Re: EZColor Problems

["Ian Lancaster" <ilancas@attglobal.net>]

Any news on when the next release of EZ will be available?  I've spent many
happy hours over the holiday period tweaking my printed color patches with
adjustment layers in PhotoShop to fool the software into creating more
accurate/acceptable profiles.

I've been trying to address two problems: dark blues printing tending to
purple, and difficulty getting neutral blacks.  I am inclined to think that
the underlying problem is with the scanner. Although it's an Epson :-)  636
(7000 in the UK) and therefore quite well suited to profiling, it's not good
at delivering accurate RGB values from scans of the very dark patches (GS20,
GS21, Dmax) on the IT8 target.  This seems to confuse EZColor into creating
profiles which translate 0,0,0 into bizarre output values.  In fact, I've
profiled the same saved scan of my IT8 target several times and got a
different profile each time, with 0,0,0 translating to anything from 20,8,14
to 5,0 40  !!   Of course, with near black it's not too important to have
near equal RGB values, but it would be nice for those values to be close to
zero. However, this only happens if I un-check black point compensation
during the profile to profile conversion.  Trouble is, doing the latter
crushes all my shadow detail as well.

I'm not sure what causes some blues to tend towards purple, but again I
think the scanner is the culprit. I've been able to fix this with a couple
of hue/saturation adjustments to the printed color patches at the expense of
some accuracy in the rendition of some other blue shades. No great loss as
EZ is at its least accurate with blue in any case, as long ask sky blues are
still ok.

I understand that the new level of EZ has an improved color engine.  I'd be
interested to know to what extent these issues have been addressed (assuming
I'm not alone in experiencing these problems, of course!).  Overall, I do
get quite acceptable color rendition for my purposes. With it, my 900 is
brilliant for photos - almost as good as the 750 in quality, but much more
robustly built, faster, and with larger ink carts.  Without a profile, it
would be crap.  Maybe as Epson developed it as a business printer, they
didn't bother too much with color accuracy?

Happy new year to all,
Ian

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