Strange behaviour Qimage Ultimate

I downloaded Qimage Ultimate to test its new features and see if it is interested enough to update from my very old version (2008), but I was surprised I could not get it handle my home-brewed printer profiles well. Somehow the grey images tends to turn sepia withing the same file, while the other colours are visibly not affected by how the latest version of Qimage handles my printer profile.

I made a scan of my printed test image using my calibrated Epson WF-7840 scanner, so colours should be visibly accurate to give you an impression of the colours produced by the old version (upper image) and the latest version (lower image). I checked all settings (no double profiling).



I also tested the same image and using the same profile under Photoshop: the results are ok like the upper image, so the problem must be caused by how the last version(s) of Qimage handles printer profiles (maybe some strange setting hidden in the new interface causing this problem). I tried it on 2 computers sending to the same Epson SC-P800 printer using Ocbestjet K3 Art Pigment ink (from Aliexpress.com) and using the attached profile and in both computers it was the latest Qimage causing this problem: no neutral B&W reproduction but a sepia tone.

I'm using as well a pretty old Studio version and never really felt the need to update, I even have a newer ultimate version on the system which I don' t use. I don't really have an idea what is causing the color shift in your case -
could it be some setting with the rendering intent ? Or do you try to control the driver settings via Qimage ? Could it be some change how you select the color control mode in the driver ?

Ink stained Fingers said:

Or do you try to control the driver settings via Qimage ? Could it be some change how you select the color control mode in the driver ?

Click to expand...

Qimage will control your driver settings ,so it will disable Colormanagament in the driver when you choose a ICC-profile.How do you apply your custom ICC-profile?

I have found the cause of my problem: The profile I made was done with the print setting: Epson Premium Glossy, print quality: quality (setting 4: superfine 1440 dpi) and off course color management: off, but I discovered the latest Qimage enables extra settings like always set driver print quality to highest available.

This latest setting caused a magenta cast on the black and white pictures on prints, because it puts extra ink on the printed area. I unchecked all settings except the automatic color management setting and the prints made with the aforementioned settings were restored.....this also concludes that a printer driver is specially tailored for a specific print resolution: there is a difference between print quality: quality and maximum print quality.

To confirm this I printed the same image with the older version of Qimage, I had not problem with, but I changed to printing quality to maximum setting (setting 5: 2880x1440 dpi) and indeed: the same sepia tone appears on the black and white area's of the above test image. Somehow the setting "always set driver print quality to highest available" was enabled in the latest version, which caused my problem of a sepia tone to the black and white area of my prints without hardly affecting visually the colour sections of the image, when I compared the prints with the older version of Qimage that does screw my preset print quality from quality (4: superfine 1440 dpi) to highest quality (5: superphoto 2880 dpi).

I think this fact is also beneficial for those creating printer profiles: the paper type and quality setting must be specified to obtain the desired result. Using the same printer profile but increasing or decreasing print quality will cause colour shifts due to less or more ink put on the paper surface and you might not get the same printing result.

Yes sure the resolution changes output result, how else you get better print quality. But its very hard to explain this to a client, they want to pay as cheap as possible, so instead of buying two profiles in this case they buy the hi res one but soon it becomes clear printing time is too long, do they lower output resolution as result colors get color shifts etc.

Driver version is also important