one of his seminars. They are usually free.
Hope this helps.
-Joshua
Thanks, but I need the large printer. I can charge quite a bit more per square inch for larger prints, as people perceive more value in them. Besides, I got this printer for free because it had a broken head and I managed to fix it myself for just a few dollars in parts and about a days worth of time (minus the month long wait on parts to arrive from China). I'm a pretty good at stuff like that having studied electrical engineering. It's software that I don't do. So it makes in my case to replace it with a smaller printer.
In any case, I've already figured out the problem. The Epson drivers won't apply color profiles to files larger than 30,000 pixels. That explains why I wasn't having the issue with the exact same file when printed at smaller sizes. That's also one of the big reasons why they usually sell you RIP software when you buy one of these printers, because a RIP software bypasses your printer's native drivers and allows you to control the printer more directly. However, I could bypass that driver limitation without using a RIP program by allowing another program like Photoshop to control the color profile directly to the file! Unfortunately in my case that created a separate issue due to Photoshop not being compatible with the custom profile I created in Argyle II (I also got a free i1 spectrometer, but no software with it). My custom profile worked fine applied directly to the printer's driver (so long as the file wasn't above 30,000 pixels), but applying that profile at any size file in Photoshop caused the colors to go all funky. I confirmed this by printing a file in Photoshop directly to PDF (instead of a hard copy) and got the exact same color shifts in the new file (proving the issue wasn't the printer or the driver, but Photoshop's compatibility with my custom profile). When I applied commercially available/generic color profiles, I didn't experience this problem with either hard copies or print to PDF's.
So in the end my solution is to just use a generic profile I found that is 98% as good as the custom profile I made on all pictures above 30,000 pixels until I can save up enough money for a dedicated RIP program. I'm happy (enough) with that compromise. I'd rather spend my money on travel and film than more computer junk anyway.
Re: Color of large prints
I keep trying to talk myself into a RIP but at my age I think they'll write it on a piece of stone with my name on it before I convince myself to get one...
Re: Color of large prints
You might try out QImage Ultimate. A little less spendy.
Re: Color of large prints
Out of curiosity, did you change the resolution to make the larger print? If the resolution used is different from that used to print the profile's target, the color can shift.