QTR profile for Epson 2200 and pure Pd

[sanking]

I am posting a jpeg of an image I made today using Clay's profile. This is not an easy image to print because the range of tones is very great, from the black trunk of the beech trees in shadows, to the very light green color of the new leaves. This is a platinum toned vandyke print.

Made this first as a 5X7, then repeated to a 12X17. Ultrafine was used with the Epson 2200 for both negatives. Negative was made in the high Pyrenees of Aragon in early May of this year.

Sandy

 

[Bruce]

Photowarehouse Ultrafine OHP

Bruce,

I have never had a problem with the Photowarehouse Ultrafine OHP feeding into the 2200. Just make sure to feed it into the printer with the tape facing down. The printer needs to feel the edge of the film and the tape helps a lot.

Course, if your material has taken on a lot of curl I could see that there could be a problem. In that even, I would advise taping it to a thin piece of mylar. Just use a very thin tape (red lithorgrahers tape works fine) and attach tape on the bottom on the two bottom sides. I have done this a couple of times with very large sheets of Ultrafine and it worked fine.

Sandy King

Sandy

Thanks for the taping tip regarding the Photowarehouse Ultrafine OHP material.

Bruce

 

[Clint Brewer]

If you guys could lend your advice to me that would be much appreciated. I am a student at Colorado State University and there just aren't any Pt/Pd printers around (unless anyone knows of one or is one) here that i have been able to look to for advice. And i would like to learn as much as i could in the coming weeks.

My prints thus far have been working well, but i know that i am still having some difficulties with too much contrast in some and just not enough density. Thanks alot for all of your help. i have a few questions for all of you guys who seem to have much more experience (than my 2 months) in this process.


I have looked into the ChartThrob and i am running those tests now for a very accurate correction curve and i Totally understand that.


The post where Clay talks about the 2200 Profile that if is set up, you really do not need a correction curve confuses me a bit for these reasons.

1) I have QuadTone Rip set up on my Macbook Pro (OSX) but i can not figure out how to load that profile in so that it shows up when i want to print from Photoshop (CS4). I am new to the QTR stuff and have only used it a few times when it was already all set up for me. Can you (Clay) give more detailed instructions on how to set that up?
2)Once I set that profile up for my Epson 2200, is it a good idea to still use the ChartThrob and come up with yet another correction curve for fine tuning?? (I would obviously do this later after i played with printing straight out of the printer profile that is provided).



~Clint

 

[Clint Brewer]

I have been using the 7800 for all of my own work for the last few months, but I am preparing to teach a workshop in August where we will be using Epson 2200 printers. I spent the day creating the same type of profile I have been using successfully on the 7800. It uses mostly black and light black, but adds a little color at the highlight end with the yellow ink to boost the UV density slightly, and a little cyan and little magenta to enhance smoothness.

This profile is a good illustration of a point we were discussing last week about the maximum density needed to print pure Pd with no restrainer. You will see that the 100% negative value (0% white on the print) checks in at UV logD of 2.97! And I have also added some visible and measurable density as low as 2% negative value (98% on the print). I used the same target print densities that I linearized in the 7800 profile, and then eyeballed in some tweaks. This profile, for me, in my conditions, prints a 50 step tablet that mimics the look I have on my calibrated monitors. I hope it does for you.

To use this profile , follow all of instructions that Ron Reeder has so generously loaded onto his website for using QTR. Put this profile in the 2200-Create-profile folder, and run the script to add it to the 2200 profiles. Edit your file in Photoshop, invert to a negative (command-i on the mac) and then flip the image horizontally. Pick the QTR2200 printer in your print dialog, , choose this profile as your #1 ink profile, then choose 2800 dpi and uni-directional, and if you feel like it, you can click the advanced mode and choose adaptive-hybrid dither. Note that you do not have to add a curve to your file. It is built into the driver, in 16bit mode, no less.

Print it on Pictorico and then print the negative with no restrainer. You may find that you need some extra print time with this profile, because I have intentionally added some negative density in the shadows that is not present when using some other methods. IOW, your minimum time for maximum black may not quite be enough. A test strip may save you some time here.

Good luck. I hope this is useful.


P.S. The attachment manager here will not let me upload a file with the extension .qidf on it. This is a .qidf file that has had the extension manually changed to .txt. After you download it, you will need to change it back to UC2200Pd.qidf!

Ok So i have everything set up and it is just NOT Printing! It will send it to the Print Queue for the Quad2200 Printer i have set up, but then i just sends my media right on through the printer and reports the job as finished printing. Any Ideas??

 

[sanking]

Did you close down and re-start PhotoShop after installing the profile?

Sandy King

Ok So i have everything set up and it is just NOT Printing! It will send it to the Print Queue for the Quad2200 Printer i have set up, but then i just sends my media right on through the printer and reports the job as finished printing. Any Ideas??

 

[Clint Brewer]

Yes i did. I have actually tried completely re-installing it too. Everything shows up like it seems that it should. But when it prints, it just sends the media straight through the printer and logs it as a completed print.

 

[sanking]

I have experienced that several times myself. The culprit is usually some illegal line in the file. You downloaded Clay's 2200 profile for palladium, right? Did you change anything in it? Just in case you may have made an error, I would suggest the following. Since you are on a MAC also I think this will be correct procedure for you.

1. First, trash the profile. To do that you need to go to Applications > QTR and find the Epson 2200-UC folder where you placed it for installation. Then, go to Library>Printer>QTR>Quadtone>Epson 2200-UC and trash the quad file that you previously installed.

2. Quit Photoshop.

3. Download the 2200 palladium profile again to make sure it has not been corrupted. Not sure what the ending will be when you get it, but if it is not .txt change it to that. Don't change anything else at this time.

4. Place the profile in the Epson 2200-UC sub folder, and run the Install 2200 command in the folder. If the folder installs correctly you should see a graph that shows ink descriptors. You will only see the graph the first time so if it is there you might want to do a grab command to keep it for future reference. If you don't see a graph, chances are great that something else is wrong. I don't know what because the profile worked perfectly for me on my Epson 2200 when I installed it.

5. Now go to Library>Printer>Quadtone>QTR>Epson 2200-UV and verify that that a .quad file is actually there.

6. Start up Photoshop again and see what happens.

If this still does not work email me a copy of the profile and I will look at it so see if there is anything internally wrong. Send to sanking at clemson dot edu.

Sandy

Yes i did. I have actually tried completely re-installing it too. Everything shows up like it seems that it should. But when it prints, it just sends the media straight through the printer and logs it as a completed print.

 

[Clint Brewer]

I think i got it working today. Printing right now actually. Is the general recomendation to print with no restrainer for these? I tried a #2 solution first (a=10, b=2, c=12) but i was just wondering since everyone seems to talk about printing w/ no restrainer. Does this fogg at all?

 

[sanking]

Many people like the warm color, long toe, and shoulder of pure palladium and like to print with no restrainer. If you get enough blocking density in your negative you should not need a restrainer. But this requires a negative of very high DR.

If you like a more neutral tone you could use a color with less blocking and add a bit of Na2.


Sandy King

I think i got it working today. Printing right now actually. Is the general recomendation to print with no restrainer for these? I tried a #2 solution first (a=10, b=2, c=12) but i was just wondering since everyone seems to talk about printing w/ no restrainer. Does this fogg at all?