@ Tyler…
i just realized something interesting.
when i check the details of my custom 7clr profile. it says V2, device color space 7clr… BUT conection colorspace LAB…
the EFI built profile says connection colorspace XYZ… !
this could be the clue…!
any idea of how i can change or edit this ?
I don’t know if it is even possible to change something so fundamental in a profile - as far as I know the PCS is so strongly (is that a word?) tied into the profile/software/algorithms/etc that it would almost take a software code re-write to change? Certainly haven’t ever read about or seen the ability to change PCS in a profile or even an app that allows choice of PCS when building profile - do you know if it’s possible with any software, let alone EFI? I’m 99% sure it can’t be done within EFI or for their profiles. Please correct me if I’m mistaken.
I wrote to Mr Versace & incredibly I received a reply only a couple hours later! I have some good news & some bad news for you guys. I’m sure you guys would have heard of & seen the work Versace outputs & of course, he is known as easily one of a handful of the greatest master printers alive (I definitely do not say things like that almost ever), along with a close relationship with Mac Holbert (first person to ever use an inkjet for fine art photography printing, more than 20 years ago, starting off with reel to reel fed directly into the printer, NO monitor) & John Paul Caponigro who needs no introduction.
You might be banging your head against a brick wall there Monster. Or perhaps you’re just up shit creek without a paddle. Either way, from what I have just seen extremely quickly of a RIP built by an Aussie company (I’m Australian by the way, was very surprised when I found out Versace uses these guys’ RIP) called Serendipity Black Magic.
I quickly went to their site & downloaded their PDF brochure & the amount of control they offer from their multi-channel almost seems like the difference between contone & halftone or CMYK vs CMYKRGB/CMYKOG. Black Magic just offers SO much that EFI haven’t even touched on, let alone actually implement. And as I’ve been saying/thinking, I knew there just had to be people around that have successfully implemented multi-channel for fine art photography printing, as opposed to proofing. Honestly, regular ordinary people like us couldn’t really ever be doing anything that hasn’t been done many times before by persons so far ahead of us & with such skill, knowledge, direct inside info from the printer manufacturers, likely have a Phd in this sort of thing, we probably couldn’t get to where they are in 40 years of studying. Honestly, think of the difficulties experienced here & then try to imagine actually coding your own software to get around these problems (I can’t even imagine where one would start). Maybe the difference between EFI & Black Magic could be thought of as the difference between a national level racing car (Aussie V8 Touring Cars, German DTM, British Touring Cars, etc.) vs Formula 1. Really does seem like they are that much more advanced & offer so much more granularity & control. And no, I don’t like car racing, I used to race motocross bikes. But I digress…
Perhaps what is even worse is that Versace uses the Epson driver for the majority or his print work, as do both JPC & Mac Holbert. Now if the likes of 3 of the most incredibly talented master printers/photographers to ever walk the Earth can obtain such an insanely high level of quality using the Epson driver, that really does essentially prove, to me at least, that there just isn’t that much of an improvement to be had with most any other method, except perhaps this Black Magic thingy & (if there are any) other RIPs out there that offer the same degree of control as Serendipity allow (don’t think there is though).
Oh ye, even worse still (you thought it couldn’t get worse, right?), Versace claims that Black Magic is the ONLY RIP that does not use Epson screening with the 7900/9900 & EVERY other RIP on the market uses Epson screening. Put another way, whatever we try, short of using Black Magic is still just using Epson’s own driver/algorithms.
Now, I wouldn’t make such sweeping claims if it were just about anyone else telling me this but when Versace says these things, I for one have absolutely no hesitation in believing every single word he says is 100% true. He is a beta tester for Epson for I don’t know how many years (decades perhaps) & us mere mortals just cannot compare to being in bed with the manufacturer of these awesome printers. And regardless if we’re using an HP, Canon, Epson or what, everyone knows for a fact that up until just a few short years ago there really only was Epson in the fine art printer market, short of those handful of (literally) genius types who have the knowledge & skill to be able to write their own drivers & code up their own RIPs, just like the companies who make the RIPs.
Really, I know what I’ve said is rather one-sided but if it’s good enough for Versace, JPC, Holbert et al, who am I to argue?
If anyone is interested I can copy/paste Versace’s email reply so you can read it all for yourselves. And I did expressly mention this forum thread & gave him the link, but I don’t know if he actually read any of the forum, but I certainly explained to him all the trials & tribulations you 2 have been going through.
So there you have it, some good news & some bad. I’ve no idea how much Black Magic sells for but I’m going to give them a call tomorrow morning (it’s midnight Sunday as I write this) & find out.
smile… well thanks for all the effort and emotions.
but i would be very happy with the help of how to build a profile using xyz PCS instead of lab… 
lol. Do you know if it’s actually possible, or any app offers a choice? Maybe you just need a bit of Serendipity - some Black Magic wouldn’t hurt either. 8) 
i cant see the HPz3200 being supported by the black magic…
and i would like to find the way with EFI 
I think you’ll be struggling to get where you want with EFI because as far as I can tell it just doesn’t offer anywhere near enough control for what you’re trying to achieve. Even if it did offer the granularity, so many features that would make life a walk in the park instead of a boat ride in a stinky creek are absolutely just non-existent in EFI’s products.
Just checked & I think your printer is supported but obviously not sure.
Eureka…
i got it…
not sure how… but i did. lol
i checked all the details in the ICC… got rid of some stuff where there should be 0… and patched it again… and it worked! voila… so if someone wants to know how… hit me up… lol
back to tyler please…:
about the gray axis… its a lil green… and i can see it prints with all sorts of colors starting with magenta…
im not sure how to build up the black correctly…
I’m just not that familiar with Profilemaker and the settings and dialogues. You want a 0% start, 100% end point, “heavy” or whatever they may designate it- max amount of GCR or straight line curve… whatever it takes.
That still may not solve your hue in the neutral axis, because the profile will still be built on the same measurements and algorythms. You may have to make a custom chart with a LOT of near neutral patches if best possible neutrals is the priority for a given profile and/or ink setup. Perhaps a Profilemaker expert will chime in…
thnx.
its really complicated… and hard to achieve the best i think.
my sitiuation now is as followed.
its so easy to create custom RGB profiles… the quality of the color transitions is really amazingly perfect. and the grays are perfectly neutral… as the RGB driver only uses grays for equal RGB values. BUT… the overall gamut loks flat compared to my 7clr profie and the rip…
the hues of blues and reds and even yellow are WAY brighter and more saturated… BUT the grayschale is not perfect. and the transitions are quite hard sometimes.
now… what to do about this ?–
and second… the very brigt colors with little inks… you can see the dots easily!.. not very nice…
i think it is because i cant tell profile maker to only use light inks there. and the RIP doesnt either.
when lookin “inside” the new profile.the RGB colors start right away as well. and the RGB nozzles are bigger then the light ones. so the gradiations is not that smooth.
bummer… haha
its really complicated… and hard to achieve the best i think.
-Wouldn’t be all that difficult if we were given more control over what EFI is doing & how it’s mixing inks & settign crossovers/transitions. You knew it was coming - that Black Magic jobby really does look the bees knees, giving exactly the type of control you need to achieve your rectify the problems you’re having
its so easy to create custom RGB profiles… the quality of the color transitions is really amazingly perfect. and the grays are perfectly neutral… as the RGB driver only uses grays for equal RGB values. BUT… the overall gamut loks flat compared to my 7clr profie and the rip…
the hues of blues and reds and even yellow are WAY brighter and more saturated… BUT the grayschale is not perfect. and the transitions are quite hard sometimes.
-First you say the RGB profile produces perfect neutral greys with excellent color transitions but then contradict yourself by saying the greyscale now is not perfect & the transitions are quite hard. Please explain, which is it?
and second… the very brigt colors with little inks… you can see the dots easily!.. not very nice… - dots showing up has more to do with screening & exactly which inks are mixing in what quantities rather than much that goes on inside the profile.
i think it is because i cant tell profile maker to only use light inks there. and the RIP doesnt either. -Black Magic does
when lookin “inside” the new profile.the RGB colors start right away as well. and the RGB nozzles are bigger then the light ones. so the gradiations is not that smooth.
-Just found out Serendipity also has a RIP specifically for photographic output whereas Black Magic is more oriented towards proofing but still makes incredible photographic output. The photo type RIP is called MegaRIP. As Serendipity absolutely correctly points out, the greyscale & neutrality should most definitely be taken care of or at least optimized so the profile has very little work to do there. Both of their apps have very specific linearization algorythms to achieve this so the profile hasn’t to do much heavy lifting in the greyscale neutrality side of things.
Have a look at these 2 PDFs & let me know what you think: http://www.serendipity-software.com.au/img/v1/smr-brochure.pdf & http://www.serendipity-software.com.au/img/v1/sbm-brochure-pages.pdf
Back to EFI - I went & had a good look around their “support” forums & I just can’t get over how crap their support really is. There had to be maybe half dozen of your queries in a few different forums there that are sitting unanswered, some since Jan this year(!!!). That is ridiculous, especially as they even ask for people’s feedback to let them know how good their support is & they babble on about the quality of their support. Well, I for one will be writing to them & asking specifically why so many of your questions/posts are unanswered & why (I think) only 1 or 2 of your (probably 20 or so) questions have been answered by an actual EFI support technician. That vassilis fella has been helpful, but where is the so-called “support” EFI claims is so wonderful & offers to their customers?
My, you guys have been busy over the weekend! I know that Argyll is capable of making XYZ printer profiles. It has an option that can be used to designate XYZ as the PCS for the profile. Naturally this is normally intended for display profiles and I have no experience in how well it works for what you’re looking for. Argyll is run by command line, so it takes some advanced computer knowledge to delve into it. Probably not what you need anyway.
ProfileMaker does like to have extra near-neutral patches in order to define the neutrals more accurately. The default targets made by ProfileMaker has these 6 columns of near-neutral patches spaced around the neutral axis. How far out of neutral does your printer print in its non-color-managed state? This is important. We have found that with some printers, if they have a wide swing in one color direction, their neutrals go outside of this near-neutral range that the default target is expected to handle. So you can end up making a profile that did not actually have good near-neutrals to help define the gray scale. ColorThink is good for viewing these sorts of things.
As Tyler said, if you’re wanting to do all you can to get neutral grays, a heavy GCR will help. There are disadvantages to using too much CGR too. Steve Upton had a good article on this a while back:
colorwiki.com/wiki/The_Color_Key
thank you. i solved the PCS thing. that didnt cause the problem. so i got the profile to work.
the thing is: i have a DTP20. so i cant use profile maker directly only thru colorport. and so far i havent found a way to import the PM ref for n-channel profiles into colorport. it works with CMYK… but not with 7channels.
and when i build the standard 7 channel with PM i dont have any of the usual choice lige GCR… i could enter each channel seperately to adjust the curves. but no black build up. nothing!
The support is supposed to be given by your dealer. If you had bought the ColorProof from me, you should contact me with any support questions. If I can’t answer, I can ask a person within EFI. Pretty normal support chain, if you ask me. The forums are more for contact between the users.
And to be able to make a n+profile you have to select the correct driver. You can’t create a linearization for a four channel workflow and then attach a 7channel profile to that workflow.
I use the ColorProof for proofing and large format posters. I would select another RIP or go with the printer driver for the best photographic prints. I use ImagePrint for that purpose, but it doesn’t support the HP Z-printers.