QTR-Quadtone RIP

Just wondering if anyone can help please ?

I've spent the last few days morning till late at night, setting up my quadtone rip and at the end of it my prints look the exact same as when I started. i.e. a bit heavy in the shadows with less detail compared to my print printed via photoshop and the epson advanced black and white mode.

I did do some nice prints printed from photoshop cc with the Epson P600 using the printers advanced B&W mode, the prints were practically the same as what they looked like on my screen.

I'm now using Print-Tool and the QTR looking to achieve even better quality prints if that's possible.

The RIP only came with a couple of Profiles none of which suited my paper (Hahnemuhle bamboo). So I set out to make my own curves using the Raw curves / profiles that came with the RIP i.e. UCmk-raw-cool.txt and the warm and sepia etc etc.

I've run two lots of tests - both from BWMastery blog which has a good amount of info. I firstly ran with the i1 Profiler and 21x4-random QTR Step Wedges, printing out each of the 5 curves ( Neut, Cool, Warm, Warmer and Sepia) all with no colour management, let them all dry over night. I then scanned them with my i1 Spectrometer. Then i took the text files and ran them through QTR-Linearize-Data droplet/software, there was a slight bend rather than the straight diagonal L to the LAB curves .txt files. I went ahead and copied the linearize data at the bottom of the files and transfered them to my now new curves. I then used the InstallP600.command to install the curves to my QTR.

I then printed out another test copy of the 21x4-random QTR step wedge only this time using my new curve in 1st curve drop down in QTR, let it dry over night, scanned it again, looked at the curve and it still had a couple of bumps in the line only now in the opposite direction to the first scans.

I now did a test print anyway of the same print that I had printed out at the start and there was no difference to the print what so ever.

( apologies for the length of this )

A bit disappointed - I now turn to the "A New i1 Profiler Workflow for the QuadToneRIP 51-step Grayscale Target" from BWMastery website thinking - ok this should be more precise. I printed out the 51 step target for each of the 5 curves and painstakingly scanned all the printouts 3 times each as suggested.

A long story short - I did all of the above only this time with the 51 step Grayscale and the curves still have a slight bend to them and the print doesn't look any different from the first print that I printed in the first place with QTR - which is a tad heavy in the shadows.

I hope this all makes sense.

I'm obviously either not following the instructions as well as I think I am or I'm totally missing something somewhere.

Any help to shed some light on this would be great.

best
ian

http://www.ipmclaren.com

Since you repeatedly say that there is "no difference whatsoever" it would seem that you're bypassing those curves completely. Time for a sanity test: choose two curves as far apart (most likely to be different) as you can imagine, and print an image from each. If there is still no visible difference, then it's most likely something in your setup that is likely at fault.

Apologies, I probably didn't phrase my post properly:

I can get the different tones, the tones work absolutely fine.

My problem is that the prints with or without the tones are really heavy in the shadows compared with the epson prints.

QTR is very different from ABW.

Edit> . . . . Photoshop using the QTR-Gloss or QTR-Matte profiles . . . .