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Epson Stylus Pro 4900 Part 2 - part 4 of 1 2 3 4

by Mike McNamee Published

Epson Traditional Photo Paper
Having got some baseline data and tuned the targets here and there, we progressed to using Epson Traditional Photo Paper. This was printed using the profile from the Epson website (Epson Stylus Pro 4900_4910 Traditional_Photo_Paper_PK.icc for the record) with PGPP250 as the media and 2880dpi, with High Speed set 'off'.

The patch set looked very vibrant and this was confirmed by the HiGAM data plot and the very low ΔC/w values (see tables). All the errors were low but the highest component was the lightness and to investigate this we took the Epson profile and edited it to provide 3% less lightness at the 50% point.

Our efforts were rewarded with a record-breaking data set at 1.3 ΔE00 for the Macbeth CC 24 swatch set! Interestingly the Fogra V3 set failed with the dissenting tones being the very darkest tones which were being rendered too dark. Our printing method (from Photoshop using Black Point Compensation and without a RIP) does not do so well in these tests and the ability of the TPP to hold very deep tones actually goes against us! As with other baryta papers the skin tones were very accurate.

The Dmax for the paper was 2.40 and the CII was 1.63, both excellent results.

Overall

After quite a lot of huffing and puffing we managed to break a record! It is not vital to the cause but it is nice to keep the boundaries pushed forward. There is no doubt that the UltraChrome HDR ink set does what it says on the box; the high gamut, high saturation capability shows through in all tests and the new testing regime seems to be bedding in well. As we do even more testing the enticing possibility of pushing things further is dangling before us; we have not even started using tuned, bespoke profiles yet but the stack of test prints gradually submerging the desk (and work table and the floor space) is telling us it is time to take a break!

Finally, perhaps we should apologise for burdening our readers with such an indigestible luncheon of statistics but we wanted to set down a benchmark and we ourselves often refer back to Imagemaker to seek clarification of previous results (there are plenty already on the last couple of pages!). Incomplete lists make this difficult, even impossible and who knows what we may wish to compare with in the future.

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last update 09/12/2022 14:54:01

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Epson Stylus Pro 4900 Part 2 - part 4 of 1 2 3 4