EZwoes

[james45667 <james45667@layeredlens.com>]

This is a plea for help to any of you knowledgeable color
calibrationists.
I have EZcolor.  The problem would appear to be that it is not
accurately
generating a printer profile.  That's how it appears, after many many
hours
of trials and tests and use of expensive ink and paper.  Whether that IS

the problem remains to be seen; that's how it appears so far.

The test target appears to print well as printed from the CD.  These are

Lyson inks, new to me; they are less vivid than Epson's, which I
expected.
Given that, however, they look well printed.

I have not been able to scan from EZ.  It does not "see" any plugins in
the
import/export folder, even though they are there- color sync's and my
scanner's.
So I have had to scan first, save as a TIFF RGB.  Then EZ opens the scan
using
the "input image" button.

The scan looks like this:  The IT8 target looks great; vivid,
saturated.  The
printed Lyson target looks washed out in comparison- in other words, it
looks
less like the original printed target than the IT8 scan looks like the
original IT8 target.
That seems consistent, I guess.  If the scanner software (LinoColor 5.0)
is basing
its base density on the IT8, which I guess it would, since it has the
greater range,
then it would seem that the shorter range of densities of the Lyson
target would
get "placed" on a higher part of the curve- thinking in photography
terms.  I don't know
if any of that's right.  But it seems consistent.  I would think,
though, that the whole
point of all this is that the software would compare the two targets and
then stretch
the Lyson target's values to approximate the IT8 as best as it can.

What happens is that the colors get shifted bizarrely.  First of all, it
blows everything
out.  It looks like a typical bad scan or something off the internet
where you have to
adjust the contrast in curves to get rid of the "fog".  Then it makes
everything either
red or blue.  It does it when printing, and it does it in profile to
profile.  In other words,
the print and the conversion in profile to profile from my monitor
profile to the printer
profile are consistent with each other.  That's why I say it appears
that EZ is generating
a bad profile.

The monitor profile seems to work fine in that things on the monitor
look great.  I've had
questions about how to set everything, though.  Larry at Cone Editions
(very helpful, by the
way) suggested ColorMatch rather than Bruce RGB as the editing
colorspace.  These problems
were happening while I was still using Bruce, though; the new color
space hasn't changed
anything.  The only thing is that ColorMatch is a D50 space.  If you
change the monitor temp
to 6500 in the RGB setup box, "ColorMatch" turns to "custom".  I assume
that that just means
that that one setting has changed, but I don't really know.  Now, there
are many indications
that 6500 is the preferred temp (Mac).  Also  a gamma of 1.8.

Another set of variables is that my card, a Twin Turbo 128 4MB, has its
own control panel.
It has these controls: Channel gain, which I've left alone;  Monitor
Temperature, where you can
set 5000, 6500, or 9300; Desired Monitor White Point, with those points
plus others; Applied
Gamma, where you can choose: linear, trinitron, typical p22, TV dim or
TV normal.  Or you can
check Use Custom Gamma, which allows you to manually set the gamma.

Back to EZ:  If I select 6500 for both the monitor temp and the white
point, and select 1.8 as
Custom Gamma, when I look at the four rectangles where you set
brightness and contrast in
EZ, I have to set the brightness on the monitor (RasterOps) all the way
up in order to get any
seperation in the dark boxes, and then there's still not enough
brightness to seperate the
darkest two boxes.  If I choose "linear" on the Twin Turbo control
panel, I get more appropriate
seperation, so that's what I've done.  Also D50 works.  There's also a
"Use System Gamma"
checkbox on the Twin Turbo control panel.  I don't know what it's
supposed to do; I check it and
nothing seems to happen.  The white squares-  I don't know what's going
on with them.  I can't
get them to be "barely distinguishable from each other" unless I crank
the contrast so far down
that it just can't be right.  It just doesn't feel right to run things
either wide open or all the way
down.

Then, in the ColorSync control panel, I choose my monitor profile.  The
monitor always looks great.
In Photoshop I've set everything to "ask when opening".  I doesn't seem
to make a difference how
the file looks on the monitor unconverted versus unconverted.

Larry gave me several suggestions for setting things in Epson's print
driver.  The results are
all similar.  Sometimes I can get a different result, but it's not
accurate or good, just different.

The only othe symptom I've noticed is that after setting a profile, the
next day things look too red.
That was when I had the gamma in Twin Turbo set to 1.8.  I've since
reset it to "linear".  So far
I haven't seen that color shift.

I had none of these problems before EZ color.  I always got decent
results with just the stock
driver and ColorSync.  It's just when I wanted to go to the Lyson inks
that I thought I needed
to profile.  And I still want to;  I'm just getting really bummed about
the whole thing.  I've always
had a problem here or there, but I've always been able to work through
them myself.  Not this time.

I might mention again that I have LinoColor 5.0.  I have attempted to
turn all of its color management
off, to get as "raw" a scan as possible.  And, set that way, as I say,
the IT8 target looked great.
I've never had any problems scanning with it- the scans always looked
great.  It has its own
internal calibrator software, which I attempted to investigate but
which, after a long night of
this crap left me hoplessly confused (computer manuals weren't bad
enough in hard copy.  I HATE
CD ROM manuals.  And yes, I do print them, when I can find the section I
need.)  So I changed nothing
in Lino Color.

I realize this is a long list of items.  I'd be grateful if anyone has
any suggestions on any of this.
I wrote a lot of this to Larry, but I know he's preparing to go to a
conference.  So I haven't heard.
(Some of my posts to the Painter list haven't appeared.  Is some of my
e-mail getting lost somehow?
Does that happen?)

Thanks to anyone kind enough to wade through all these variables and
come up with any ideas.
There may be other things, such as those variables in the print driver
boxes, although, as I said,
changes there haven't made a difference except to maybe crash if you
specify the working space
profile where it says "space".

James Irelan

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