QTR-Quadtone RIP

Ken, let's see if anyone else has any thoughts on your method and your
problem.

A couple of things occur to me.  One is your viewing environment.  Is
the light illuminating the print of the right brightness?  After all,
the monitor is emitting light.

Another is the dpi.  I believe virtually all the QTR profiles are made
at 1440 dpi, but some folks like to print at 2880.  This would result
in a lot more ink being laid down.  So, if you are using a 1440 curve
and want to print at 2880, you want to decrease your ink limit in the
QTR driver to about -35% (I think).

The third thing is, did you read the Eye-One read me in the Curve
Design folder that comes in the QTR 2.4.1 download. It describes two
parts to the process.  Linearizing a curve for your printer, and
building an ICC profile for printing and soft-proofing.

Ed

--- In QuadtoneRIP@yahoogroups.com, "prof_mgt551" <prof_mgt551@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Ed,
> 
> The procedure I used was outlined in an article on the NorthLight
> Images website for using PrintFix Pro to linearise the QTR output.
> Here are the steps that I used:
> 
> 1. Converted the Step-21-gray file (contained in the eye-one folder)
> to the QTR-Gray-Photo Paper space, saved as a tiff and printed the
> file using QTR and the Ilford Smooth Pearl curves provided on this
> website.
> 2. Read the L values of the printed 21 step scale and entered these
> into a tab delimited text file.
> 3. Used QTR-Create-ICC program to convert the tab delimited text file
> into an icc file.
> 4. Converted the original Step-21-gray file into the new icc space
> created in step 3, saved this file and printed again in QTR
> 5. A reading of this new print showed that the scale was linearised.
> However when compared to the screen view of the image in Photoshop on
> a calibrated display, the printed version is slightly darker or heavier.
> 
> So the process did linearise the gray scale, but the new icc profile
> does not create a close softproof match. The print doesn't look bad at
> all. It looks good when viewed by itself, but when compared to the
> display verion, then some difference can be seen. The difference is
> not dramatic, but enough that it is not possible to accurately adjust
> a gray scale image in Photoshop based entirely on what is viewed on
> the display.
> 
> There is something not quite right and I am not sure exactly what
> might be causing the problem. I prefer not using the gamma adjustment
> slider in QTR to correct the discrepency between the printed and
> display version, since I assume this would cause the output to no
> longer be linear, thus in some respect degrading the image quality.
> 
> Thanks for input on this.
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> Ken
>