Accuracy by using OEM paper, ink and profiles?

[mikling]

Here's something for all printer people to think about.

Here we have two top end printers. The R3000 and R2880. Both are superb printers for portraits. Top end paper and as well OEM inks for the printer are used and look at the difference in flesh tones. Is it any wonder there is never any consensus on what is "correct".

http://www.photoradar.com/reviews/p...pson-stylus-photo-r3000?page=0,3&t=1294932675

Now I can assure you that either printer can be made to print near identically to the other one.

Obviously the profile chosen by Epson is different for each model. The question is why?

Is neither accurate? Do manufacturers ship out profiles they think will look better rather than for accuracy? Is accuracy the objective at all? So for those using OEM ink and papers thinking they are achieving the best accuracy, perhaps they are being misled?

Is this a result of a different committee choosing the profiles to be shipped, weighted by personal preference?

Is the mfr. creating an endless loop of changes so that newer machines always look different from the previous one, so that an "upgrade" is the result?

 

[Grandad35]

1. I would maintain that most people (myself included) process our images to increase the "punch" by artificially boosting the contrast and saturation to produce images that are pleasing to the eye. Images that are truly "accurate" often appear ot be "washed out" and not all that pleasing.

2. When we view a scene in real life, our brain does an amazing job of compensating for changes in the lighting so that we always perceive the colors as being "natural". With a printed image, the lighting under which we view an image has a large impact on how we perceive the printed colors, as our brain doesn't seem to apply the same automatic corrections to a printed image as it does in real life.

3. How can we expect to get true "color accuracy" even under the best of circumstances, given that the color gamut of a good camera is larger than either our monitors or our printers? Add to this that the gamuts of our monitors and printers don't overlap all that well. I guess that we could use the "absolute colorimetric" rendering intent, but that doesn't give pleasing images at the edges of the color gamut. The same image printed with the "perceptual" rendering intent will not be as "accurate", but it will look better.

All of this just points up why color management is so important (and difficult to learn).

 

[mikling]

Grandad,

your points are valid but it skirts the issue and does not really give more insight into why OEM profiles are nowhere close to one another as they could be.

You can artificially increase the punch as much as you want with a proper profile so that you know how much punch you are dialing in but with an OEM profile, how much you get is an unknown it appears.

The key question is why are there so large differences ? and they obviously are intentional it appears.