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Blotchy matte black ink on enhanced matte paper

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Tom March

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Love my 2200! Last fall, I toured through NY shooting fall colors. I shot all the way up until dark and several of the best shots were at near total darkness over lakes with the bright glow of the setting sun going down beyond the hills. Trouble is, when I printed them out using Enhanced Matte paper, 50% of the extensive black foreground came out with large blotchy patches of black like it was sprayed with a flat black paint, although 50% printed OK. I tried switching to photo black and that seemed to do OK. Is that normal for large black areas or do I have a printer problem? I used a profile from Cathy. I never noticed a problem on other prints, however, none had large areas of black.

Another thing I have just experienced lately is that some shots of trees that look good on the screen print out with the fine detail of the leaves or needles blocked up both in soft proofing and printing on enhanced matte with the new Epson MK profile and in switching to Cathy's profile I get the same effect. I switched to PK ink and profile and it looks right without destroing the detail. Could this be part of the same problem? Could something have changed that would affect both of these things?

Hope someone can shed some light on this problem. I've spent enough on paper and ink trying to solve this on my own.

Thanks,

Tom
 
Ummm....have you tried another matte black cartridge? What happens if you don't use a profile at all - just use Color Controls at default settings in the Epson driver?

--
Tricia
 
Tricia said:
Ummm....have you tried another matte black cartridge? What happens
if you don't use a profile at all - just use Color Controls at
default settings in the Epson driver?

--
Tricia
Click to expand...
This blotcheyness started months ago. Very few pics have that much black in them I never had a problem working around it. It is only recently I started noticing the blocking up of detail on pics of trees. It isn't the ink since it shows up in soft proofing.

Tom
 
Tom March said:
Tricia said:
Ummm....have you tried another matte black cartridge? What happens
if you don't use a profile at all - just use Color Controls at
default settings in the Epson driver?

--
Tricia
Click to expand...
This blotcheyness started months ago. Very few pics have that much
black in them I never had a problem working around it. It is only
recently I started noticing the blocking up of detail on pics of
trees. It isn't the ink since it shows up in soft proofing.
Click to expand...
...and what happens if you don't use a profile - do the photos print correctly (even though not as well in other aspects as with a profile)? Also, what happens if you print from another color-managed program using the profiles?

--
Tricia
 
Tricia said:
...and what happens if you don't use a profile - do the photos
print correctly (even though not as well in other aspects as with a
profile)? Also, what happens if you print from another
color-managed program using the profiles?

--
Tricia
Click to expand...
They print great using the Epson PK profile and they look good and print well using prem glossy paper & profile. I've never tried it without any profile. I don't use any other program to print other than Photoshop CS.

Tom
 
Tom March said:
They print great using the Epson PK profile and they look good and
print well using prem glossy paper & profile. I've never tried it
without any profile. I don't use any other program to print other
than Photoshop CS.
Click to expand...
The only two things I can think of would be that the printer may not be seeing that you have the matte cartridge installed (sometimes mine is not immediately recognized and I have to click it in utilities and close everything, occasionally more than once) or that your profiles have somehow gotten corrupted. For the first, just be sure to check the utility window to be sure that the correct black is selected. For the second, you might try the profile here to see if it makes any difference:
http://www.klarisma.com/photo/default.htm

--
Tricia
 
Tricia said:
The only two things I can think of would be that the printer may
not be seeing that you have the matte cartridge installed
(sometimes mine is not immediately recognized and I have to click
it in utilities and close everything, occasionally more than once)
or that your profiles have somehow gotten corrupted. For the first,
just be sure to check the utility window to be sure that the
correct black is selected. For the second, you might try the
profile here to see if it makes any difference:
http://www.klarisma.com/photo/default.htm

--
Tricia
Click to expand...
It sees the cartridge installed. It shows properly. The blocked up detail in the photo shows up in the soft proof as well as printing. I'll check out the klarisma profile tonight and see what happens.

Tom
 
Tricia said:
For the second, you might try the
profile here to see if it makes any difference:
http://www.klarisma.com/photo/default.htm

--
Tricia
Click to expand...
Tricia,

I went to that site, downloaded the profile and tried it with soft proofing. It more or less looked the same. After much experimenting, I have come to the conclusion that certain images just won't work well with the matte black and just need to be printed with photo black on the enhanced matte paper.

Thanks for the help.

Tom
 
I'm not sure exactly what you are seeing, but I have seen something similar in dark areas when printing black and white on the 2200. What I discovered in my situation what that there was a splotchiness in the image in Photoshop in those areas, too. I never saw it on the screen until I noticed them on a print and went looking for it on the screen - by darkening my room and removing all ambient light so I could better see the monitor - and there it was, splotchiness in the original shot. Checked the RAW, and it is there, too. In my case, it seems to be a camera issue, but I solved it with a curves layer to move certain areas a bit darker.
Tom March said:
Tricia said:
For the second, you might try the
profile here to see if it makes any difference:
http://www.klarisma.com/photo/default.htm

--
Tricia
Click to expand...
Tricia,

I went to that site, downloaded the profile and tried it with soft
proofing. It more or less looked the same. After much
experimenting, I have come to the conclusion that certain images
just won't work well with the matte black and just need to be
printed with photo black on the enhanced matte paper.

Thanks for the help.

Tom
Click to expand...
 
I have a post in this forum with exactly the same problem. I called Epson and they had me try turning off 'High Speed' printing and change the paper thickness setting on the printer... neither did any good. Interestingly enough, I have been printing at 1440 dpi when I see the problem. I tried printing at 2880 and the problem is significantly better... BUT NOT GONE. I'm using the latest epson profiles. I was also wondering what temperature your room is at... mine tends to be a bit warm.. over 80 degrees. Woindering if this could be a contributing factor with the matte black ink. I CANNOT see any evidence of this botchiness on my screen. It is ONLY on the print. I have darkened the room, modified the contrast and/or brightness levels to try to see anything on screen... but to no avail. And that makes sense because when printing the same image using the PK cartridge, there is absolutely NO blotchiness, just a loss of richness in the blacks of course. I would be interested to know if your problem gets even marginally better at 2880 (assuming that you are using the 1440 setting).

Regards, Ron
coolsnapz said:
Tom March said:
Tricia said:
For the second, you might try the
profile here to see if it makes any difference:
http://www.klarisma.com/photo/default.htm

--
Tricia
Click to expand...
Tricia,

I went to that site, downloaded the profile and tried it with soft
proofing. It more or less looked the same. After much
experimenting, I have come to the conclusion that certain images
just won't work well with the matte black and just need to be
printed with photo black on the enhanced matte paper.

Thanks for the help.

Tom
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Ron Cenker said:
I have a post in this forum with exactly the same problem. I
called Epson and they had me try turning off 'High Speed' printing
and change the paper thickness setting on the printer... neither
did any good. Interestingly enough, I have been printing at 1440
dpi when I see the problem. I tried printing at 2880 and the
problem is significantly better... BUT NOT GONE. I'm using the
latest epson profiles. I was also wondering what temperature your
room is at... mine tends to be a bit warm.. over 80 degrees.
Woindering if this could be a contributing factor with the matte
black ink. I CANNOT see any evidence of this botchiness on my
screen. It is ONLY on the print. I have darkened the room,
modified the contrast and/or brightness levels to try to see
anything on screen... but to no avail. And that makes sense
because when printing the same image using the PK cartridge, there
is absolutely NO blotchiness, just a loss of richness in the blacks
of course. I would be interested to know if your problem gets even
marginally better at 2880 (assuming that you are using the 1440
setting).
Click to expand...
Ron,

This has been at 2880 where I always print. I had never noticed this before, but it seems to have shown up on the needles of a pine tree. I see it clearly on the soft proof and thought it may not show up in the print, but it did. The soft proof showed me very close to just what I would get. I also looked into using both perceptual and relative colorimetric. The rich green of the pine needles also turn lighter as well as blocking up and perceptual is much worse than relative colorimetric. I think this is called posterizing. It is not the ink or room temperature, since the soft proof showed it too, and the proof doesn't take room temp into consideration.

It happens with both the 1440 & 2880 MK profiles, and Cathy Stratton's 2880 profile. I have always seen very slight changes in proofing other images, but nothing that ever caused enough of a change to be a problem and all rendered very good prints that matched the screen within reason. (At least in the begining of learning to do this.)

I went back to many of my other images and while not as noticeble, it still slightly degrades the image. I found I get better results with the PK profiles both proofing and printing. While blacks aren't as rich, detail is much better. Of course, the more I do this, the more fussy I get. It was hard to discerne when I was fighting to get decent prints starting out and wasted a lot of paper. Since I only used enhanced matte for the first two 50 packs of paper, I never considered using PK and just got color management to produce acceptable prints with the MK. After having a sunset over a lake with the bottom 25% of the print in almost pure black, I found the matte ink had the heavy blotchyness, giving the apearance of flat black paint sitting on top of the print in blotches across the foreground. I switched to PK on the enhanced matte and got a better print. I just figured it was due to the large expanse of black. Now, since I started using soft proofing and with this photograph of a pine tree showing up strong blocking of colors and detail I started looking back at others with soft proofing. I found I get much better detail in all photographs using the PK. Now I'm not so sure I like the matte black at all. Not sure if I am just not doing something right or if this is just the way it works. Maybe it's the trade-off for getting richer blacks.

Tom
 
Tricia said:
Do you get any out-of-gamut warnings in soft proof?

--
Tricia
Click to expand...
No, I didn't, but I wasn't sure what I had set for gamut warnings. I went thrugh and set it and selected bright red for the warning color, then checked the image for warnings. It had none.

Tom
 
Tom,

I have repeated the printing of certain images and the patterns of blotches are identical. It's quite depressing because the MK ink clearly gives richer blacks. The sunset shot that you spoke of is a perfect example. I don't see any signs of this on the screen but, as I write this, I realize that I really haven't used the soft proofing tool to examine the print. I will do that later this evening. But my results when using the PK ink sound exactly like yours... i.e. NO blotchiness at all, just a lack of deep, rich blacks. I can't believe that no one else has seen this. The way everyone speaks of the 2200 and the quality of the matte prints, one would expect them to be near perfect. And, quite frankly, I have had clients look at some samples and immediately point out the defects... ugh!! Is it possible that we have a bad lot of MK ink... Mine was purchased from Altex a couple of weeks ago. I have one other cartridge that I will be trying in a couple of days. I really want to get to the bottom of this. Let's stay in touch.

Regards
Ron
Tom March said:
Ron Cenker said:
I have a post in this forum with exactly the same problem. I
called Epson and they had me try turning off 'High Speed' printing
and change the paper thickness setting on the printer... neither
did any good. Interestingly enough, I have been printing at 1440
dpi when I see the problem. I tried printing at 2880 and the
problem is significantly better... BUT NOT GONE. I'm using the
latest epson profiles. I was also wondering what temperature your
room is at... mine tends to be a bit warm.. over 80 degrees.
Woindering if this could be a contributing factor with the matte
black ink. I CANNOT see any evidence of this botchiness on my
screen. It is ONLY on the print. I have darkened the room,
modified the contrast and/or brightness levels to try to see
anything on screen... but to no avail. And that makes sense
because when printing the same image using the PK cartridge, there
is absolutely NO blotchiness, just a loss of richness in the blacks
of course. I would be interested to know if your problem gets even
marginally better at 2880 (assuming that you are using the 1440
setting).
Click to expand...
Ron,

This has been at 2880 where I always print. I had never noticed
this before, but it seems to have shown up on the needles of a pine
tree. I see it clearly on the soft proof and thought it may not
show up in the print, but it did. The soft proof showed me very
close to just what I would get. I also looked into using both
perceptual and relative colorimetric. The rich green of the pine
needles also turn lighter as well as blocking up and perceptual is
much worse than relative colorimetric. I think this is called
posterizing. It is not the ink or room temperature, since the soft
proof showed it too, and the proof doesn't take room temp into
consideration.

It happens with both the 1440 & 2880 MK profiles, and Cathy
Stratton's 2880 profile. I have always seen very slight changes in
proofing other images, but nothing that ever caused enough of a
change to be a problem and all rendered very good prints that
matched the screen within reason. (At least in the begining of
learning to do this.)

I went back to many of my other images and while not as noticeble,
it still slightly degrades the image. I found I get better results
with the PK profiles both proofing and printing. While blacks
aren't as rich, detail is much better. Of course, the more I do
this, the more fussy I get. It was hard to discerne when I was
fighting to get decent prints starting out and wasted a lot of
paper. Since I only used enhanced matte for the first two 50 packs
of paper, I never considered using PK and just got color management
to produce acceptable prints with the MK. After having a sunset
over a lake with the bottom 25% of the print in almost pure black,
I found the matte ink had the heavy blotchyness, giving the
apearance of flat black paint sitting on top of the print in
blotches across the foreground. I switched to PK on the enhanced
matte and got a better print. I just figured it was due to the
large expanse of black. Now, since I started using soft proofing
and with this photograph of a pine tree showing up strong blocking
of colors and detail I started looking back at others with soft
proofing. I found I get much better detail in all photographs
using the PK. Now I'm not so sure I like the matte black at all.
Not sure if I am just not doing something right or if this is just
the way it works. Maybe it's the trade-off for getting richer
blacks.

Tom
Click to expand...
 
Tom,

I decided to try the old profiles that came with the 2200. This would be the SP2200 Enhanced Matte - MK. Unless I'm crazy (and my eyes are starting to cross by now), I'm fairly sure that the blotchiness is almost, if not completely, gone. I went back to the profile that I was using in the first place... the SP2200 Enhanced Matte 2880MK, and the problem re-appeared. I need to do more testing on a variety of images but I thought you might want to try it since you made the initial observation that the profiles you were using seemed to be the culprit.

Regads
Ron
Ron Cenker said:
I have repeated the printing of certain images and the patterns of
blotches are identical. It's quite depressing because the MK ink
clearly gives richer blacks. The sunset shot that you spoke of is
a perfect example. I don't see any signs of this on the screen
but, as I write this, I realize that I really haven't used the soft
proofing tool to examine the print. I will do that later this
evening. But my results when using the PK ink sound exactly like
yours... i.e. NO blotchiness at all, just a lack of deep, rich
blacks. I can't believe that no one else has seen this. The way
everyone speaks of the 2200 and the quality of the matte prints,
one would expect them to be near perfect. And, quite frankly, I
have had clients look at some samples and immediately point out the
defects... ugh!! Is it possible that we have a bad lot of MK
ink... Mine was purchased from Altex a couple of weeks ago. I have
one other cartridge that I will be trying in a couple of days. I
really want to get to the bottom of this. Let's stay in touch.

Regards
Ron
Tom March said:
Ron Cenker said:
I have a post in this forum with exactly the same problem. I
called Epson and they had me try turning off 'High Speed' printing
and change the paper thickness setting on the printer... neither
did any good. Interestingly enough, I have been printing at 1440
dpi when I see the problem. I tried printing at 2880 and the
problem is significantly better... BUT NOT GONE. I'm using the
latest epson profiles. I was also wondering what temperature your
room is at... mine tends to be a bit warm.. over 80 degrees.
Woindering if this could be a contributing factor with the matte
black ink. I CANNOT see any evidence of this botchiness on my
screen. It is ONLY on the print. I have darkened the room,
modified the contrast and/or brightness levels to try to see
anything on screen... but to no avail. And that makes sense
because when printing the same image using the PK cartridge, there
is absolutely NO blotchiness, just a loss of richness in the blacks
of course. I would be interested to know if your problem gets even
marginally better at 2880 (assuming that you are using the 1440
setting).
Click to expand...
Ron,

This has been at 2880 where I always print. I had never noticed
this before, but it seems to have shown up on the needles of a pine
tree. I see it clearly on the soft proof and thought it may not
show up in the print, but it did. The soft proof showed me very
close to just what I would get. I also looked into using both
perceptual and relative colorimetric. The rich green of the pine
needles also turn lighter as well as blocking up and perceptual is
much worse than relative colorimetric. I think this is called
posterizing. It is not the ink or room temperature, since the soft
proof showed it too, and the proof doesn't take room temp into
consideration.

It happens with both the 1440 & 2880 MK profiles, and Cathy
Stratton's 2880 profile. I have always seen very slight changes in
proofing other images, but nothing that ever caused enough of a
change to be a problem and all rendered very good prints that
matched the screen within reason. (At least in the begining of
learning to do this.)

I went back to many of my other images and while not as noticeble,
it still slightly degrades the image. I found I get better results
with the PK profiles both proofing and printing. While blacks
aren't as rich, detail is much better. Of course, the more I do
this, the more fussy I get. It was hard to discerne when I was
fighting to get decent prints starting out and wasted a lot of
paper. Since I only used enhanced matte for the first two 50 packs
of paper, I never considered using PK and just got color management
to produce acceptable prints with the MK. After having a sunset
over a lake with the bottom 25% of the print in almost pure black,
I found the matte ink had the heavy blotchyness, giving the
apearance of flat black paint sitting on top of the print in
blotches across the foreground. I switched to PK on the enhanced
matte and got a better print. I just figured it was due to the
large expanse of black. Now, since I started using soft proofing
and with this photograph of a pine tree showing up strong blocking
of colors and detail I started looking back at others with soft
proofing. I found I get much better detail in all photographs
using the PK. Now I'm not so sure I like the matte black at all.
Not sure if I am just not doing something right or if this is just
the way it works. Maybe it's the trade-off for getting richer
blacks.

Tom
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Tom March said:
Another thing I have just experienced lately is that some shots of
trees that look good on the screen print out with the fine detail
of the leaves or needles blocked up both in soft proofing and
printing on enhanced matte with the new Epson MK profile and in
switching to Cathy's profile I get the same effect. I switched to
PK ink and profile and it looks right without destroing the detail.
Could this be part of the same problem? Could something have
changed that would affect both of these things?
Click to expand...
Did you try perceptual as rendering intent? It improves image quality quite a bit for me with matte black, especially for images with a lot of dark areas. Additionally, I convert my images to 8 bit before printing.

Best,

Dirk Dittert
 
Dirk Dittert said:
Did you try perceptual as rendering intent? It improves image
quality quite a bit for me with matte black, especially for images
with a lot of dark areas. Additionally, I convert my images to 8
bit before printing.

Best,

Dirk Dittert
Click to expand...
Dirk,

Yes, I did. Please refer to my statement later in this thread.

Tom
 
Dirk Dittert said:
Did you try perceptual as rendering intent? It improves image
quality quite a bit for me with matte black, especially for images
with a lot of dark areas. Additionally, I convert my images to 8
bit before printing.

Best,

Dirk Dittert
Click to expand...
Dirk: I am no expert, but Blatner/Fraser's Real World PSCS speciafically advises against downsampling to 8 bit before printing.

Page 797:
"Tip: Don't Downsample high-bit files for printing"

"If you are printing a high-bit file directly from Photoshop, it's both unnecessary and unwise to downsample it to 8 bits per channel prior to printing. It is unnecessary because Photoshop is smart enough to downsample the data before handing it off to the printer. It is unwise because if you request color space conversions, you'll get better results allowing Photoshop to do the conversions on the high-bit data before it does the automatic downsampling than you will forcing Photoshop to to make the conversion on an image that's already been downsampled to 8 bits per channel."

--
Best,
Pat
http://www.pbase.com/minicucci
 
Pat Minicucci said:
Dirk: I am no expert, but Blatner/Fraser's Real World PSCS
speciafically advises against downsampling to 8 bit before printing.
Click to expand...
Thank you for this advice. Unfortunately, my images don't look right when previewed in 16bit with cathy's profiles. I do not have this problem with the original Ilford profile or the Epson profiles. That's why I convert my images to 8 bit before printing.

Best,

Dirk Dittert
 
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