Epson Pro 3800

[MiguelK]

I've had my 3800 for about 3 years now. It's a superb machine, and it still amazes me with the quality of its output.
Just one problem, though, and that concerns some blue colours, which I want to reproduce but are clearly out of gamut, and tend to have a purplish hue rather than the purer blues I seek.
I mostly use Epson Premium Semigloss paper, with the appropriate built-in profile, and I allow Photoshop to control the colour.
Is it possible to solve the problem by buying in another profile, or is it impossible to get a decent range of blues?

I'd be grateful for any suggestions.

MiguelK

[Costas L]

...... blue colours, which I want to reproduce but are clearly out of gamut, and tend to have a purplish hue rather than the purer blues I seek .......

Hi Miguel - out of gamut colours are an interesting problem.

This can be addressed by a tailor made profile, but suspect its one you would have to produce yourself. Have you also tried different rendering intents ?

It might be worth trying a paper from a different manufacturer to see if that gives more satisfying results. Actually you might be able to experiment a bit by just downloading the paper profiles from different manufacturers and using "soft proof" in PS to see which gives the lowest amount of "out of gamut" colour in the part of the image there is a problem, and then maybe reduce saturation of that colour using a "selective" colour layer.

[The Crofter]

I had to jump through hoops to get this picture to print correctly and the blues were a nighmare. However I did produce a 99% accurate copy on the 3800 using Hahnemuhle paper & canned hahnemuhle profile. Trying to get this sorted did eventually force me into selling a leg to buy a Spectraview Ref 2690 monitor but was worth every penny. The wide colour gamut actually allows you to see & adjust colours that will not be rendered by a standard monitor which is part of the battle. To get the best out of any monitor it has to be calibrated.

hare-bowl-final.jpg (44.73 KiB) Viewed 1752 times

[bez]

As above, cameras and some printers can render colours outside a monitor's gamut.
I think this could be a question of profile, which you may not have to buy-in ... experiment.
There are also some dodgy profiles around, particularly concerning blues/purples; which Epson one are you using?

After some recent tests we found it’s more usual to have a problem with matt papers than gloss/lustre, although this was using the larger gamut 7900, with vivid magenta

[MiguelK]

This is amazing - three interesting replies already - bless you all!

I normally use the standard Epson printer profile for the paper, i.e. 'Pro38 PSPP', mostly with 'Absolute Colorimetric' rendering. This usually works well for me, giving vibrant prints closely approximating to the screen image [allowing for the inevitable difference between a light-sourcing screen and a reflective paper].
The exception, as mentioned, is in those parts of the blue spectrum which go out of gamut.
This surprised me, because surely the excellent K3 inks must be capable of mixing to produce nice pure blues!
(Changing rendering to Perceptual helps [less purple shift], but still could be better.)

I've just tried an experiment, bez & Costas, choosing, for one of my problem images, an "off piste" printer profile that looked good on the soft proof screen, with a nice blue. This was called 'Pro3800 3800c 3850 Standard'. The print, however, was much too dark (irrespective of rendering) - although the blue appeared to be much better. I could fudge it by lightening the image, but would then lose the essential proximity of screen and print.
However, there is certainly potential in the idea.

Crofter - I was very interested to see the painting you attached as an example, because I first encountered the problem when trying to reproduce a painting by a friend, which was mainly blue all over, and almost all out of gamut. The friend seemed happy with the result, but I wasn't. [My wife is also a painter, and I photograph work for her, though not usually for prints].
Congratulations on your 99%! If all else fails, maybe I should fork out (I like to work at A2 size...) for one of the Hahnemuhle papers; which one did you use?

Incidentally, I use a 20" iMac set to a gamma of 2.2.

Again, many thanks to you all for your helpful thoughts.

[The Crofter]

Incidentally, I use a 20" iMac set to a gamma of 2.2.

I have no idea of the capabilities of your monitor so you need to find out its weak areas, it may not be possible to show some colours so you will be working blind. No mention of a screen calibration device ?. I doubt that a standard monitor calibration file will be anyway near as good so you will be fighting that one as well.

The example picture was scanned on an epson 4990 in 6 pieces and stitched together. It could be that this source file produced a better colour capture than a camera although if you shoot raw then all the info should be there anyway. I have no idea of the gamut available on the scanner. I seem to remember that very little colour adjustment was required but it was impossible to do this accurately on the Samsung monitor I had at the time.

If you do not have a calibrator and you want to do more of this sort of work then it really should be the next purchase. I will stick my neck out and say that ANY monitor will benefit from calibration....

No idea which paper I used, sorry too long ago !.

Finally, there is a school of though that suggests a print shouuld not be a perfect replication of the original and that slight colour variances are acceptable. This means that if the print and original are viewed together there should be differences. For a valuable original this would prevent an accurate copy being made.

[bez]

The canned Epson profiles are normally very good, although I’ve never used ‘PSPP’ – you could try Premium Luster 260, but I would be surprised if this fixes the problem.
Perceptual Rendering is generally safer than Absolute for out-of-gamut colours so I would stick with that for all future tests.
Another approach I can suggest is downloading a selection of other manufacturer’s gloss/lustre profiles and trying some small A5 prints. Alternatively a custom profile may cure the problem - some companies such as Fotospeed offer free ones.

Our experiment consisted of printing an image (where the dark blues were indeed going purple with the Innova IFA14 matt cotton rag profile) using about ten different matt profiles, but all onto the same mid-price paper (not Innova) We were surprised, and alarmed by the wide variety of results.
Finally Innova kindly did a free custom profile for the 7900, which improved matters considerably.

We didn’t do the same test with PK gloss/lustre profiles because the blue>purple problem has never been particularly noticeable.

[bez]

ps. as Pat says, profiling your monitor is definitely a good place to start. However, the Photoshop guru Martin Evening doesn’t rate the new glossy Mac screens very highly - he uses NEC

Personally I find gamut warnings & soft proofing are of limited use, mainly because of the obvious differences between the screen and the print ...

[Murray Foote]

I have a 3880 and my monitor is an NEC 2690 which I profile with Spectraview II (the US version) and an Eye-One display Pro. The current NEC model would be a PA271W which is a significant improvement. I don't know anything about the i-Mac but most monitors have an sRGB gamut whereas the two NEC ones I mention have an aRGB gamut. If your monitor has an sRGB gamut that will have some degree of handicap for printing an image with a wide gamut. If you have a good monitor and colorimeter, it is also possible to set up a profile close to the paper you are using. You mention using a printer profile that produced a good result but looked too dark. If your monitor is unprofiled this is the likely cause because I think all monitors are sold displaying an image much brighter than appropriate for photographic printing.

Absolute colorithmic is not generally thought to be suitable for printing photographs; the choice is usually between relative colorithmic and perceptual. Relative colorithmic is probably a better choice for most images but perceptual is likely to be a better choice where some colours are out of gamut.

Epson profiles for Epson paper are usually pretty good so that a custom profile will only make a marginal difference. Check the Epson site that you have the latest ones, though. I usually check the US site for this purpose.

I have done quite a lot of printing live music images which can often have out of gamut colours. Usually I find that soft proofing gets me pretty close but I recall a few images that were dominant blue and way out of gamut. The only way I could get something like the screen was by hard proofing, or iterative test prints.

[MiguelK]

First of all, apologies for the delayed reply. I had problems with my text disappearing each time I tried to post - and then my daughter [bless her......] commandeered my computer for her work! So I hope this one makes it.

Pat, I also use an Epson 4990 scanner, and my friend's 'Blue' painting was done as a '4x scan & stitch' (an extremely useful way of expanding the A4 format).
In the case of my wife's work, I use a camera for most of it, because it's usually just for website use or record purposes. However, I did make prints or one drawing of hers - in black ink with a splash of Red (which I also did as a 4990/ 4-way S&S). This was very satisfactory - the 3800 produced a precise full-size facsimile that was almost indistinguishable from the original. Here the Abs. Col. rendering was fine, albeit with Epson Enhanced Matte paper (which I don't normally like much) & standard 'Pro38 EMP' profile.

Thanks, chaps, for your thoughts on monitors and calibration; you all obviously work at a much more professional level than me! As for the iMac, I don't like the new glossy screens either; mine is of the previous silky matt type, and my impression is that its far superior to most standard PCs. It has an Internal cal. procedure which uses sequential tone balancing (by eye). [This may seem corny, but one could argue that the human eye+brain is the most remarkable optical instrument of all and is the final arbiter of any photo or art work.]
Having said that, for any quantitative measurements you would obviously have to use a proprietary electronic device, especially where gamut is of interest.
So, should I invest big bucks in the sort of kit you guys have? That's something to ponder; for 90% of the work I do, I'm very happy with the results I already get. If I did so invest, would I be happy with most of the other 10% too - and maybe even happier with the 90%? Who knows........?
I'm very grateful to all of you who have responded; you've given me plenty to think about and follow up on, and I've enjoyed looking at the work on your personal websites.

Miguel
PS[1] - Moving to Perceptual has sorted out one problem photo (with a single bright blue tone).
PS[2] - Just a thought - why don't professional monitors have Square screens? It's a pain that vertical format (portrait) pictures always have to be scaled down on the inescapable Landscape-format screen.

[bez]

Just a thought - why don't professional monitors have Square screens? It's a pain that vertical format (portrait) pictures always have to be scaled down on the inescapable Landscape-format screen.

Good point - however, some high-end screens can be swivelled on the stand to a portrait position.

On the calibration topic, if your screen matches the prints pretty closely (which can be done by eye, without hardware calibration) then that's probably good enough
Gamut & contrast are indeed more important than brightness, which is largely dependant on ambient lighting.
Accurate colour balance is obviously fairly crucial ..

[Murray Foote]

I'd say ask Epson.

[Vincent]

Murray,

I deleted the URL in this post, he was after 3800 engine parts, not for a printer. The post has now been deleted.