andrew_borowiec

My Epson 7800 worked perfectly a week ago. Today I did a nozzle check and, instead of the usual pattern of fine grids for each ink, it printed out two bands of dark stripes. I turned it off, back on, tried again with the same result. Then I tried printing an image (out of Lightroom); the result was a sheet dripping with black ink, covered from edge to edge except for the leading edge, with just a faint outline of the image under all the black ink. Does anyone have any idea what is going on? The image below is of the nozzle check; no point posting a photo of a solid black page!

<p>Well, I'll be calibrating it tomorrow, so we'll see how it does. Maybe all the great reviews are hype too, but I thought it was worth trying out, as it was $599 vs almost twice as much for NEC or Eizo.<br> I've had a 22" Eizo for almost ten years that's performed flawlessly...</p>

<p>Thanks, Andrew. I just watched your very helpful video.</p> <p> I'm assuming that the BenQ chart is comparing the values read from the monitor to some standard, Lab or otherwise. Of course, I undertand why the chart is next to useless without more information. Still, based on your video, it seems that the variations between v and u in the chart are not that large, and that even their max dE of 2.0093 is so small as to not be easily perceived.</p>

<p>I just took delivery of a BenQ SW2700PT monitor. This monitor has received very good reviews but there have also been posts about big discrepancies in quality from one sample to the next. As a result, I decided to buy it from a local vendor, B&H Photo, so that I can easily return or exchange it if it's flawed.</p> <p>The monitor came with an Online Factory Calibration Report that shows "Delta (the symbol, presumably meaning change) E Measurement Result" and a table with figures for R, G, B, W, C, M, and Y values in two sets, u (with what looks like a superscript 1) and v (with what looks like a superscript 1). Does anyone know what those u and v values represent? Some of the u values are very close to the v values, while for Green and Cyan the v values are much higher than the u values.</p> <p>I lent my I1 monitor calibrator to a friend, will get it back in a day or two and then will run a full calibration on this monitor, but in the meantime would love to know what the BenQ calibration report is actually telling me.</p> <div></div>

<p>Thanks Andrew! I just printed the TC9.18 RGB targets from the ColorSync utility and they appear to be identical to those I printed earlier from ACPU. I haven't taken the trouble to read them but I don't think that's necessary. This suggests that the problem is with the prints from CS3, though I still can't figure out how.</p> <p>Anyway, from now on I will use ACPU or ColorSync to print printer profile targets.</p>

<p>Andrew, how does one use ColorSync to print targets? While I'm at it, I'd like to try that!</p>

<p>As you can see in the screen shots I posted on the first page of this discussion, color management was turned off both when I printed from Adobe Color Print Utility and Photoshop CS3. That means no profiles were applied to the printing jobs, and all the other settings were the same for both, as was the printer driver. That's why I find this so baffling: the output should have been identical from ACPU and CS3.</p> <p>I haven't had time to re-load CS4 on my computer to see what happens when I print the targets from that, but will post when I do.</p> <p>I understand that some newer printer profiling programs have you print the targets from within their own software, but that is not the case with the Gretag Macbeth Eye-One program that I have been using for the past ten+ years.</p>

<p>Yes, ColorSync is greyed out in the printer dialogs for both ACPU and CS3.</p> <p>I guess I'll just use ACPU from now on but it makes me call into doubt all the profiles I've made in the past, printing the targets from CS3. And yet they all seemed to work...</p> <p> </p>

<p>So what could I be doing wrong?</p>

<p>And in CS3:</p><div></div>

<p>I'm using a Mac and am reading the targets manually, one row at a time. I just repeated the whole experiment on a different paper and came up with the same results: the targets printed in CS3 are visibly darker than those in ACPU.</p> <p>I seem to remember that CS4 also has the ability to turn off color management, I'm going to reload it on my computer and try printing the targets from it.</p> <p>Here are screen shots of my printer settings when printing the targets from ACPU and CS3:</p> <div></div>

<p>Andrew, it's reassuring that you carried out the same test and found no difference, which is what I was wondering about. You must be right that I did something wrong, but I can't figure out what that was—will keep looking!</p>

<p>For years I've made custom printer profiles using a Gretag Macbeth I1, reading the two TC9.18 RGB targets that I print from Photoshop CS3 with color management turned off (I have my laptop partitioned with Snow Leopard on one of the partitions so that I can still use the old I1 hardware and software). I continued to use CS3 because I can't turn off color management in CS6.</p> <p>I recently learned about Adobe Color Printer Utility, which was apparently developed for the purpose of printing targets without color management, compensating for that flaw in CS6.</p> <p>As an experiment, I printed two sets of TC9.18 RGB targets on the same paper, with identical printer settings and rendering intents. One set was printed from Photoshop CS3 with color management off, the other from the Adobe Color Printer Utility. Even to the naked eye, it was obvious that the two sets of target were not the same, and therefore it was no surprise that the two profiles I generated are quite different. What completely baffles me is why that should be the case.<br> <br />Can anybody explain why that is?</p>