Paul - top bloke!

[JSR]

I don't know if this is the right place for this post, but I just wanted to sound a cheer for forum moderator Paul. Forums are always a good place for griping, but this post is all about praise.

This is my story -

I recently bought an Epson B40W and, as posts on this forum will tell, I've had a pretty tough time with it. To cut a long story short - it prints with a hideous green cast (using the Sawgrass ICC profile ArTainium_UV+_B40W_RGB_v2.5.icm).

I spent weeks on it doing test prints, making multiple prints, tweaking images, the whole works. If I hadn't been in the game for so long, I'd have been blaming it all on me not doing it right. It's our first thought, right?, to double-check, triple-check, pull our hair out, then check again?

Thanks to Paul's unparalleled generosity, he's loaned me his gadget for creating profiles. The gadget isn't tricky to understand and, after a few hours work, I created a brand new profile for my B40W. The first print was a little dark, but a quick increase on the brightness setting in Qimage sorted that.

And now, within hours of unboxing the device, my B40W is printing the best and most accurate photos/designs that I've ever seen in all my time of doing dye-sublimation. I can't believe the difference between the home-made profile and the Sawgrass one. It's even doing a fine job with a greyscale gradient - the ultimate utopian ideal that I've never been able to get from any Artanium system. The quality and colour accuracy from the B40W with this profile beats my 1400 (both of them) hands down. (That may change when I create new profiles for them too.)

It turns out that it didn't matter how many days I spent tweaking, doing test prints, wasting stock, and generally pulling my hair out by its roots. The problem came down to the profile. A problem that could have been fixed within two hours, if I'd had the right gadget.

As a result of what Paul has helped me to discover this week, my next big investment for 2011 will be to buy in one of these devices for myself. Yes it is expensive, but I think it'll be a price well worth paying.

Anyway, I just wanted to post this to express my thanks to Paul and to acknowledge what a top bloke he is for trusting me with his profiling device. I honestly can't believe that this is the same printer.

[AJLA]

Top bloke indeed!!!!!

He very kindly let me borrow some dvd's a while back and the tutorials he has posted on here are great.

[MissyH]

whats this "gadget"? and how can you creat the profiles? My prints are coming out ok however I think my profile could do with a "tweak"! is there any way you could share your profile for others to try? (sorry not very technical when it comes to things like this!)

Thanks
Paula

[JSR]

whats this "gadget"? and how can you creat the profiles? My prints are coming out ok however I think my profile could do with a "tweak"! is there any way you could share your profile for others to try? (sorry not very technical when it comes to things like this!)

Thanks
Paula

The main problem with someone else supplying the profiles (whether that's Sawgrass, Epson, or whoever) is that not all printers are alike. Even if you're using the same ink and the same paper/substrate, manufacturing tolerances mean that your printer won't be identical to the one used to make the profile.

Sawgrass supply a generic profile in much the same way that Epson supply generic profiles for their inks and paper. The cheaper the printer is, the wider the allowed manufacturing tolerance, and the more likely it is that the profile might not be good enough. The more expensive printers are manufactured to tighter tolerances, so the problem is less likely on those.

A generic profile is kind of like saying "close enough is good enough" - which is fine for most of the time, but if your printer was manufactured at the other side of the tolerance compared the one used for profiling, the profile won't solve too many issues. I suspect that was my problem with my B40W.

This "gadget" costs a few hundred pounds, so it's a considered purchase. It will also profile your monitor and projector if you have one.

It has an additional function above and beyond making the profile, and that is that it can create an optimised profile for any image you're planning to print. So even they are admitting that the accurate profile you create with the gadget can be further optimised depending on the image you're printing. I guess the best explanation of that is if you're printing an image with many shades of blue, then you'd want a profile that's best optimised for blues and you're less interested in reds. With this gadget, you just load up the image and it works out which colours it uses and then creates a photo-specific profile for that job.

It does work. I'm printing an order right now that only has greyscales and reds (not a green or blue to be seen), so it's of no interest to me if the greens or blues are accurate because I'm not printing them - but I do want the greyscales and the reds to be accurate, so I created a photo-specific profile. Last year I printed a similar design on my 1400 using the Sawgrass profile, but the greyscale was so red that I was embarrassed to send the order to my customer. This year, no such problem because of the home-made profile.

I have no problem with sharing the profile I've created but I had a specific problem to solve - the green cast. If your printer doesn't give you the same green cast, then my profile would over-compensate and you'd end up printing everything with a red cast. You could actually make things worse.

I hope I haven't made it sound too complicated. It's difficult to explain if you're not doing it yourself.

[Paul]

whats up with you people? ps. can any one give me a quote for large,white aluminium sheet with sublimated JSR 1st ost?? i want to frame it and hang it above my bed. even my wife dont say that many good thigs about me thanks Jonathan! i am happy i could help.

[AJLA]

We could have a "PAUL" fan club section or appreciation society

[Ian M]

I second what everyone else says in that Paul is not only a top bloke but a star too.

Ian

[Paul]

LOL how did I deserved for all that guys???

[Justin]

I'll try and finds another smilie for Paul with a VERY BIG HEAD! lol. Paul certainly is a great asset to the forum and will be sadly missed......just kidding If there were enough folk interested we could do a co-op buy and share the cost of one of these gadgets, maybe not an easy thing to sort out but just thinking aloud

[Paul]

not easy at all


ps. this is perfect "ME"
and I wear glasses too