Problem With Printing a Sunset

With an Epson 1280, I’m trying to print an image of a sunset that has a sunburst effect. That is, the sun is in the center, white, with colors radiating outward from yellow to yellow/orange, to orange/red. These are not the exact colors. I’m just giving you the idea. There’s some flare, but that’s not the issue.

The issue is that when I print the image, instead of the smooth gradation I see on my monitor, I see the colors separated with a definite line between them, like concentric circles of color, like a target with the sun as the bull’s eye.

I’m using Photoshop CS on a Mac system with 2.5 GB RAM. The 1280 has been custom profiled, and ColorSync Utility shows no problems with any of my .icc profiles.

Is there something in the printer driver that’s doing this? The problem seems to be when the app hands off the file to the driver. Do I have to do something in print settings? However, the problem also shows up when I do a soft proof, before getting to the printing stage.

This is not an issue of matching color, tonality, etc., to the monitor. Earlier, I had the same file printed by a local lab, and there was no problem. Now, I’m trying to print it, myself.
I posted this in the printer newsgroup, as well.

Is PS controlling the color or Epson driver settings??

I had a 1270 (no longer) didn’t see that problem
make sure to choose the right paper type and highest res, not fast settings in the printer driver

The issue is that when I print the image, instead of the smooth gradation I see on my monitor, I see the colors separated with a definite line between them, like concentric circles of color, like a target with the sun as the bull’s eye.

In article ,

One4All wrote:

The issue is that when I print the image, instead of the smooth gradation I see on my monitor, I see the colors separated with a definite line between them, like concentric circles of color, like a target with the sun as the bull’s eye.

Yep, that’s correct.

Consumer inkjet printers can only produce a small range of tones in any one color–particularly in ligt colors. The banding you’re seeing is the result.

I also posted in a printer newsgroup, and one post suggested my problem is posterization due to out-of-gamut colors. I checked the gamut warning & sure enough, all but the sun itself and the immediate yellow are out-of-gamut. The yellow/orange and the orange/red are out of gamut. The entire area lighted by the sun is out-of-gamut. Only the darker parts of the image are in gamut.

My concern now is getting the colors within the 1280’s gamut without degrading the brilliance and vibrance of the image. It may well be that only a professional lab can produce what I want, but this lab is a shop serving basic point & shoot and film developing and printing needs. It’s an 11×14 print, so I don’t think they printed it on a very sophisticated machine. I need to call them & find out what printers they use.

Would you care to give a couple examples of printers a photo lab/shop would use instead of a consumer inkjet printer like the 1280 for 11×14 prints?

One4All wrote:

I also posted in a printer newsgroup, and one post suggested my problem is posterization due to out-of-gamut colors. I checked the gamut warning & sure enough, all but the sun itself and the immediate yellow are out-of-gamut. The yellow/orange and the orange/red are out of gamut. The entire area lighted by the sun is out-of-gamut. Only the darker parts of the image are in gamut.

My concern now is getting the colors within the 1280’s gamut without degrading the brilliance and vibrance of the image. It may well be that only a professional lab can produce what I want, but this lab is a shop serving basic point & shoot and film developing and printing needs. It’s an 11×14 print, so I don’t think they printed it on a very sophisticated machine. I need to call them & find out what printers they use.

Would you care to give a couple examples of printers a photo lab/shop would use instead of a consumer inkjet printer like the 1280 for 11×14 prints?

Photolabs, even the consumer type, do not use a non-continuous tone printer like an inkjet printer, but a printer based on silver halide paper (normal photo paper). Because these printers are continuous tone printers, they shouldn’t have a problem with gradients like this.
—
Johan W. Elzenga johan<<at>>johanfoto.nl Editor / Photographer http://www.johanfoto.com

My concern now is getting the colors within the 1280’s gamut without degrading the brilliance and vibrance of the image.

In article ,

One4All wrote:

My concern now is getting the colors within the 1280’s gamut without degrading the brilliance and vibrance of the image.

You can’t–the brilliance and saturation are what makes those colors out of gamut. 🙂

—
Photography, kink, polyamory, shareware, and more: all athttp://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html

On Sep 19, 4:30 pm, tacit wrote:

In article ,

One4All wrote:

My concern now is getting the colors within the 1280’s gamut without degrading the brilliance and vibrance of the image.

You can’t–the brilliance and saturation are what makes those colors out of gamut. 🙂

—
Photography, kink, polyamory, shareware, and more: all athttp://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html

You’re right. To get the colors within the 1280’s gamut really bled them out. Since I cross-posted in a printer newsgroup, I can’t remember where this advice came from, but it got into trying a different rendering intent, and I find saturation intent, in soft- proofing, shows the least gradation while preserving the look of the image, altho "least gradation" means there’s still some. I’ll just have to do a trial print, but for this image @ $10 for an 11×14 at my local photolab, getting what I want is probably the way to go *for this image.*

With an Epson 1280, I’m trying to print an image of a sunset that has a sunburst effect. That is, the sun is in the center, white, with colors radiating outward from yellow to yellow/orange, to orange/red.

The issue is that when I print the image, instead of the smooth gradation I see on my monitor, I see the colors separated with a definite line between them, like concentric circles of color, like a target with the sun as the bull’s eye.

The 1280 has been custom profiled

"One4All" wrote in message

news:> With an Epson 1280, I’m trying to print an image of a sunset that has

a sunburst effect. That is, the sun is in the center, white, with colors radiating outward from yellow to yellow/orange, to orange/red.

…

The issue is that when I print the image, instead of the smooth gradation I see on my monitor, I see the colors separated with a definite line between them, like concentric circles of color, like a target with the sun as the bull’s eye.

…

The 1280 has been custom profiled

…
I’m going to bet five dollars it’s the profile. Here’s how you check it out. Create a smooth neutral gray gradient, and convert it to your printer profile. If you see banding in the gradient, or banding in the individual color channels try using the driver’s PhotoEnhance mode to print your image. —
Mike Russell -www.curvemeister.com

I did what you said & even on creation of the initial gradient document, before converting to any printer profiles, the gradation is not smooth; there is slight vertical banding, esp. in the mid-gray tones. This, of course, shows up when converting to a printer profile. I created the initial gradient document as an untagged document.

One thing that seemed to work with the sunset image was in making the print profile Same As Source in Print With Preview, when the source was Adobe RGB. In effect, I used no profiles other than the document’s
] profile, so I think your point that I have a profile problem rings
true.

The only problem with using Adobe RGB as a printer profile is that the print, while not showing the banding, produced less than vibrant colors, maybe due to a slight magenta cast in the print that doesn’t appear when I soft-proof the Adobe RGB profile. At any rate, there are no out-of-gamut problems using Adobe RGB as a printer profile.

I might add that I checked for profile errors in the Mac’s ColorSync Utility app & no problems found.

Not sure where to go from here. Maybe to the photolab.

I forgot to add that I made a print using Best Photo (my driver doesn’t have PhotoEnhance), but that produced many more problems.

Try converting to sRGB and you’ll see brighter colors.

BTW – I’m guessing you’re raising the price of everyone’s Epson stock with the ink you’re using. Rather than print the entire sunset image, just a strip of it at the top of the page will allow you to get many test prints from one sheet – cut off the strip you printed and run the sheet through again for each test.