Re:Monaco Profiles & Pigmented Ink

Marc Levine <mlevine@monacosys.com> · Wed, 17 Apr 2002 12:36:26 -0400

Hi Diana,
I saw your query on this list and wanted to give you the "skinny" regarding
MonacoEZcolor and pigmented inks. The deal is that some scanners and some
pigmented ink/media combinations don't "play well" together. Certain
pigmented ink sets can cause the scanner to capture color information
differently that if you were using a spectrophotometer.

The technical name for this phenomenon is called metamerism, which refers to
the situation where 2 images can match under one lighting condition, but not
under another. Under the illumination of the light source in the scanner,
everything is matching. However, when you look at the resulting image in
your viewing environment, colors do not match.

Actually, for this reason, Monaco has developed expansion table technology.
You can see this technology integrated into MonacoEZcolor for use with the
Epson2000P. What this technology does is align the way a scanner interprets
color to the way a spectrophotometer measures color. This technology is not
only used at the consumer level, but by some of our OEM clients as well.

The point is, this is not an a software thing, it's a scanner-based
profiling thing (Tobie, your thoughts?). It's difficult toovercome these
types of issues without a spectrophotometer as some pigmented inks / media
combinations may be subject to metameric effects. If you are making profiles
for professional applications, I would consider upgrading to a
spectrophotometer- based solution. At the amateur level, scanner-based
profiling and certain pigmented inks can be difficult to work with.

Marc

-- 
Marc Levine
Monaco Systems
Technical Manager
Sales Division
www.monacosys.com

> From: owner-epson-inkjet-digest@leben.com (Epson-Inkjet-Digest)
> Reply-To: epson-inkjet@leben.com
> Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 18:02:38 -0500
> To: epson-inkjet-digest@leben.com
> Subject: Epson-Inkjet-Digest V2000 #1838
> 
> From: Diana Meredith <diana@dianameredith.com>
> Subject: Monaco Profiles & Pigmented Ink
> 
> Hello List,
> 
> I've been lurking on this list since New Year's. Due to my reading
> here I've recently bought an Epson 1280 and a Gen4 CIS from
> MediaStreet. Now I'm trying to get the profiling thing. I chose
> Monaco's EZ Color 2 bundle  over the oft recommended custom profiling
> because I wanted good monitor calibration and I wanted to be able to
> profile a number of different papers.
> 
> My first profiles have produced prints that are too yellow. When I
> wrote to Monaco, they said the following:
> 
> "Third party inks can be problematic. It's not uncommon to
> have to edit a printer profile when third party inks are being used. You
> should not be getting a heavy cast, however, unless the inks are pigmented.
> If the inks are pigmented, you would be better off with a spectrophotometer
> based profiling system as there are limitations to flatbed scanner
> technology which makes it difficult to get accurate readings from pigments."
> 
> I saw nothing on their website about the limitations of  EZColor2
> with pigmented inks. It seems I've made the wrong choice.  That's
> unhappy news after I spent $740 Canadian on their bundle.
> 
> Do any of you have any suggestions about how I can salvage this
> software and still use it accurately with pigmented inks?
> 
> Cheers,
> Diana