We have members learning Piezo printing. Using a wide variety of papers so we start by picking a curve which matches the characteristics of a paper supported by Piezo Pro software. Frequently, the user wants to simply make the print darker overall. Is this best done using the Ink Limit (Shadows) or Gamma (Midtones) sliders in QTRgui? I haven’t been able to find anything in the Piezo Pro documentation regarding this short of creating or modifying a curve. This is way to daunting a task for or members. Any suggestions?
For example, one case involves Canon HW Matte Paper (230gsm, 10mil) using Quad3880-HDP2 printer, Curve=P2-Sel-UHD-HahnPhoRagUltSM, Res=2880dpi,Uni-directional. The prints are beautiful yet too light; just to make them darker.
Thanks for any advice.
The QTR adjustments work with print descriptor files rather than .quad files and so Piezography does not really support any of the QTR adjustments - or rather other way around. They were not designed for adjusting Piezography curves. What you can do in Print Tool instead is to use a Piezography ICC to make the prints a bit darker. - especially in the mid to lower end. You would set Print Tool color management to Print Tool Managed and then select the Piezography Matte Print.icc. It will change the printing characteristics from purely linear to more like the contrast on uncalibrated displays.
If you have a calibrated display and your brightness is set quite low in the 80-95 candelas or L range - you could instead use this profile to Soft Proof and adjust the darkness of the print that way instead of in Print Tool Managed…
I think you should try the 1st method and use the ICC in Print Tool Color Management as I mentioned above!
Let us know!
Best,
Jon
Thanks, Jon.
Print-Tool is for macOS only, right? Is there a way to do this on a Windows PC?
We do have an ancient iMac (27-in, Late 2014) which cannot go beyond Big Sur v11.6.1. We could pull that out of our “to be recycled” pile if that would work. Otherwise, all we have is a miniMac M2.
Wow yes! That Mac would be perfect! And Big Sur is great. So make that the printer server if you like. Once you do that - you can try my suggestion.
Try this attached curve on your Win machine…
CM-P2-SEL-UHD-HahnPhoRagUltSm.quad (7.3 KB)
regards,
Jon
Thanks again, Jon! We’ll do that (iMac) and try out your curve on the PC tomorrow when I’m over there. I’ll let you know how it goes. Appreciate the help.