Serious typo: you CAN'T just stick stick any kind of pigment into an inkjet printer, not "can". Sorry. Stiff fingers again.
Serious typo: you CAN'T just stick stick any kind of pigment into an inkjet printer, not "can". Sorry. Stiff fingers again.
That's a much bigger difference than I saw last time I checked. The RA-4 gamut doesn't even poke through anywhere.Originally Posted by pherold
I take those charts with a grain of salt. But then I print optically.
I printed Ciba, RA4, B&W [both fibre based and RC].
I now only print inkjet, but that is because I primarily print Fine Art Repro and the digital workflow offers me the control that I need. I am working with an iPF8300 which I believe is the same ink set that Bob's iPF9400 uses.
Each has it's intrinsic quality and I love all of them, but they are all just part of a tool kit. Choose the process that best fits the kind of images that you want to make.
The chart comparison between RA and the Epson 9900 is truly interesting as it brings a visual to understanding where the differences may lay.
In terms of which has the most gamut, I think each process needs to be mastered.
BTW front mounted glossy metallic paper shows promise. Then it may not fit your artistic vision.
Those gamut graphs are precise beyond what the human eye can discern, at least if the profiles are made directly from actual printers you're comparing. The generic profiles will be slightly different.
The questions is how relevant the differences are to your pictures. I often don't see any of those differences, because I'm rarely working with highly saturated colors. When I do have a color that exceeds the gamut of the printer/paper, the color management translation usually handles it pretty gracefully. I'm often perfectly happy with that color being subdued slightly. Colors near the limits of the paper's gamut are already pretty blinding.
They're no better than the parameters that went into them in the first place, just like a Powerpoint presentation. In this case, we're not even talking about the distinction between a particular RA4 paper and inkjet gamut, but between two different workflows with a lot of digital this and that intervening. I avoid that bottleneck completely and learned how to break the sound barrier some time back. But there is still a bottleneck right out the gate, depending on the limitations of a particular film itself. Punching direct in-camera tricolor separations onto RA4 paper might change people's opinions completely. I've seen that done, even with the older Fuji papers, might even have a sample of it somewhere. Don't confuse saturation with overall gamut. The latter fact has to accommodate how everything mixes too. Any fool knows how to ramp up saturation. Getting clean primaries is step one. But getting clean complex differentiated neutrals is what separates the men from the boys. But you can only play the chords so long. Ultimately you have to make music. And it's better to have a wonky fiddle in the hands of a master than a Stradivarius in the hands of a Bozo. Now I'm trying to unlearn, and learn the funkier side of my chosen color neg films, but not in that stereotyped palette
of 70's Vericolor photographers. What the heck. It's all fun. Pick your poison and enjoy it.
That's not a meaningful statement here. When you profile a paper / ink combination, you print a test target with hundreds of swatches (my software prints over 1600). It's enough to map, with great precision, the gamut of the materials.
It also maps the dynamic range, but you can do that with a much smaller set of grayscale swatches.
As I've already said, the relevance of these measurements depends entirely on your actual practice. What looks like a big difference in the graphs may not show up at all in your work. This has nothing to do with the reliability or accuracy of the measurements.
I'm no software type per se, but many years ago I was discussing the parameters behind the very design of these measuring devices with engineers when they were just beginning to transition from graph paper plots to digital integration. For several years my wife work with a color plotter that cost six million dollars just for the hardware. The software itself cost substantially more to develop. So I have at least a feel for the theory itself, its usage and weaknesses. Colorants have changed, and continue to do so, software and measurement devices keep evolving, but the specific color theory behind this has remained essentially the same ever since the 1920's, and the pitfalls for potential misinterpretation remain analogous. And in the pigment industry itself, the meaning of gamut itself is a bit more accurately defined than how most computer interface users throw around the term. But we certainly do agree, Paul, that it's the practical aspect of this which really counts. Each carpenter deserves his own tools, those he is most comfortable and competent with.
But do you like what you are making with either process?
Once a proper calibration is done on any paper, ink , RA4 , Ciba by a professional with proper calibration test charts. It is a pretty simple visual to see where different materials fall off.
Contrary to what some say here that they can adjust optically.
a good test looks at thousands of colour in and can quickly show what any paper can hold or show.
After this calibration test there is nothing one can do to alter the papers ability to record colours.
After doing this manually with a I one spectrometer set up , and then having Angus Pady come in and use his new auto set up for colour profile making we can clearly see where papers fall out of gamut .
I pointed out that inkjet now is further in this field than RA4 and I doubt the paper manufactures (Kodak and Fuji ) are going to research and develop an emulsion that will enhance any ends of the spectrum that inkjet has dug deeper in.
The paper and emulsion coatings on RA4 .. and the ink sets and amount of inkset the printer has(currently a Cannon is at 12 inksets) and how they perform on the paper is what controls the colour gamut ,
not what we do in the enlarger or Photoshop.
Some may be better in PS to extend the Range of Colours but that is not the controlling feature... The media is what controls the gamut of printed pieces.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks