smudged greens on enh. matte- epson 4000

[john_sutherland]

I have been using an epson 4000 for quite some time now, and a problem i keep

encountering is a smudging of greens, especially in grass. I often place large

swaths of grass in the foreground of my photos, and this degrades the image

considerably and marks it as obviously digital.

 

I ran across an illustration of this here:

http://www.gamutvision.com/docs/smudged_pines.html

 

I can barely make heads or tails of this article, other than a suggestion to

turn "black point compensation" on, which i already do, or to switch to a K3

printer, which i can't.

 

According to Norman Koren, the problem is in the (L)uminance channel, and seems

to be something that could be fixed in photoshop (i hope). or am I wrong?

 

Has anyone solved this problem or found better profiles for enhanced matte and

ultracrome inks? More importantly, is this solution free or at least cheap?

 

thanks,

john

[Ed_Ingold]

Check your images using "Soft Proof". You can try various combinations of rendering intent, black point compensation, etc. You can definitely improve on the generic profiles, through third parties or by creating them yourself (e.g., Gretag-MacBeth Eye One Photo).

[frans_waterlander]

John,

 

I have used the Epson 1270 and 2200 extensively using Enhanced Matte paper and I have never seen anything like this problem and my photos have lots and lots of green trees and grass in them. Sorry, but I have no idea what might be the cause.

[joe_allebaugh]

John,

 

I believe you need a better (custom) profile than Epson has supplied for the 4000. I had similar "green" and shadow blocking observations using Epson's EM profiles with the 2200, only resolved with new profiles found on the Internet. The original link, still in Google, is now missing, although the parent site is still up. The profiles were for the 2200 only, were created by Nick Wheeler and Eric Bullock for a limited range of Epson matte and gloss papers and for Hahnemuhle Photo Rag. The missing site link is here - http://www.lenscraft.com/profiles/wheeler/2200/index.html (try contact via parent site.)

 

The Wheeler EM profile I like the most reduces Ink Density by 7% among its other changes. The 2200 interface software does have an area where Ink Density can be manually adjusted and saved. I don't know the 4000 interface, so you're on your own there.

[john_sutherland]

thanks guys

 

i tried changing all of intents in proof set up to no avail. i have sent an email to ron lussier to see if he would be so kind as to offer them to me. as for a profiling system, i guess i should push my university to get some kind of set up.

 

thanks again,

john