This is often where things go wrong - people don't take the time to learn how to set it up right, they don't verify their setup against a known good colour reference, and they don't maintain the setup. Having spent years messing around trying to get good colour in both prints and monitors, I have given up and done what everyone else who wants good colour does: colour management.Ĭolour management is highly effective at getting consistent colour across different devices (cameras, scanners, monitors, printers, projectors etc.), but does require care and a degree of understanding to use it correctly. Switching to CMYK yields less visible dots and smooth colour transitions (ICC profiles need to work less hard) with the loss of extremes of gamut (I can live with that):
I did have a quick look at the source code to see if I could change the rendering of auxiliary colours to only be used at high densities, but this looks like a lot of work which I don't have time for. even at low densities) which results in very visible dot patterns in lighter blue and to some extent red areas.Ĭombining this with the uneven rendering of the colour transitions when using the auxiliary colours, I have decided to disable the auxiliary colours and use the printer in plan old CMYK mode. Gutenprint seems to have chosen to use them as primary colours (ie. I suspect that Epson intended this printer to operate in CMYK mode in the more neutral area, and only use auxiliary colours at higher densities to extend the gamut. The auxiliary colours are much darker and have far more visible dot patterns: This is likely what is causing the artefacts seen above. On a colour test strip we see uneven colours:Īs can be clearly seen on this test strip, the blue area is uneven and the density dips briefly as we move towards magenta. This manifests itself as colour artefacts - in this example, blue and red lights on skin:
After much experimenting and examining the prints under loupes and microscopes, I came to the conclusion that Gutenprint is probably using the auxiliary colour inks (Red, Blue) differently to how Epson intended and this is the cause of the problems. One thing that I have encountered with this printer with Gutenprint was strange effects with colour in blue regions. My eventual choice of photo paper is very reasonably priced and available in both plain Glossy and Pearl (rather like what others call Lustre): Ilford Galarie Smooth.īoth the Glossy and Pearl give very similar colour rendering, so one profile is likely to be ok for both unless you are fussy about perfect colour. Could this be the same trick?Įpson photo papers are very expensive, especially for the highest weights, and while the print quality is excellent, I think they have competition for these types of paper.
This makes me think of tricks used by some TV manufacturers where they found that by boosting the blue slightly in their sets, they stood out in the showrooms and sold more.
Many of the highly reviewed third party papers turned out to be less neutral and had a blue-white (often perceived as a whiter-than-white) colour. The glossy / pearl (plasticy coatings) papers all handled the ink density well, but there was a distinct difference in colour.
The only matte paper that I was satisfied with without using high resolutions for dense prints was Epson's own. Printing at the highest resolutions (more passes for the same amount of ink) was often needed to stop ink bleeding on the paper. This was particularly the case with the matte type papers (chalky rather than plasticy coatings) where they simply did not manage to hold the same ink density if it was put down to fast. My findings where that many third party papers (even the major brands) simply where not up to the job. I conducted trials of loads of different types of papers and had profiles made for many of them. The R1800 solved this, and with Gutenprint support was a winner for me. The main reason for me buying it (I had a 1290 at the time) was the print life and the better colour neutral B&W prints by not having the light Cyan and Magenta which then needed to be matched with the corresponding dark Cyan and Magenta (even using ICC profiles this was often a struggle). Epson introduced the R1800 (A3 version of the R800) around 3 years ago.