They arrived an hour ago!!! and we are printing and will scan and post the results on matte and baryta GO printed for you today! The images look great and the results you got are not from the files. That is for sure.
Any baryta or gloss needs GO to complete. The PK is equalized to the others when over printed. Each of the shades are actually glossed to some different degree so that they are equalized when over-printed. The final result is very important to me and we spend a lot of time with this during ink formulation. Our ConeColor PRO PK is much glossier than Piezo PK because of GO.
We will FedEX you back the finished results using an Epson 3800 printer and Selenium inks - so we are both on the same page. Our system is bone stock and should print exactly like yours. If you still can not produce what we do - then there is some workflow, mechanical, or other issue preventing you. If and when we find that out, we are willing to go through your workflow step-by-step to look for something unnoticed. We can not do the QTR software troubleshooting or the printer troubleshooting. However, you indicate that things are now changing for you since you first contacted us. Hopefully that trend continues and you will be printing as we can shortly!
We are not going to bother to post scans of the results. We blew away the lab prints with our sharpness. I will FedEx to you for your own eyes. You really owe it to yourself and your work to get your printing issues discovered and remedied. You are going to be one happy photographer if you’ve been relying on a lab.
Well, that is odd your print beats the lab’s on sharpness. I thought their’s was pretty darn good compared to what I’m getting. Puzzling for sure. Lab said the images were fine too even though they did them in Dot Gain 20% or whatever they saved them too from their Photoshop run using ABW in their 9900.
Jon, can you send me the name of the same exact quad file and name of the paper you used too? With those two in hand, it should narrow down where the problem lies. I’ll go find some of the same paper - I hope! Maybe Samy’s in LA has it and I can get next day from them, or drive there (Just to get away from this mess too!).
Still wondering why the stuff is looking a little better today after a refill with the second batch of ink. I don’t get it. Printer maybe faulty? Junk in lines or head?
Also, did you use the Apple or Windows version of QTR? I wonder about the Windows one at times since it seems like Roy’s red-headed foster child to the Apple supported one.
I’m almost afraid to look at what you got… I got piles of “Something’s gone askew images.”
I think theirs falls apart on detail like in the jewelry for example. We present much more detail along with the sharpness. Sometimes things appear sharp (like in the lab print), but they are over sharpened to the point of losing detail or blowing it out by adding contrast lines to the contours of the objects themselves. We just printed your file on the HPR sheet you sent using the standard K7 curve for HPR for the 3800 called K7-2880-HahnPhotoRag.quad. We only support printing at 2880. We used uni-directional. We did not have the HPR Baryta so we printed on Type 5 for the glossy. We used QTR Print Tool on Mac to print to QuadTone RIP which is the correct Mac workflow. Your file came in as dot gain 20% and we only support Gamma 2.20 so we converted it upon opening.
So something is def askew on your system. Possibly the software is corrupted but you can download and reinstall. Use your uninstall for Windows first - then install fresh. As you mention you think it is beginning to clear up with use - so maybe it was mechanical in the ink delivery system or pressurization or gremlins…
FedEX will pick up tomorrow and you should get on Monday.
Thanks for your patience in this process. I hope that the reinstall or just printing through the issue will resolve everything.
no not really. i print bi-directional all the time with my own work if the printer is well aligned for bi-directional printing. if it is not well aligned there is a tiny minute micro-banding that will be visible and uni is the better choice. if the printer is well aligned it is nearly impossible to see the differences between bi and uni. you would have to take out loops and make a visual study to look for the differences. dana printed these and uses uni knowing always that it is the absolute best possible and chooses that as her practice.
I’ll try uni-directonal next time and see if it helps.
I was reading and one guy says uni-directional flips the CMYK in one direction of travel, the return travel becomes KYMC. Thinks that may be a result of any sharpness issues and maybe different nozzles and registration alignment, but I don’t know as never explored it. I’ve always used bi-directional for speed.
I did see my alignment of the 10 lines showed #7 better than the factory default of #5 so I set that in now too.
you should be able to get the same exact results we are.
if you are not able to - then we can continue to trouble shoot you.
there is no mystical set of variables you need to discover other than using our prescribed workflow - so you do not have to continue experimenting.
if the system is not stabilized by the time you see our results on Monday and you can not duplicate them - we will help you go though it step by step to make sure your printer is up to the task and the system is installed and being used as expected. it is not fair with all your efforts that you can not do what others are doing out of the box. it may just be your printer has given up the ghost or is it that process - or some simple oversight in workflow or some really bizarre issue that can be remedied by a reinstall of either the epson drivers or the qtr drivers. so don’t go searching for solutions other than what we prescribe. that effort ultimately will not be rewarded if your system is brought to standards. it is better to pursue what it is that you may be doing differently than our manual or how your OS or printer is behaving that is sub-standard. take note of things that are not quite as we instruct - as they may well likely be factors. take note of how your printer is behaving that is unexpected. for alignments i select whatever number is best. then i hit alignment again. i will fine tune it often as much as three times and ONLY on the expensive paper i am printing with. there is NOTHING gained by aligning on thin copy paper and them imaging the print onto a thicker substrate that is closer to the head.
I’m also curious what happened after we sent the test prints we made of Mack’s images to him, and would like to know if he was able to resolve his printing issues or not… There were a lot of unusual factors in this situation.
I would like to try Canson Rag Photographique with Carbon K7 ink…how do I download/install the file in my QTR gui list of papers…haven’t done this before (Windows 7, Epson 3880).
To install a new curve to use with QTR, you will need to drag and drop the curves (NOT the FOLDER containing the curves, but the individual curves themselves) into the following folder location: I[/I] C:\ProgramFiles\QuadToneRIP\QuadTone(Your Printer Model)-K7
I[/I] /Applications/QuadToneRIP/Profiles/(Your Printer Model)-K7 NOTE: With Mac users, you must uninstall your Quad printer model then reinstall it using the install.command located in the same folder you placed the new curve in. You will also need to restart your printing application if it was open when installing new profiles. This will show the new curve in QuadTone RIP. You will not lose any of your previous curves when you uninstall the printer.