Printing on B9180

[usathyan]

I am sure someone else in this forum has done it - printing on fine art papers using Lightroom on the B9180 printer. Have you?

I have tried a few papers and just not happy with either my settings or something else. Here is my issue:

Suppose i use the Museo Crane Silver Rag, i add the paper & ICC using the HP Utility tool. Then i select "Managed by Printer", Perceptual and Color Sync in the Print settings option. The result = The colors match the screen.

If i select the specific ICC (Museo Silver Rag) directly from the Color management screen, and change the Print  settings to "Application Managed" - the colors are OFF.

If i use the Relative instead or Perceptual - there is bleeding (Matt black all over the dark areas).

Then, when i try the Hahnmuhle Fine Art Pearl - everything is reversed! i get better prints by using "Application Managed" instead of the "ColorSync".

BTW, If i use HP Advanced Paper and "Managed by Printer" works wonderful!

Help! what do you guys use? Can you help me become a better printer?

[DavidW]

I suspect the problem isn't your printer (I have a B9180 too) - it's that Lightroom's print preview doesn't offer soft proofing.

Particularly when printing on expensive fine art media, it may be worth dropping to Photoshop or another program that does allow you to soft proof before printing.



David

[usathyan]

I suspect the problem isn't your printer (I have a B9180 too) - it's that Lightroom's print preview doesn't offer soft proofing.

Particularly when printing on expensive fine art media, it may be worth dropping to Photoshop or another program that does allow you to soft proof before printing.
David
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Thanks david...i figured that out too....i am planning on using a RIP software such as PrintFab (http://www.printfab.net/) to do printing...hopefully that may provide better results...About soft proofing though, i know that the more expensive Z3100 series printers offer a "HP Print Preview" software - any ideas on how or where to get it? and if  it works with the B9180? Otherwise, i may have to do this manually with ColorSync or Preview (I am a Mac)

[DavidW]

There's no need for a RIP or a much more expensive printer for soft proofing. The key requirement for soft proofing is a calibrated and profiled monitor - without an accurate monitor profile, soft proofing isn't going to produce workable results.

If you have a recent version of Photoshop, that will allow you to soft proof and adjust the images if necessary. I've done this in Photoshop CS2 by adding some adjustment layers to the PSD - if I need to do it again, I'll use exactly the same techniques in Photoshop CS3 Extended.

Hopefully Lightroom will get soft proofing features in a future version - as usually all it needs is a slight change to the curve (or similar tweak) to get the tonality right.


Meanwhile, if you were on Windows, you could download a trial version of Qimage, and see if that does what you want. I don't know what Mac users tend to use instead of Qimage. Maybe the Printfab RIP you mention is the best solution; it's not as expensive as some of the RIPs on the market.


There is a print preview function in the B9180 driver (at least there is on Windows XP), but I'm pretty sure it's for layout purposes only, and isn't a soft proof.



David