> a generic profile is a bit like buying spectacles from a filling > station or chemist, they may suit your vision, they may not, but trying > them unsuccessfully wouldn't persuade you that spectacles are a flawed > concept?
I disagree. If the examples of 'glasses' that I got actually made my eyesight worse, it would not persuade me that glasses were a good idea... call me a sceptic (or a scientist) but I need proof. My old StylusPhotoEX gave excellent results with Lyson media. My new 1290 is not as good with Epson media and profiles, and even worse with Lyson media and 'generic' profiles. This does not persuade me that the new printer is better or less problematic than the old one... apart from the fact that the old one had developed symptoms that I ascribe to backlash in the paper advance gearing etc , i.e. it was knackered. >> What I expect from a generic profile is similar to what I would hope for in a proof print from my own black and white >> darkroom: black at black, white at white (after all 0%C 0%M 0%Y 0%K >> is pretty unambiguous), > well, yes, but different printers will print it differently. Erm.... Surely a specular highlight (for example) is just a clear piece of tranny film, and therefore a 'hole' through to the paper colour when printed. What colour this appears is therefore dependant on the colour of my paper (for a print) or the colour of my light source (for a transparency). I would have thought that if you sent the instruction "0%C 0%M 0%Y 0%K" to the printer, that is what you get... otherwise what instruction would you send to get this result? negative values? Illogical, captain. > > BTW, you're not sending CMYK to the Epson are you?? No i'm not (although as the printers all print CMYK I would have thought that it would have made your job easier to insists that everyone convert to CMYK and write a profile from there, as there are RGB colour that are simply out of the CMYK gamut). > >> and everything else roughly in the right place in between. Then I >> know whether it is worth spending time (and money) refining the >> output... > do you mean whether the paper stock is worth continuing with? No... whether these new fangled spectacle-thingies actually improve eyesight at all, i.e whether my money would have been better spent trying to repair the old printer. > That is indeed an issue I know. > > I suppose the only easy solution is to look at other's work on the same > stock. For example, on the wall at Marrutt (45 minutes drive from me). > > As i said before, I think the generic profile you got is for a > different type of 1290[earlier], not the 1290 S, there seems to have > been a hardware update [but of course Epson don't tell us]. So, I > submit that it's not a generic profile any more, it's now a profiole > for a different printer. So as a reward for my late uptake of the printer (always cautious, preferring tried and tested and working on a limited budget for this project... it all having to fit into projected costs), I bizarrely end up as a guinea-pig. I know that this strand is going mildly philosophical, so I will keep the practical results of contributer's suggestions on Re: [PRODIG] 1290 problems Thanks so far... just about managing to keep my interest levels above those of frustration... shall now try to work through an answer to Dave Greenwood on the subject. Regards Giles =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
