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Feb. 6th, 2007 05:09 pmEVERYTHING seems to be fighting me today...
Backstory: I have a customer (who also happens to be my next gallery artist) with whom I really seem to have hit it off. Maybe it was because when she first came in to show me her photographs and put on a pair of white cotton gloves to handle them, I reached under the counter and brought out my own pair as well. She recognizes how seriously I take my work and how deeply I respect the art.
Well. She brought me a number of prints that she wants to have scanned and reprinted for a jury submission. There's no other way to make copies of them, since they are truly one-of-a-kind prints, directly exposed on the paper, so there's no negatives.
I really want to do a fantastic job and impress her, because I want to be worthy of the trust she's placed in me. Maybe it was the white-gloves thing, but she pretty much said that she didn't want to give these prints to just anybody...
I must add that these prints stretch the limits of color fidelity. They are almost, but not quite black-and-white prints. They are very subtly tinted in places, so there are tones of very subtle green and ochre in various parts. The subtle tones are an important part of her work, and must be reproduced as accurately as possible.
Well. First I had trouble getting the colors right on the scanner end. For some reason my color calibration seems to break down badly with her stuff... when I apply the color profile to the raw scan, I get this horrible greenish cast all over the image. In fact, the raw scan looks the best of all... go figure. On top of that, I seem to be having trouble getting all the subtle shadings. I solve that by scanning in 48 bits rather than 24...
Then, comes the printing. Oh god, the printing. Every. One. of my printers has given me serious grief this week. The Epson 7000 is in not too bad shape (I fought with it last week), but it gives me more visible dithering than I'd like. The Epson R1800 has twice the resolution (2480x1440 vs 1440x720)... when it's working. I can't get a clean nozzle check on it to save my life. I suppose that's the price I pay for trying to use aftermarket inks in it, but this is ridiculous! I even bought and downloaded the service manual so I could find out how to take it apart to clean it... the waste ink system was overloaded from all the cleaning cycles.
Oh, and the Epson 9000 literally lost its head. One of the two printheads is not working, which means I only get three of the six colors. Totally unusable.
Finally I tweaked and poked at the 7000, aligning the heads to within an inch of their lives, and I *think* I can get barely-acceptable work out of it. Now the problem is "just" color-calibrating it again... it too was printing stuff with a greenish cast.
I'm thinking of ditching the lot and spending the money for a new Epson 9800. May as well leapfrog to current technology and free up space in the shop....
Anybody want a few used printers that need TLC? The R1800 prints up to 13" wide, the 7000 up to 24" wide, and the 9000 up to 44" wide...
Backstory: I have a customer (who also happens to be my next gallery artist) with whom I really seem to have hit it off. Maybe it was because when she first came in to show me her photographs and put on a pair of white cotton gloves to handle them, I reached under the counter and brought out my own pair as well. She recognizes how seriously I take my work and how deeply I respect the art.
Well. She brought me a number of prints that she wants to have scanned and reprinted for a jury submission. There's no other way to make copies of them, since they are truly one-of-a-kind prints, directly exposed on the paper, so there's no negatives.
I really want to do a fantastic job and impress her, because I want to be worthy of the trust she's placed in me. Maybe it was the white-gloves thing, but she pretty much said that she didn't want to give these prints to just anybody...
I must add that these prints stretch the limits of color fidelity. They are almost, but not quite black-and-white prints. They are very subtly tinted in places, so there are tones of very subtle green and ochre in various parts. The subtle tones are an important part of her work, and must be reproduced as accurately as possible.
Well. First I had trouble getting the colors right on the scanner end. For some reason my color calibration seems to break down badly with her stuff... when I apply the color profile to the raw scan, I get this horrible greenish cast all over the image. In fact, the raw scan looks the best of all... go figure. On top of that, I seem to be having trouble getting all the subtle shadings. I solve that by scanning in 48 bits rather than 24...
Then, comes the printing. Oh god, the printing. Every. One. of my printers has given me serious grief this week. The Epson 7000 is in not too bad shape (I fought with it last week), but it gives me more visible dithering than I'd like. The Epson R1800 has twice the resolution (2480x1440 vs 1440x720)... when it's working. I can't get a clean nozzle check on it to save my life. I suppose that's the price I pay for trying to use aftermarket inks in it, but this is ridiculous! I even bought and downloaded the service manual so I could find out how to take it apart to clean it... the waste ink system was overloaded from all the cleaning cycles.
Oh, and the Epson 9000 literally lost its head. One of the two printheads is not working, which means I only get three of the six colors. Totally unusable.
Finally I tweaked and poked at the 7000, aligning the heads to within an inch of their lives, and I *think* I can get barely-acceptable work out of it. Now the problem is "just" color-calibrating it again... it too was printing stuff with a greenish cast.
I'm thinking of ditching the lot and spending the money for a new Epson 9800. May as well leapfrog to current technology and free up space in the shop....
Anybody want a few used printers that need TLC? The R1800 prints up to 13" wide, the 7000 up to 24" wide, and the 9000 up to 44" wide...
