finepics

Hi George,

 

Prior to my purchasing the 1905fp I had been running the older Dell 1702fp which I think also had a Samsung screen. I calibrated it regularly with Spyder Pro and have always had a good enough colour match with profiled prints that I have been very happy with TFT. I am aware that for true colour accuracy a CRT is better by far, but my space considerations also had to be considered. Before I bought the 1905 I had considered a Lacie Blue (very cheap secondhand) but in the end the shorter lifespan was enough to put me off (and secondhand could mean very short). The 1702 has been working flawlessly for the 3 years I used it. It would seem that the major criticsm of most current TFT's is the loss of shadow detail but again, for me, that has not been a notable obstacle. I am certainly very happy with my new 19" Dell and it has always been given good reviews when it comes to graphics use. Incidentally I picked the 1905 up on Ebay for a 3rd less than current retail.

 

BTW, I think you will find that Sony still make CRT's for graphics use.

Hi, I have just answered a similar question. There are plenty of Lacie monitors around on ebay but the problem with any CRT monitor that is more than 3 years old is that they are no longer colour stable/accurate. This is not a problem with LCD/TFT and I would highly recommend the Dell 1905fp (certainly not $1700)as it uses a Samsung 8 bit screen which will display the full gamut of 16.7 million colours. Most of the other TFT displays use 6 bit screens and interpolate to get the full colour spectrum which is not as good. The only downside of the 8 bit screens is a slightly slower response time (currently 20ms), although claimed response times should not be taken too seriously and this would only really be an issue if gaming was a priority.

Hi, I have just spent the last few days researching this and as a result have just bought a Dell Ultrasharp 1905FP. It's not the fastest around if you like gaming (20ms response time) but it uses a Samsung screen which is a full 8 bit colour depth and not 6 bit like most others. This means it has better colour accuracy which is a must for photo work. It is adjustable for height and can rotate into portrait position. These monitors are reasonably priced and offer excellent value for money. There are others but this one still tops most reviewers lists.

It sounds like that old familiar phrase "Double Profiling". I have a PC so I am not sure what dialogs you have on a Mac but the Epson software places paper specific profiles in the Windows Color management tab of the printers properties and I'll bet it does a similar thing on the Mac. Watercolor paper was the default out of about 6 papers and I had to remove all of them (they are still accessible through PS) to eliminate this problem. Interestingly the UK driver does not do this and I am not sure why the US driver does.

 

The other thing to check is if you have recently changed your black cartridge to the Photo Black. This was actually my problem as the UK driver will not allow black only printing unless there is a Matte black cart installed. The US driver is not so fussy which is why I installed it (easier than re-chipping the cart!)

I must be one of the lucky ones as its working flawlessly on my PC. But there have been problems as there is already an update to v1.01 available. CS2 also has different memory management which needs setting up more carefully. The difference between CS2 and CS is huge, much more than between PS 7 and CS.

Hi Ed,

 

Glad you sorted it. Its not Photoshops fault that jpeg is in 8bit. Thats just the way jpeg is. Tiff and psd can be 16bit files. Photoshop CS2 now supports 32bit which is really strange as monitors cannot render in 32bits so you cannot see the actual image!

Hi Ed,

 

If your source images are 16bit you will not be able to save as jpeg, so one of your action commands will be to convert the image to 8bit.

FWIW I think bridge is superb. Yes it initially is slow when loading images for the first time, but once it has done that and built its cache it is very fast. Much much faster than the old file browser and much more stable as well. Its search and filtering capabilities are superb, batch commands etc. And its standalone so bye bye Extensis and ACDSEE etc. Most of the reviews in professional journals have said that bridge is one of the main reasons to upgrade to CS2.

You answered your own question Joe, most of your prints have been great without a RIP. RIPs are really meant for high volume digital labs rather than the home user. Take the rebate and get some custom paper profiles made instead.

Thanks Byron,

 

I've just changed it to that method. I forgot it could be done that way!

Hi Bob,

 

Yes a PC thing, but I imagine that Adobe does something with Mac's too.

Msconfig is the system configuration utility. This allows you to do a selective startup usually for diagnostic reasons but it also allows you to disable certain processes. There are other ways to stop Gamma loading, one is to navigate to it's folder - C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Calibration and rename the file Adobe Gamma Loader from .exe to .old or something like that. That will also do the job.

Just a reminder for anyone who has recently upgraded to CS2, and

calibrates their monitor, to turn off Adobe Gamma which will have been

re-installed during the upgrade. To do this go to the Run box and type

msconig. Select the startup tab and scroll down the list until you see

Adobe Gamma and/or Adobe Gamma Loader (this was still there from PS CS

and was already unchecked) and uncheck them. Close the dialog and

select restart. When you restart you get a message telling you that

selective startup is on - check the box at the bottom left to not show

this again. Now Adobe Gamma will not load its default monitor profile

at startup.

 

In fact anyone using a hardware calibration device must disable Adobe

Gamma otherwise calibration will not be accurate and it would be wise

to check that your graphics card can make use of LUT - Look Up

Tables/Profiles. For example certain versions of ATI's drivers for

the Radeon 9800 Pro series (v4.7 I think but the newer v5.0? now can)

could not do this, making calibration useless.

And you should check if your graphics card can use LUT (look up tables). Certain ATI cards cannot use them with certain drivers. If not calibrating will have no effect at all!

I scanned my first 5x4 on my Epson 4870 using Vuescan at 4880 dpi and ended up with a 1.4gb file! Almost fried my PC. Detail was amazing though. My problem was that Vuescan chooses its own output dpi with the 4870 options and it selected 750 dpi (no option to change that until opening in PS). Downscaling in PS to 300 dpi gave a file of around 90mb.

Hi Gareth,

 

Patricia's right about double profiling. The only other thing that might cause a severe colour shift is a blocked nozzle.

 

Colour mangement always seems to baffle people but it really is fairly simple once you understand how it works and what it does. The goal is to get out of the printer what you see on the screen.

 

The first and MOST important step is to get the screen right. Until you do that how do you know that adjustments you make in PS are right? It might not be a mile off but small shifts can produce big differences to printed output. So for ultimate control you need to calibrate it using a hardware device.

 

Now you can start printer profiling because now what you see is right you want the printer to match it. You can download general paper profiles from Ilfords website which will be sufficient, and sometimes are perfect, but there is no point getting custom profiles made (but they are not too expensive - 40 dollars) unless your monitor is accurate.

 

So, start saving and buy a monitor calibration device like the Eye One display or Colorvision Spyder Pro II (Spyder comes as a kit with a printer profiling device).

John,

 

Are you sure that nobody sells alternative pigment inks for the 2200/4000 range. What about MIS, who have a very good proven reputation and have been selling them for a long time. I went over to them a year ago and they were so good that I did not need to change any settings or the standard Epson profiles (I do now have custom profiles) when I changed over to them. The prints I make are identical in colour to the Epson OEM inks and it has saved me a fortune. I do not know if MIS themselves manufacture the ink but whoever does also has very high quality control as the consistency of different batches has been excellent. Their Eboni black is particularly recommended for the BO technique as it has a very high dmax, much more than the Epson OEM MK ink. Are you saying that they are not pigments inks?

 

In the UK Lyson and Permajet, well known companies, have also been selling pigment ink for some time and, like MIS, have enjoyed a good reputation. The only real problems have been with the 1st generation CIS proving troublesome at times, but that was more due to the cartridge than the ink. The newer generation of spongless cartridges that are now available are set to change that though.

 

I don't doubt for a minute that MIS and others will soon start offering replacement inksets for the 2400 as the only real difference is the new LLK ink and I hardly think that will be much of a challenge.

 

Obviously the average remanufactured or OEM replacement cart is not going to be pigment based and no one doing proper photo output is likely to use them anyway but they do have their place.

To simplify this further imagine you are buying a new TV. You go to the TV store and see twenty TV's. They all look slightly different. Which one is right? How much should you adjust them? The International Colour Consortium - hence ICC - have determined a standard by assigning numerical values to each colour and so a monitor profile will adjust the TV (or monitor) to those values so that you know that red is red etc! Then any adjustments you make to an image in Photoshop is a real adjustment. A printer profile similarly then makes adjustments to the printed output so that it matches to what you see on the "TV".

Hi Colleen,

 

Edward has answered admirably but just to add my pennies worth;

 

To calibrate your monitor you need to at least use Adobe Gamma which, if you have installed Photoshop, you will find in Control Panel on a PC. This is a software method that involves a visual matching of coloured squares.

 

The best method is to use a hardware device such as Eye One display or Colorvision Spyder II which attaches to the monitor and measures its colour output applying any adjustments in the form of an ICC profile which is then used by the graphics card to display the correct colours.

 

Printer profiles, like monitor profiles, adjust the printers colours by measuring and comparing them to a known standard and are only relevant to the individual printer for which they were made.

 

All Profiles are installed by simply right clicking on them and choosing "install profile" from the menu or placing them manually in the Windows\System32\Spool\Drivers\Color folder.

 

Do a Google on Color Management - there are dozens of articles that explain in more detail.

Hi Dave,

 

To be fair I don't think it's a bad batch or MIS's fault rather than a driver issue that affects the 2100 and not the US 2200 printer. The US Epson driver does not have a problem printing black only at full photo resolutions with either chip whereas the UK/European driver does, so even if you have a genuine Epson cartridge it will not print Black only if its a PK. It will print but it uses Cyan and Magenta as well which results in a colour cast and the max resolution is only 1440 dpi. This was something I struggled with for ages until some kind soul pointed it out.

I should add that you can check this by going to printer properties\Utilities and clicking the Status monitor button. In the pop up click the Info button and it will tell you what cartridges you have and who made them.

Hi Yannick,

 

The problem is that you have a PK (Photo Black) chipped cartridge from MIS. What you need is an MK (Matte Black) chip for it to work with the UK driver in Black Only mode. There are two solutions.

 

1. Contact MIS and get them to supply a MK chip.

 

2. Download the US 2200 driver (the interface is different from the UK version but it's fairly obvious what's what. Do not install the US Status Monitor) which does not care what chip you have and print with that. The downside is that you effectively have two printers installed.

 

I had this very same problem and the US driver does the job perfectly although I have now got the correct chip from MIS.

Hi Andrew,

 

Phase one C1 Pro is an excellent RAW file converter only (I use it for my RAW files) but it's not an editing program. PS CS2 is a full industry standard editing package that also converts RAW files.

 

So the answer to your question is that you do not need C1 Pro (but at a later stage you might like it in addition to PS) but you definitely do need Photoshop CS2.

I'm with Calderon on Phase One. It's an excellent program and I much prefer it over ACR.

Hi Paul,

 

The 2100 is an excellent printer and you will not be disappointed. The problem of metamerism and bronzing is only with pearl/satin and gloss finish paper. If you print on Matte (and most fine art prints are) you will have no problem. You do not need to have a dedicated black inkset if you print Black only prints - this technique has come about since the resolution of printers became higher - and the results are superb pure monochrome prints with a slight grain like T-Max or Tri-X film.

 

Alternatively use a RIP such as QTR from Roy Harrington to produce tonable results. There is plenty of info on this forum about both techniques and they mean you do not need to change cartridges or risk invalidating a warranty. Permajet are a good company but I don't think you really need them.

Hi Craig,

 

This is not your problem, but worth mentioning for anyone else reading this. When you calibrate a monitor you must prevent Adobe Gamma from loading at startup. Since you cannot uninstall it you must disable it. Go to Start menu\Run and type msconfig. In the Startup tab scroll down till you find Adobe Gamma Loader - uncheck the tick box. In the General tab make sure all the boxes are ticked as it will have changed from Normal startup to Selective startup. Click ok and re-boot to affect the changes.