The other evening I profiled my friends (chipper, on this forum) Epson 3800 using a bill atkinson 1452 patch target on Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper 255gsm.
It was profiled for 2880dpi bidirectional using a perceptual rending intent.
If anyone would like this profile for free or, to see how it reproduced a Neil Bartsow test chart available here: http://www.colourmanagement.net/downloads.html
Give me an email.
All the best
Ian
Epson 3800 printer profile
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scovell001
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David Rees
- Forum Hero
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Ian,
Given that several photographers on this group may well have a 3800 printer, and/or are interested in (or have purchased) custom profiles, information about how the Atkinson profile worked would presumably be of interest to a significant proportion of the forum readers. So why not just post your observations on this thread?
Given that several photographers on this group may well have a 3800 printer, and/or are interested in (or have purchased) custom profiles, information about how the Atkinson profile worked would presumably be of interest to a significant proportion of the forum readers. So why not just post your observations on this thread?
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chipper
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Chipper here!
Well what can I say. Ian has created an individual profile for my Imacon scanner, so that now I can simply scan my transparencies, and within 2 clicks of the mouse in PS have on screen (which he calibrated) perfect colour rendition of my tranny. I have to say I was somewhat sceptical of a profile for my Epson 3800, as the prints I was getting from it appeared pretty damn good to me. However, Ian has absolutely maximised the printer's gamut range (don't ask me to get any more technical than that!) Simply put, prints appear more 'punchy' and all shadow detail is brought out.
Basically, I can highly recommend having Ian create a profile for your 3800, and no, he aint gonna pay me for this!
If anyone has any further questions, please don't hesitate to pm me.
Stu.
Well what can I say. Ian has created an individual profile for my Imacon scanner, so that now I can simply scan my transparencies, and within 2 clicks of the mouse in PS have on screen (which he calibrated) perfect colour rendition of my tranny. I have to say I was somewhat sceptical of a profile for my Epson 3800, as the prints I was getting from it appeared pretty damn good to me. However, Ian has absolutely maximised the printer's gamut range (don't ask me to get any more technical than that!) Simply put, prints appear more 'punchy' and all shadow detail is brought out.
Basically, I can highly recommend having Ian create a profile for your 3800, and no, he aint gonna pay me for this!
If anyone has any further questions, please don't hesitate to pm me.
Stu.
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scovell001
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- Joined: Thu May 29, 2008 10:17 am Etc/GMT-1+01:00
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Hi, sorry for the late reply. O.K. I’ll try and explain everything in this post. I don’t know how to post images (otherwise I would).
With a little background on the case. Stuart shoots 5x4 and has always felt that his images have been a little on the darker side of the exposure scale. This has carried on through his prints (they we’re coming out a little dark too).
This has had an impact on his picture taking, because a) he thinks his exposure technique isn’t quite right and b) now he’s trying to compensate in the camera (by over exposing) for his digital darkroom equipment which hasn’t been set up correctly. Hopefully I’m striking a chord with a few people here on the forum?
The first step in the chain was to calibrate Stuarts Formac monitor, for this I used an I1 Pro, and basicolor software. White point was set to d65, gamma to L* and brightness to 150cmd based on the brightness of his room.
The next step was to take action on his Imacon Precision III scanner. Here I used a Hutchcolor target, and designed a profile from the ground up to extract every last nuance from Stuarts transparencies, particularly shadow detail. The old precisions do suffer with some major optical flare, but we managed to get round this as much as possible.
So, at this point we’ve got Stuarts scanner getting all the detail, and he can see what he’s doing on the monitor.
The last stage, and the reason for this forum post, was his Epson 3800 printer. Prints have always been coming out a little on the dark side. So, I used a Bill Atkinson 1452 patch target to create a profile. I used this one because it has a greyscale patch section rather than just being colour gamut based, and obviously has a lot more patches than many of the standard printer profiling charts available.
In the software, I made 2 profiles both based on a D50 (daylight illuminant) using paper grey and neutral gray with a perceptual rending intent just to see which would give the best reproduction. I also made a large profile rather than the smaller standard version usually available for free download.
Examining the 2 profiles on their own, the Paper grey has the larger gamut. Soft proofing in Photoshop shows paper grey to be the most colour accurate, but neutral grey introduces a slight warming which could be useful for flesh tones.
Next, I examined the profiles compared to Bill’s profiles made for the 11880 with vivid magenta etc etc. Bottom line, the Epson 3800 has excellent yellow and red gamut, really really wide. The area where its not quite as good is in the blues, the K3 11880 is probably about 10-15% wider in the blue’s which ultimately means more shadow detail. But, I’ve got to say the Epson 3800 properly profiled is one excellent printer, I can see why Epson haven’t updated it yet.
Penultimate test, we downloaded a Colourmanagement.net RGB test image. It reproduced beautifully especially the grey ramp, showing all steps from 1 to 99%. Overall image reproduction was excellent, with the overall image appearing slightly warmer (due to the paper stock being slightly more yellow than pure monitor white) and nigh on every last ounce of shadow detail, again this more down to the printers ultimate resolution rather than a profiling issue.
The final test, printing one of Stuart’s images. We selected an image that a lot of fine detail, and deep shadows and had always caused Stuart a problem. As hoped, the resulting print came out perfectly, and Stuart was well impressed.
So, to summarise, Stuart has gone from thinking all his images we’re underexposed, to being able to fully resolve all the fine shadow details and nuances in his images. Result!
So, for those who have their own profiling equipment on this forum, do try Bill Atkinson’s profiling charts, especially those with a grey ramp. There’s even one with 1024 grey steps purely for b&w reproduction.
With a little background on the case. Stuart shoots 5x4 and has always felt that his images have been a little on the darker side of the exposure scale. This has carried on through his prints (they we’re coming out a little dark too).
This has had an impact on his picture taking, because a) he thinks his exposure technique isn’t quite right and b) now he’s trying to compensate in the camera (by over exposing) for his digital darkroom equipment which hasn’t been set up correctly. Hopefully I’m striking a chord with a few people here on the forum?
The first step in the chain was to calibrate Stuarts Formac monitor, for this I used an I1 Pro, and basicolor software. White point was set to d65, gamma to L* and brightness to 150cmd based on the brightness of his room.
The next step was to take action on his Imacon Precision III scanner. Here I used a Hutchcolor target, and designed a profile from the ground up to extract every last nuance from Stuarts transparencies, particularly shadow detail. The old precisions do suffer with some major optical flare, but we managed to get round this as much as possible.
So, at this point we’ve got Stuarts scanner getting all the detail, and he can see what he’s doing on the monitor.
The last stage, and the reason for this forum post, was his Epson 3800 printer. Prints have always been coming out a little on the dark side. So, I used a Bill Atkinson 1452 patch target to create a profile. I used this one because it has a greyscale patch section rather than just being colour gamut based, and obviously has a lot more patches than many of the standard printer profiling charts available.
In the software, I made 2 profiles both based on a D50 (daylight illuminant) using paper grey and neutral gray with a perceptual rending intent just to see which would give the best reproduction. I also made a large profile rather than the smaller standard version usually available for free download.
Examining the 2 profiles on their own, the Paper grey has the larger gamut. Soft proofing in Photoshop shows paper grey to be the most colour accurate, but neutral grey introduces a slight warming which could be useful for flesh tones.
Next, I examined the profiles compared to Bill’s profiles made for the 11880 with vivid magenta etc etc. Bottom line, the Epson 3800 has excellent yellow and red gamut, really really wide. The area where its not quite as good is in the blues, the K3 11880 is probably about 10-15% wider in the blue’s which ultimately means more shadow detail. But, I’ve got to say the Epson 3800 properly profiled is one excellent printer, I can see why Epson haven’t updated it yet.
Penultimate test, we downloaded a Colourmanagement.net RGB test image. It reproduced beautifully especially the grey ramp, showing all steps from 1 to 99%. Overall image reproduction was excellent, with the overall image appearing slightly warmer (due to the paper stock being slightly more yellow than pure monitor white) and nigh on every last ounce of shadow detail, again this more down to the printers ultimate resolution rather than a profiling issue.
The final test, printing one of Stuart’s images. We selected an image that a lot of fine detail, and deep shadows and had always caused Stuart a problem. As hoped, the resulting print came out perfectly, and Stuart was well impressed.
So, to summarise, Stuart has gone from thinking all his images we’re underexposed, to being able to fully resolve all the fine shadow details and nuances in his images. Result!
So, for those who have their own profiling equipment on this forum, do try Bill Atkinson’s profiling charts, especially those with a grey ramp. There’s even one with 1024 grey steps purely for b&w reproduction.
nice expanation, here is Bill's link if anybody else is looking:-
http://homepage.mac.com/billatkinson/FileSharing2.html
edwin
http://homepage.mac.com/billatkinson/FileSharing2.html
edwin
I do remember reading somewhere that the grey steps on those targets aren't actually used in the creation of the profile, they're included there only for aesthetic reasons, visually appraising the print, and to fill out the target. Makes sense really, the target is there for mapping the colour gamut, and those grey steps will not help there save for gauging white point ( which can be done with a single patch anyway ) and for linearity. Ooh, found it :scovell001 wrote: The last stage, and the reason for this forum post, was his Epson 3800 printer. Prints have always been coming out a little on the dark side. So, I used a Bill Atkinson 1452 patch target to create a profile. I used this one because it has a greyscale patch section rather than just being colour gamut based, and obviously has a lot more patches than many of the standard printer profiling charts available.
So, for those who have their own profiling equipment on this forum, do try Bill Atkinson’s profiling charts, especially those with a grey ramp. There’s even one with 1024 grey steps purely for b&w reproduction.
That said, the advice is sound, I've been using Bill's Targets for years, and as far as patch-count is concerned, more is better. I profiled Epson Premium Lustre on my Epson 4000 with a 4096 patch target once and it gave the most beautfiully smooth profile, but boy did it take a long time....Bill Atkinson wrote:Why do some of the targets include a block of gray patches, and other's not? Odd numbered grid sizes do not lay out evenly into rectangular grids, so I usually fill out the extra space with grays. These grays are not used in building profiles, but they are very useful for visual examination of a printer's gray balance.
For B&W printing I would advocate the use of QuadToneRIP if it supports your printer, I've yet to find a better method of printing B&W.