alan_goldhammer

<p>NEC with SpectraView calibration software and puck. They make a number of different sizes and you can find one with the associated software and hardware in the price range you note.</p>

<p>Ian, the basic problem is you not get as wide a gamut from matte paper as you will from glossy papers. I have a 3880 also and have done a considerable amount of testing of papers. The Dmax for matte papers falls in the range from 1.5 - 1.65 while Dmax for gloss papers is 2.1 - 2.3. This of course means that the range will be compressed in terms of being able to control the contrast. You can see the marked difference by just putting an image into soft proof mode and trying out a matte profile vs a glossy profile. I do a lot of printing on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Ultra Smooth which is a real nice matte paper. It does a good job on B/W and color images. However, when I want a more vibrant print I move to gloss (mostly Museo Silver Rag or Ilford Gold Fiber Silk).</p>

<p>+1 to the Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Ultra Smooth; I have printed on it for three years now and love the results. The other paper that I like which is somewhat similar is Canson Rag Photographique.</p>

<p>You won't get really deep blacks on matte paper which is what you are using. Average Dmax in my testing of such papers is 1.6 and you will need to go to a gloss paper such as Ilford Gold Fiber Silk or Museo Silver Rag (two that I commonly print on though there are others just as good out there) to get a black with a Dmax of 2.2 - 2.3. This is one reason a lot of folks have shifted away from matte papers.</p>

<p>Correct, the normal driver uses more of the "colored" inks than does the ABW driver which is why you (and me as well) see the color cast. Regardless of the approach that one uses, you can get absolutely stunning B/W prints from this printer. I have a scanned negative of one of my better B/W negatives and have showed friends the original darkroom silver print and the Epson inkjet print and folks are amazed at how similar they are. Well done Epson.</p>

<p>@Patrick Lavoie - yes but the curve trick has been around a long time and is referenced on Eric Chan's Epson 3800 website. He then figured out that preparing profiles for the ABW driver gave a better linear response. Epson never indicated this approach and it was left to users who were "slightly" dissatisfied with the response to tinker with the print pathway to achieve a better response. This is no different from the old film and paper days where users modified Kodak instructions to achieve better results. MacOS users will have to follow your approach as one can no longer use ABW profiles under that OS. The big advantage to using ABW is the higher Dmax than if you use the normal driver with a color profile to print B/W.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=58778.0"><strong>This</strong></a> may help.</p>

<p>Check to see that you are using the most current Epson driver for your OS. Things were changed last fall which principally affected the MacOS. <a href="http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=58778.0"><strong>This</strong></a> is but one thread over on LuLa that goes into this topic.</p>

<p>The inability to print with profiles using the ABW driver is restricted ONLY to MacOS systems since the latest driver update last fall. The issue is that the OS won't permit a profile with the ABW which why Epson changed the driver. If you are on a Win7 system you can still use profiles which help to linearize the response and are much easier to use than Patrick's curve solution. The Epson driver is not truly linear in its response.</p>

<p>@Emil, see my post immediately above. You cannot proof for ABW printing on the new MacOS as it will not let you send a profile to the printer driver. The feature is only available on Windows machines (but even there the question is for how much longer). </p>

<p>One correction to Andrew's post above. If you are using a Win computer, you can use ABW profiles for softproofing since Windows does not lock out the use of profiles as does the new MacOS. Eric Chan used to prepare ABW profiles but is no longer because of the lack of Mac support (though not all of us are MacAholics). You can prepare your own ABW profiles using Roy Harrington's QTR. You will see some improvement in your ABW prints as the Epson print driver is not completely linear which is what the profile corrects for. The big difference between an ABW print and a color managed B/W print is that you get a deeper Dmax (hence an extended gray scale range) with ABW. If you really are happy with your toning process by all means use the color managed process as it will really be difficult to replicate that tone using the Epson color wheel.</p>

<p>Tim, I really don't know since I've always used Windows machines. I just see a number of posts complaining about various updates to the Mac OS.</p>

<p>X-Rite are wrong about this being Epson's fault when it really is Apple's for changing the way the print path is handled. There was an extensive discussion of this over on the Luminous Landscape. Apple makes these changes and really doesn't give third party vendors sufficient time to make changes to drivers/software. Since the dialogue box works with Adobe PS/LR the fault has to reside with X-Rite who did not want to recode the ColorMunki software to adapt to the new print path.</p>

<p>The problem you have here is that you can manually switch the black ink using the control panel and printing from the rear feed is straight forward, all you have to do is insert the paper, the printer really doesn't care which feeder you use since it senses which one is being engaged. The worry here is that you really don't know what paper setting the ColorMunki software is using to print the targets if the dialogue box won't open and I wouldn't be certain that the profiles will be valid without that confirmation.</p>

<p>I would go back to X-Rite and demand that they make good on their software.</p>

<p>I have an Epson 3880 and use Ultra Smooth Fine Art as the media setting. I have profiled the paper using this setting and it comes out quite well.</p>

<p>I have a 3880 and have used ink for 12 months with no visual impairment of quality. Pigments are pretty darn stable and the ink systems don't allow air to get in which would be a worry in terms of chemical oxidation. Only issue is the settling of pigments and I routinely shake the cartridges gently if they have been in for six months.</p>

<p>When I was getting ready to set up my own site a couple of years ago I got Adobe Dreamweaver and it was pretty easy to learn. Once I got the FTP configured correctly it was straight forward to do the updates.</p>

<p>This is a frequently reported problem for Macs (I'm on a PC). My understanding is that you have to uninstall all the printers and do a fresh install using the driver from the Epson website.</p>

<p>I print all patch charts using the <a href="http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/834/cpsid_83497.html"><strong>Adobe Color Print Utility</strong></a> to avoid any issues regarding color management. As I noted in my first post I use ArgyllCMS to generate the patch sets (TIFF files) and I don't have any problems with the readings. The software is configured to generate the precise size patches for reading.</p>

<p>First, I never clip it into the holder since I find it easier to just move the ruler guide and hold it down with light pressure. Second, you mention clicking to start and then clicking at the finish. I don't know what you mean by this since you have to hold the button in while you read all the patches and then release it at the end of the row (or at least that's how I do it with ArgyllCMS and I assume that the drivers are pretty much the same but could be wrong). If you don't have the button engaged throughout the read, it isn't reading.</p>

<p>I bought an i1 back in June and have profiled every paper that I use. I don't use the X-Rite software which IMO is too expensive but the open source free <a href="http://www.argyllcms.com/index.html"><strong>ArgyllCMS</strong></a>. I had to load the Argyll i1 driver which was a snap and other than a couple of sloppy positionings of the reader template, I never got a reading error (and this was using an 1848 patch set; 4 letter size pages).</p>

<p>There have been a variety of complaints about abnormally high number of clogs, primarily in the cyan channel over on the Luminous Landscape forum. I've not seen this problem mentioned anywhere else.</p>

<p>@Patrick, I use it correctly to and it appears that Randy was trying to use it correctly as well but it didn't work. The fact that two uses report problems means one of two things: 1) there is a weird problem that affects some Mac OS/CS5 setups or 2) user error. Unless we have a full set of print workflow instructions we cannot rule out 2. You get good prints from ABW because you are using it correctly; I get good prints on ABW because I use it directly as well (and I have used both Eric Chan's profiles as well as my own QTR and have also printed without a profile successfully).</p>

<p>@Randy, curious that the ABW driver didn't do what it was supposed to. There was another report of exactly the same thing happening over at LuLa with the exact same OS and version of CS5. Something weird id going on and the fact that Patrick gets good prints using ABW under these conditions is weird to say the least. I'm on a Win7 machine and have never observed this behavior.</p>

<p>@Patrick, if you are using one of Eric's ABW profiles (as the OP states) you use that profile and not Adobe RGB. Similarly, one can prepare their own profiles using the QTR system and use those. This permits one to softproof in Photoshop using these profiles which one could not otherwise do using the ABW driver.<br>

@Randy, do you do color printing on Velvet Fine Art? Remember matte papers will not give you the same color gamut (or B/W range) that a gloss paper such as Ilford Gold Fiber Silk. As Patrick notes, if your monitor is calibrated you should get a print that matches. It might be the monitor is too bright.</p>

<p>If you have a ColorMunki or i1 Pro spectro you can prepare your own ABW profiles using Roy Harrington's QTR program. It is pretty straight forward and there are some good web resources explaining how to use it. I have a 3880 and have used Eric Chan's profiles as Michael notes and they work well also. He can make profiles for your printer if you just print out the patch set.</p>