Ip4300 colour query

[Tiggzz]

Hi everyone, after days of reading I have finally come to make a post.

The amount of info I have had from this site has been great, and has made me want more out of my printer!!!

I originally started looking around the site for info on CIS, but I'm still undecided about that, I'll wait to the 2 who have bought the new system off ebay test them. (websnail and nifty, i think) But on the other hand, I have ordered my hobbicolors ink, and I'm going to try to stay away from other 3rd party inks for my new baby.

My other baby is a ip3000, which I feel has done me proud, but finally has sort of given up the ghost. I have ended up with 2 blocked heads, and was desperate to print so just bought the 4300. PCworld have them on offer at the moment for 58. A set of canon carts is 54!!!! Hmm, not much of choice there. I'm just about out of my 1st set, and the hobbicolorsa may be a few days away, I can't not print, so a set or carts, or a spare printer and spare head for freee with a big box and carts!!! I suppose it would be nice to have a second set of canons to refill

Using a shed load of info from this site my 3000 is back to making some sort of marks on the page, I'm still not giving up on it!!!! I've had it to bits and back, cleaned the waste hoses etc, and currently soaking the head in window cleaner!!! I was going to use cheap Polish vodka, but spotted a window cleaner!!

Back to my reason for posting.

It has been a long time since I used genuine carts, so I thought I would give myself a datum test page, to compare the new inks I'll get. So with a bit of influence from a test print on here, and a test on neil slades site, I made a nice test page in Corel, and set the colours to the correct cymk values, and away I went.

The print out looks fantastic, I've outputted it to 120gsm matte photo paper, and I'm well impressed. Almost.

The cyan is just wrong. It's come out a sort of turquoise colour, and the magenta is too pink. The rest looks great. and the actually sharpness etc on the paper is brilliant.

I've scanned the image back in, using my 2 scanners, 1 from a HP all in one unit, which has standalone fax, so it's the only reason it still is in service. and the other is a canon 1220U, one of the first Lide scanners they made, but the better one of the two. I have also outputted the corel file to a jpg for screen purposes.

I was shocked at the difference between scan colours. The HP is just way out. But thats another story I suppose.

The canon scan is very acurate indeed, on my screen it has the same color as the printout. with the pink magenta and the turquoise cyan.

I have just printed off the jpg of the corel file, and it looks correct, all but a bit blurry, but thats the jpg. Importantly the colour is correct. I printed the jpg from windows print wizard.

As far as I understand, if I have used a vector file, ie the corel one, and specified the actual color values, then shouldn't the printer print that colour, unlike a jpg were it decides it's self?

What is strange is that on the bottom of the test page there is a pic from neil slades site (thanks) were the ball next to his head is almost cyan, but this is part of an imbedded jpg in the corel file, and the cyan of that is correct, were the cyan of the cyan box is well out.

I'm real happy with the output of this printer with jpgs but I do want correct colours when using vectors also. DOes this mean that I need to be using a profile, when using corel, even with genuine inks?

Below are the images, corel file as a jpg, canon scan, and hp scan - I've down sized them a bit to fit better

Any thoughts, ideas, or suggestions would be welcome.

Many regards and TIA

Tiggzz

 

[mikling]

Manufacturers design printers and choose their colors based on a target market and what they think the target market will want. This will eventually mean that they may exaggerate or intensify colors to make an impressive picture so that their sample pictures stand out. If you have taken film photographs you know that there exists a difference between Fuji and Kodak film and Kodak Gold 400 is primarily a film to enhance low end point and shoots. Color accuracy generally improves as you move towards the higher end or professional models.

Next, OEM inks are optimized for matching OEM media or papers. The same inks will output differently on varying media.

Finally, just as you are aware of having a printer profile ( ink AND paper specific) to correct or better manage the fidelity of colors for printing, there also exists scanner profiles to correct color produced by scanners. I am not mentioning the monitor because your comparison is with the same monitor but be aware as well that monitors need to be also profiled to produce accurate colors as well.

Finally, true final, when you get this far with your profile study, you'll discover something called color space and what can happen to your jpgs on your camera.

 

[Tiggzz]

The thing with all of this, I wouldn't have noticed this cyan thing ordinarily. I only made a test sheet using the pure colours to be able to havea compare when I try this new ink. I normally only print jpgs, and the jpgs are printing correctly. The cyan when I printed a jpg save of the corel file is what I was expecting.

I've scanned the jpg print, and was very suprised, that the print was so close to the corel file on screen, and also when I scanned it back in, and credit to the canon scanner, then cyan still looks the same(ish) but considering it's been compressed, printed, scanned, and compressed again, it's not doing too bad!!!

Would I be able to make an adjustment via profile etc, that would have an effect on the cyan in it's pure form, like with a vector, but not when it's printing a jpeg? ie, compare the ball next to neil's head, and the cyan box, they should be almost the same colour. Which you can see on the corel file, top one in top post, and in the scan of the print of the jpg above.

The other thing I have tested is the actual colour out of the carts. I have tapped each colour on paper to get some ink out. Compareing them against the correct colour of hte jpg print out and screen, shows me that it is the same. IE the output in the jpg form is the correct colour. Therefore the print in the vector form is not producing a cyan when it should be, becuase testing the ink itslef, has shown that 100% cyan is exactly what is shown on my monitor, and the jpg print out.

Why? How? and what next????

I know it doesn't really have much effect if I just print jpgs like I do, but now I know this is an irregularity, I want to iron it out.

TIA

Tiggzz

 

[Tiggzz]

Just a thought, if anyone wanted to print this out, maybe it's my file or the way I have created it?

Corel Draw 12 Print test file

Regards

Tiggzz

 

[hpnetserver]

Tiggzz, I think the problem has something to do with color management. The color data of your image will be converted by several layers of profiles before it is printed. When you use an image editing program such as photoshop or Coreldraw to print an image there is an input profile to convert color data of your image to a standard color space. Then there is an output profile (printer profile) to convert the color from the standard color space to the printer's color space. Most of us probably know that we can make our own custom profile for our specific printer, ink and paper. But this is only a custom output profile that we produce. The input profile has something to do with the color management scheme set up for the image editing program.

I am not an expert but I remember seeing some documents talking about these stuff on the internet. This is why I think your problem is a color management problem. I am sure we have many color management experts here who can help you.

 

[Tiggzz]

So is my printer driver getting confused with the pure cyan in the layer format? But handles what appears to be a pure cyan in a jpg format?



Tiggzz :/

 

[hpnetserver]

When the color data of your source image are converted by the two layers of profiles the data are changed. If they are not changed coreectly (corect color management scheme) the colors are changed. Cyan color should be 255, 0, 0 theorectically. But for a printer to print a correct cyan color it may need to be 239, 37, 25 for the printer to mix the CMY ink to produce the correct cyan color on the specific paper you use. If the color management is not properly set up the convertion may produce 210, 65, 13 for the printer to print, which may not be correct cyan color for the paper you print on.

 

[Tiggzz]

Ahhhh, the cyan on the source is 100,0,0,0 I have used the cmyk. I have just looked at the jpg of the corel file, and to my suprise, the colour cyan in the jpeg is 73,16,1,0.

I have also just realised that there is a cym and cymk, I have used cmyk on my colour boxes, would this have a difference over using cmy?

Well I'll be damned, I've just looked at the difference between c,m,y 255,0,0 and c,m,y,k 100,0,0,0. How come they are not both cyan? when I choose the colour by name from each of the models, rgb, cmy , cmyk. The cyan for rgb and cmy are the same (more importantly, the shade that was printed) and the cymk is matching what would come out of the cart.

ANother interesting bit is that the Pantone Process Cyan, is between both, and gives a CMYK and rgb value for the colour of 100,0,0,0 and 0,166,212.

What colour is cyan meant to be!!!! Surely it is meant to be the colour that is in the cart?

Plus regardless of what it is meant to be, it should be printing the colour that I have told it to which is the cmyk cyan, not the rgb or cmy cyan.

So is this due to the colour management that hpnetserver has mentioned?

btw this has all been on ICE Photo Matte 128gsm paper, with a setting of matte photo paper and standard print.

Thoughts

Tiggzz

 

[hpnetserver]

Actually there are RGB and CMYK mode when you look at a color image. In RGB mode a 100% luminance of Cyan is represented as 0, 255, 255 in 8 bit colors. But in CMYK mode the same Cyan is represented at %24, %79,0,0. There are also other color representation modes such as Lab Color, etc.

Just about all inkjet printers are set up to receive RGB mode color data only. If you print an image that contains CMYK color data they will be converted into RGB before getting printed. This is a universal practice. There is no particular reason for doing this by most printer companies.

I think you have not got a very important point about color management, which converts all color data received from an input device to a universal standard color space. Then the color data gets converted one more time, from the standard color space using the output device's profile, to another set of color data for the specific output device such as a printer. The reason for these conversions is so that the image captured by an input device will have a universal look (same colors) on output devices that are different (such as different photo paper).

These two layers of color data conversions will convert your say 255, 120, 40 color data into a,b,c in which a will not be 255, b will not be 120 and c will not be 40 any more. If you set up a color management that does wrong conversions your color data of 255,120,40 may result as r,s,t in which r will not be a, s will not be b and t will not be c. If the printer prints a,b,c and gives a correct color then printing r,s,t will give a wrong color.

This is why when the color management scheme is wrong you will not print correct colors. Any time you print an image these two color data conversions always take place. Even if you turn off color management it will use a defult pair of profiles still. So if you set up your own color management but it is wrong, or if you turn off color management all together but the default is wrong in both cases you will get funny colors.

I may have simplified the matter a bit. It may be more complex than that. But basically don't expect your source image with known calibrated color data in it to be printed with the color you expect to see unless you have the color management set up properly.

Messing up with color management may not yield a result you like. Sometimes it may be better off to leave it alone and use the default. But innovative colors may be achieved if you do experiment with different color management setup. You may like the result still. It may be called creativity.

 

[Tiggzz]

I think I'm in understanding with you about these conversions. The main point being, that a full cyan in the image is not the same as the full cyan on the printer. I guess thats what the management and the profiles do then.


As for the colour management I have not touched a thing, I have had the printer for 3 days, I was desperate to print, and my ip300 was as good as dead.

All I have done is make and print this test sheet. So that I had a proper comparison when I use the new hobbicolor ink that will be arriving shortly. This has now highlighted this discrepancy.

Would a reinstall of the printer software / driver have a result here? OR could it be Corel? Is is Illustrator that is the adobe equivilent?

I will instal the driver onto one of the other pc's tomorrow and see if that changes any thing.

Thanks

Tiggzz