> Still going on this one. Followed all the advice and this is the result: > > Forget the general colour balance of the image, which to get perfect I will > need a tailor made profile, and for the purposes of this discussion are a > bit of a red herring.
Well, your generic profile should be in the ballpark, otherwise what's the point. > > With source space as Adobe 1998 RGB, whites in a test image on screen are at > 255RGB. > > Printing to generic Pixl or Lyson ICC profiles results in whites with a > faint tone of ink. > > Converting to any of these profiles in MODE>CONVERT TO PROFILE shows that > the whites have been changed to 254RGB, i.e. 1%C. > > This means that what are supposed to be transparent areas of image (e.g. > areas with text but no picture, borders around the image etc) are printed > with 1%C on them. Check that your conversion engine is Adobe ACE, which appears to cope best in cases such as this. > > Using the Epson supplied profiles, this is not the case and whites remain > white, and when converted are still at 255RGB. Remember... forget what the > rest of the image looks like for the moment. > > Consider this.. I create a new A4 sized document in photoshop, and put > nothing in it. It is blank... transparent (shown by grey squares). I print > it... the printer chugs away filling a whole page of A4 with 1% Cyan. > > There is nothing wrong with the printer because the Epson profiles print > white without leaking cyan ink (it pauses as the driver calculates what to > do for the whole image, and when the driver has finished, it spits out the > paper without the head even having got out of bed... hey presto a blank > page). There is nothing wrong with your printer, it's the profile or the conversion to profile. > > I know that for aesthetic reasons whites in images are not generally printed > at 255RGB as they look like holes in the page, but this is a decision I can > make for each individual photoshop image layer in LEVELS, leaving the > background... devoid of colour. > I have not had a good enough answer so far as to why ANY profile is laying > down ink when the source image values are 255RGB. The paper stock etc are > irrelevant (they will change saturation, colour balance etc as reflectivity, > absorbancy, dot gain etc vary... but we are not talking about the colour > balance here). Where there is a total absence of colour in the image, no > colour should be laid down on the paper. All a profile does is change some of the images numbers to compensate for characteristics of the output device. A printer profile is made by measuring printed test charts, paper white could be a factor when the profile was made, especially if the profile is averaged over several paper types. > > All I want is to be able to print nothing. Meanwhile you can print white whites by converting to your printer profile, tweaking the levels to make 254 become 255 and then printing with same as source in the print dialogue. Not ideal I know, an action might ease the pain. > > Help. Get this guy to do you a printer profile: Udo Machiels <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. He wont attempt to shroud what he does in mystery, but he will give you a great custom profile for a mere �65. I've been very pleased with what he has done for me. Good Luck Dave Greenwood =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
