[Rand Scott Adams Silver Member Posts: 287]

New series Epson Printers!

on: April 26, 2020 at 1:40 pm

Mark D Segal wrote:

We have some contacts. “Clout” another matter; but seriously, they have a natural interest in customers being able to use these machines successfully and they have their eyes and ears tuned to what people say, so let’s see. And yes, things like this can take time, especially these days when that microscopic virus has most of the world under “house-arrest” until the epidemic abates or politicians do questionable things, whichever comes first. ?

Mark,

Well said!  🙂

This seems like a good time to, again, thank you, Kevin, Jeff Schewe, Andrew Rodney, Eric Chan, Michael Reichmann, and Charlie Cramer for all you’ve taught me over the past decade or so.  Anything I know about printing I’ve learned from you all.  I’ve only had the pleasure of meeting in person, Jeff and Charlie, but have a sincere wish to remedy that sometime in the future, if I’m fortunate.

Thanks all . . .

Rand

Rand Scott Adams Rand47

[Mark D Segal Silver Member Posts: 935]

Re: New series Epson Printers!

Reply #1 on: April 26, 2020 at 2:29 pm

Let us hope we are all so fortunate.

Cheers,

Mark

Mark D Segal Author: "Scanning Workflows with SilverFast 8, SilverFast HDR, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop". Please check the PhotoPXL Store for availability.

[Rand Scott Adams Silver Member Posts: 287]

Re: New series Epson Printers!

Reply #2 on: May 17, 2020 at 9:54 am

This is for Mark Segal . . .

Hi Mark,

Ilford has posted ICC profiles for the SC P7570 printer.  And there’s something “unusual” (at least for me) in their handling instructions for PK papers, e.g. Ilford Gold Fibre Gloss.  In addition to indicating the correct Epson media type to use, there is also instruction to set the “color density” to -15%.

I’ve never seen any instructions like this  for any other Epson printer I’ve owned.   I’ve also asked Andrew Rodney similar questions over on “that other site,” but would love your take on this also:

1. How would an ICC profile maker come to the conclusion that this was necessary?
2. Why do you think this printer is “different” from other Epson printers?  (Wondering if your contacts at Epson might have anything to say about this?)

Given Jan’s complaints re his 9570 about “over inking” I’m thinking there may be a connection?  The “whole world of using this printer” is getting stranger and stranger.  Of course saving a LR print template for 3rd party papers w/ this color density reduction is no big deal, but the whole issue has me scratching my head about what’s different.

Rand

Rand Scott Adams Rand47

[Mark D Segal Silver Member Posts: 935]

Re: New series Epson Printers!

Reply #3 on: May 17, 2020 at 11:13 am

Hi Rand,

I’ve never seen such a thing either. I am going to reach out to a contact in Ilford and ask what they did/observed leading them to make this recommendation. I would also be curious to know whether they recommended this adjustment for the one paper or for all their papers. Paper suppliers either make their own profiles, or they sub-contract the task to third party colour management people to do this for them. In either case, their profile would normally be made using one sample of the printer being profiled, so if there were anything amiss with that printer it could compromise both the profile and the recommendations about how to use it. To be speculative, the first thing that crossed my mind is that perhaps the printer is over-inking to an extent that the profiling math failed to accurately characterize the printer. But to suggest this could be a systemic problem, I would award this hypothesis an extremely low probability of occurrence, because you have no idea how much internal time, effort and science Epson commits to the proper functioning of the machinery and the drivers for their new models before they release them to the market – but of course in human endeavours there’s no such thing as perfection, so one can’t completely rule out the possibility that the unintended can happen. But this looks egregious and exceptional.

So, just to review what SHOULD happen: the profile is supposed to characterize the “native” behaviour of the printer, so that when the image file is sent to print, the colour conversions from the image file numbers to the numbers the printer uses for printing take this behaviour into account. When we print profiling targets for creating the profiles, we have the printer set-up with the driver settings we would normally use to make prints – in particular the media type and the other key settings in Printer Settings and Advanced Media control in the Epson driver. And then, again according to basic principles, we use only those exact same settings for making prints using that paper and that profile. So in principle, and part of the whole point of profiling a printer, is that no user intervention on driver settings should normally be required once we’ve selected the profile that is supposed to take all those parameters into account.

Hence the fact that Ilford is making the recommendation you mention above suggests to me that something “squirrely” is going on that we should get to the bottom of. I’ll revert back here if I learn something of consequence.

Mark D Segal Author: "Scanning Workflows with SilverFast 8, SilverFast HDR, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop". Please check the PhotoPXL Store for availability.

[Mark D Segal Silver Member Posts: 935]

Re: New series Epson Printers!

Reply #4 on: May 17, 2020 at 11:22 am

Oh – and one more thing I should add – I did have the opportunity of a tryout with a 9570 – it wasn’t possible in the time available under the circumstances to do a review on the basis of that tryout, and it was some months ago, but I did have a chance to profile the printer and produce several test prints. I did not see evidence of over-inking in those prints. They looked pretty usual to me – i.e. darn good. I was using Epson Legacy Platine and Legacy Fiber for that exercise.

Mark D Segal Author: "Scanning Workflows with SilverFast 8, SilverFast HDR, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop". Please check the PhotoPXL Store for availability.

[Rand Scott Adams Silver Member Posts: 287]

Re: New series Epson Printers!

Reply #5 on: May 17, 2020 at 11:27 am

Mark,

Thanks… unfortunately, your response is what I was “afraid” I’d hear!

Oh, and in my post above, I misspoke… it wasn’t Ilford, but Canson where I saw those instructions:

https://www.canson-infinity.com/en/icc-profiles

Look at the SC P7570 (obviously).  You’ll notice that the Baryta Prestige, and Platine Fibre Rag have this -15% color density instruction, BUT their new Baryta Photographique II does not.  VERY strange.

You’ll also notice that none of the MK papers carry this instruction.

Rand

Rand Scott Adams Rand47

[Rand Scott Adams Silver Member Posts: 287]

Re: New series Epson Printers!

Reply #6 on: May 17, 2020 at 11:44 am

Mark,

Thanks for this comment.  I can say that prints I’ve made on Legacy Fibre, Legacy Platine, Ultra Premium Luster, and remaining stock of Legacy Baryta (all using Epson’s ICC profiles) are, indeed, excellent with zero evidence of over inking.  I’ve even mailed Jan a 17×22” print of Bill Atkinson’s printer test file, to get his comments on it since he’s apparently having over inking in his tests. I’ll be interested in his comments, once the print gets to him in the Netherlands (the USPS just opened up being able to mail stuff there!)

I’m super happy with this printer, it’s the best printer I’ve owned yet.  But there are things that are “different” about its operation that take some figuring out.  And there were / are some teething issues w/ driver, Epson Media Installer, etc. that are being aggressively worked through by Epson.

Rand

Rand Scott Adams Rand47

[Mark D Segal Silver Member Posts: 935]

Re: New series Epson Printers!

Reply #7 on: May 17, 2020 at 12:06 pm

Hi Rand,

Surprised to hear there are driver issues. I know, as you say, they have been working aggressively on the driver and thought they would have all been ironed out pre-release. Well, perhaps not altogether,

Anyhow, good you caught me before I fired off an email to Ilford. And now that you mention the issue is limited to a couple of Canson papers, it looks to me that it’s a (limited) paper issue,  not a printer issue. What kind of paper issue I don’t know – perhaps something about the coating that isn’t absorbing those particular inks properly. In the case of Canson I’m not sure whether I can take this further – need to check on who’s there these days.

Mark D Segal Author: "Scanning Workflows with SilverFast 8, SilverFast HDR, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop". Please check the PhotoPXL Store for availability.

[Rand Scott Adams Silver Member Posts: 287]

Re: New series Epson Printers!

Reply #8 on: May 17, 2020 at 12:07 pm

Mark,

As to Ilford, if you look here:  https://www.ilfordus.com/printer-profile   at their selection for the 75xx/95xx printers, they only list four MK papers and no PK papers at all.  Possibly still worth your effort to contact and see what’s up.  The lack of PK profiles may be an indication that they are finding something different in profiling for PK.

Rand

Rand Scott Adams Rand47

[Rand Scott Adams Silver Member Posts: 287]

Re: New series Epson Printers!

Reply #9 on: May 17, 2020 at 12:15 pm

Mark D Segal wrote:

Hi Rand,

Surprised to hear there are driver issues. I know, as you say, they have been working aggressively on the driver and thought they would have all been ironed out pre-release. Well, perhaps not altogether,

Anyhow, good you caught me before I fired off an email to Ilford. And now that you mention the issue is limited to a couple of Canson papers, it looks to me that it’s a (limited) paper issue, not a printer issue. What kind of paper issue I don’t know – perhaps something about the coating that isn’t absorbing those particular inks properly. In the case of Canson I’m not sure whether I can take this further – need to check on who’s there these days.

Mark,   The only reason I referenced possible additional driver issues, is that since the driver seems to be intimately interrelated to the Epson Media Installer, and I “know” that a new Epson Media Installer version is in the works, I’m guessing that a new version of the driver may be required as well.  Having said that, the current driver (6.73 for Windows) works perfectly and resolves the very early issues I reported.  So, kudos to Epson for that timely and very responsive update.

Rand

Rand Scott Adams Rand47

[Mark D Segal Silver Member Posts: 935]

Re: New series Epson Printers!

Reply #10 on: May 17, 2020 at 12:16 pm

Rand Scott Adams wrote:

Mark,

As to Ilford, if you look here: https://www.ilfordus.com/printer-profile at their selection for the 75xx/95xx printers, they only list four MK papers and no PK papers at all. Possibly still worth your effort to contact and see what’s up. The lack of PK profiles may be an indication that they are finding something different in profiling for PK.

Rand

I think there are some changes happening in certain parts of the inkjet paper production industry that are more likely the cause of no new profiles for certain papers for the time being.

Mark D Segal Author: "Scanning Workflows with SilverFast 8, SilverFast HDR, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop". Please check the PhotoPXL Store for availability.

[Jan R. Smit Participant Posts: 8]

Re: New series Epson Printers!

Reply #11 on: June 6, 2020 at 1:59 am

Reading the above post of Mark, i would say that is an eufemistic wat of saying Epson marketed a New Line of printers that are incompatible with especially fine art gloss papers . And with their history one can only conclude that they knew this.

It is a systemic issue.

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