August 30, 2004
Fighting my printer over colors
More than a year ago I bought a Epson 2100 photo printer. Recently I bought a Sharp LL-T2020B 10-bit gamma corrected monitor. I'm using Photoshop 7. I've had pretty good success printing out my photos, what I saw on the screen was basically what I got on my printer. I started to push things tonight when I tried to print out the very dark, shadowy KAP photo of my house. The printed pictures were just coming out dead, just not the same shadow detail as the monitor, plus it was overall dimmer than the monitor.
I looked around for help. First I found this good Epson 2100 User Report. It recommended getting all my color calibrations in order. I had half-assed tried to do this before, but I wasn't convinced I was doing it properly. Secondly, he mentions that it is quite easy for the setting to accidentally apply the color corrections twice. When I checked, yes, in fact I was making this same mistake.
So after I went through the User Report's recommendations, as well as following all Epson's instructions on using an ICC profile for an Epson Printer (except I didn't run the Adobe Gamma utility) I'm getting terrible, dark prints. It's not so much that the colors are wrong, it's just that everything is so damn dark.
I'm really quite disgustipated with the whole thing. I think I have things set up properly, but maybe I don't. Here are all (?) the screen captures from the relevant configuration pages. See anything I'm screwing up, overlooking?
Photoshop Print With Preview
This capture should indicate that that I am using the Adobe RGB color space (which should be ok) and that I am using the printer profile I downloaded from one of the sundry Epson support sites sprinkled around the world. Perhaps this generic profile is shit? After all, it makes no distinction about what sort of paper I am using. (In this case matte -- the type I like the most, and also the general consensus is that the 2100 works much better with matte than gloss-based papers). The EPSON ICC document recommended using "Perceptual" intent mode.
Epson Stylus Photo Properties -- Main
This capture should show that I have all the automatic color improvements turned off, that I'm using a custom setting, and that I am using archival matte paper.
Epson Stylus Photo Properties -- the 'mds icc'
This again shows that all the color enhancements and things are turned off. All that should be going on inside the printer profile I specified earlier.
Photo Shop Color Settings
Here I've set the color settings exactly as Epson recommended.
So as far as I can tell, I've set up everything in Photoshop as it should be. Then I started wondering, "maybe it's my monitor that isn't configured properly." Now I didn't follow the step in the Epson ICC guide that calls for running the Adobe Gamma program. My monitor comes with its own profile. I am assuming that's much more accurate than any on-screen gamma guesstimator.
Here are the screens that show how I've set up my monitor.
Here is where it knows that I am using the Sharp LL-T2020-B monitor.
And here is where I tell it to use the ICC profile for the monitor
Now there is one strange remark in the readme file of the Sharp ICC disk... After explaining how to install the profile, it says:
When using the ICC profile, please set the "COLOR MODE" to "STD" and
set the "WHITE BALANCE" to "STD", and set the "GAMMA", "HUE" and
"SATURATION" to "0", and also set the "HUE" and "SATURATION" of each
color in sub-menu of "6 COLORS" to "0".
The thing is, I have no idea where I would have the opportunity to follow these instructions. Nowhere in photoshop or the control panel have I seen these controls.
So... it doesn't work... What should I try to do?
Find better profile for my archive matte paper on an Epson 2100
This site says some things that contradict the other User Report site.
He says:
- The single ICC profile supplied with the PC driver will normally have a name such as Epson Stylus Photo 1270, when viewed in the Photoshop Print dialog. However, the name/label of these profiles in Windows Explorer is less obvious, e.g. Ee089_1 or similar. These profiles simply define the optimum colour space for the Epson printer and are associated with the Color Settings, PhotoEnhance and ICM modes. When the driver is set for any of the 3 operating modes mentioned above it needs no additional media profiles, they are built-in.
One VERY important point to be noted is that these colour space profiles are NOT compatible with No Color Adjustment mode. If you choose this mode and try using these colour space profiles the resulting prints will in all likelihood be terrible.
So it sounds like it is a mistake to tell it to turn off the enhancement mode. When you do, then it doesn't know which paper profile to use! If I have one of these modes turned on, then the generic-sounding profile mode, "Stylus Photo 2100/2200," will automatically select the correct paper mode... So I probably do have the correct profile turned on...
hmmmm
Looking more closely, I realize that in the custom setting mode, I should be choosing 'ICM mode', not 'No Color Adjustment'. I explained above why the 'No Color Adjustment' is wrong, but why choose 'ICM mode' instead of PhotoEnhance4, Color Controls, or sRGB? Because ICM is exactly what I wanted to begin with: "Select ICM when printing scanned photographs or computer graphics. This setting uses the Windows color matching method to automatically match the colors in your printout with the colors displayed on your screen."
As I typed that paragraph, I was printing out a sample using ICM. Yes, in fact, that is exactly what I needed to do and I got an incredibly accurate print compared to what my monitor showed. Eureka...
I could rewrite this article and get to the point quicker, but I think the ramble was worthwhile. Other people with problems might pop in and out of the debugging tree at different points.
Other resources
Another update... I just looked at the original print of the UAV, the one I thought was too dark and had no detail. Well, I guess sitting here in my study +85F for a couple hours dried things up nicely because now it has all the detail and subtlety it was missing originally! Right now I am printing out another copy with the correct ICM configuration and it seems to be coming off the printer immediately correct. Wonder how it's going to dry?
UPDATE April 10th 2005... I hadn't printed anything in a couple weeks (at least). So yesterday I did and kept seeing really strange effects where things in general looked ok, but there would be certain parts of the picture where the color was just *wrong*. I looked closer in one photo and noticed it was clearly occuring in the shadow portions of my face. Ok, what does that mean?
I double-checked all the settings on my color profiles, etc and they were in order.
Then I noticed that the light cyan and yellow inks, although not empty, were very low. As a gamble, I replaced those two cartridges. That fixed everything.
Some combination of low ink levels and perhaps lack of use was making at least one of those colors not spray properly and make the correct colors.
August 29, 2004
UAV over Murrysville
I've been digging through old sets of film, looking for stuff to print. I stumbled across a dark roll of Kite Aerial Photography I took ages ago. I think these were taken around Thanksgiving of 2000. Lighting conditions (obviously) were falling and appallling. I didn't even bother trying to screw with it in photoshop -- it's its own aesthetic.
I do recall that shortly after these photos were taken, the KAP Rig took one of its many death falls. I don't remember exactly what the failure mode was, but i think it had something to do with an expoxied connection snapping. This version was constructed of brittle plexiglass. I think it may have been permanently retired after the fall.
I once heard of a bust of a human where everything is scultped to the scale of how your own body perceives its relative size, not the actual size. Consequently the head and torso have grotesque proportions -- huge mouth and teeth, undersized chest, etc. etc.
Seeing this photo of my home from a hawk's perspective illustrates to me the warped sense of scale and relation I had while living there. Now, objectively, things seem much closer together, vast pastures are tiny, and the radio mast impressively high.
The full 23MB scan of this picture is pretty impressive -- a lot of fine detail was captured under adverse conditions.
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UPDATE August 30th, 2004
Dad said he only recognized two of the four cars.
My guess is (from top): Dave H's car, Shannon's purple car, the copper Buick Century, and Nanny or Pa's old white Celebrity or Century.
August 14, 2004
Tristan da Cunha: the remotest inhabited island in the world
I always fancied that living on a station in the Outback or northern Canada would be a marvelously isolated experience. But this afternoon Boing-Boing was talking about a strange island called Tristan da Cunha, the remotest inhabited island in the world.
How remote could that be? Imagine you lived on a 38 square mile volcanic island 2334km south of St Helena (the tiny island where Napoleon was exiled) and 2778km west of Cape Town. Most of the land is fractured and divided by the volcano, so many spots are accessible only by the sea. This also precludes any airstrips on the island. Consequently the three hundred citizens must wait for one of five ships that make an annual call. That's how remote you could be.
It would be interesting to read about the people who live there. Not very likely, though, as they only allow one film crew per year to visit and it sounded like tourists were sharply controlled in where they could go and what they could do.