Setting Up Epson 1400 w/ Photoshop - I'm missing something fundamental here

InkjetMall Customer Support ConeColor Inks & Printing
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My current system is Epson 1400/Windows 7/Photoshop CS6

The 1400 I plan to eventually make b&w only but was initially have been using QTRip 2.7.0.0 with standard Claria inks. I’ve wanted to try the Conecolor Pro inks so installed (all positions), my first set.

My first pass settings were:
Printer: Quad1400
Curve setup:
Claria-2880-EPGPP
Claria-2880-HFB-BO
Paper: Epson Ultra Premium Photo Paper Luster

Results: About equal with both normal and BO settings, very little if any color cast, all very nice prints, comparable to ones I had printed at a Maine Workshop printing seminar recently with their setups. Same results with Epson Ultra Premium Presentation Matte.

However, since you have the ICC profiles set up for the 1400 and Photoshop, I wanted to be able to work thru PS CS6.

First problem, your webpage for ICC profiles (http://shop.inkjetmall.com/About/Profile-Libraries/) lists the 1400 but when I clicked the link, it gives “No Search Results”. Searching the forums, I found a link (http://conecolor.com/icc/Epson1400.html) that does have some, so installed them.

Settings:
Driver ICM (Basic)
Input Profile: CCK3-1400-EPpremPtoPaperLuster.icm
Perceptual
Printer Profile: CCK3-1400-EPpremPtoPaperLuster.icm

Results:
Very heavy magenta color cast. I also tried printing with “greyscale” on, very heavy cyan cast. Actually, I tried this with the 1430 ICC profiles on the current page with essentially the same results…well different color casts but way off.

Obviously, I’m missing something fundamental here and while I did search the forums…but haven’t found a solution.

Thanks for some direction.

Dan

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QTR is mostly used to print B&W in K3 printers with OEM inks, which have black, light black and light light black, or any Epson printer with monochrome inksets, which typically have six or seven shades. QTR manages the way that the various shades are combined. For OEM inks or third party colour inksets, small amounts of the colours are used to neutralise the blacks, as they’re not neutral on their own.

However the 1400 only has one black. So when you print with QTR you’re printing mostly with that one black, with small amounts of Y, M &C added in to neutralise the black. You can see this if you right-click on the name of the curve under curve setup in QTRGui and choose view curve graph.

When you’re printing using a colour ICC, then it’s a whole different ball game. The printer is trying to achieve neutrality using combinations of all the colours plus black. This is mighty hard to achieve. QTR was written 13+ years ago in part because it was nearly impossible to get neutral prints this way on the Epson 2100/2200. The later K3 printers seem to do a much better job of printing B&W via a colour ICC, although using QTR or (dare I say this) ABW mode would be better, as they use less colour inks.

The 1400 only has one black, and what I think you’re finding is that only one black isn’t sufficient to print this way. If you wanted to use this workflow, you’d need a K3 printer. Stick with QTR.

Being able to print direct from PS to QTR would be handy, but the only way to do that is on a version of Mac OS X earlier than 10.6.8 and with a version of PS earlier than (I think) CS5.

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Brian_S - Thanks. I used the K3 ink printers in the workshop I attended and was aware that they used various amounts of color to produce b&w. As does QTR. I was presuming that that if there were ICC profiles for the ConeColor inks for the 1400 (& there are), I would simply use those profiles and could print monotone files. Or at least do that with what they call “Grayscale”. Obviously not…plus I don’t think a K3 printer is in my future…for now. In any case, since QTR is still around and there’s a fair amount of info available on it. it will be my near term way forward. Thank you for your fast and thoughtful comments.

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The issue is: how much colour ink is used? QTR uses only very small amounts, which can be seen from QTR curve view. The K3 printers come with an Advanced Black and White option, and I gather that ABW is Epson’s version of QTR, in that only small amounts of colour are used. It’s my understanding that printing using a colour profile will use more, which can lead to problems in achieving neutrality, and metamerism.

That said, the K3 printers do a reasonable job of printing this way, and my suspicion is that the Epson driver is programmed to print neutral or near-neutral tones using something approximating ABW. The K1 printers (1400/1410/1430’1800/1900/2000) and K2 printers (2100/2200) don’t have this mode, and my partly educated guess is that without that mode and with so few black inks, they use more colour in the mix and hence the problems you encountered.