Ive been using the piezopro inks for prints for the last year with much success. Lately, I cant seem to figure out what is happening but, my prints come out with very cool tones. I have used the same settings and have saved them in a preset in print tool. I believe nothing has changed in my workflow to cause this change. In print tool I have turned off the split tone print option in QuadToneRIP and I’m still seeing these cool tones.
Here is a close up of the cool tones I’m seeing on Moab Juniper Glossy. I’m printing on a epson p600.
I cannot really troubleshoot anything in terms of looking at the print as to what has changed to make your prints cool when they were not previously. I would need to know the curve or curves you selected… that would be first up… Send a screen capture of your printing setup in QTR that shows the curve/curves and settings…
I used the factory P600-Hahn-PhoRagBaryta-Neutral quad curve. Ive never adjusted it since it was working good. The print looks like I had every slider on the cool quad curve turned to 100 on each.
Perhaps you should print inkseparation8.tif in Calibration Mode and look at each of the individual ink channels to see if the warm inks have been contaminated. At the least it will rule out any ink contamination (cool inks in the warm)…
I notice you are printing with an ICC profile but that will not affect color, only adjust the contrast from linear to that which is contained in the ICC.
This has been printed incorrectly… why I can not tell you but it would appear that the calibration image has been tagged (possibly) with a profile; or it has been opened in Photoshop (perhaps) at which time its color values were converted and then saved; or (perhaps) your QuadTone RIP installation is corrupted and needs to be reinstalled; or (perhaps) your OS X permissions (if you are on OSX) are not allowing the QTR printer driver to operate which can happen if you updated OS X.
So - these calibration images are untagged when you download them and must remain so… If yours is now tagged with a profile (you can tell this if you have setup your Photoshop settings according to our manual and when you open it the message that the the image is untagged does not appear) - then that is preventing your being able to print the target correctly. But if it is untagged - then it would probably point to permissions issues in QTR or corruption of QTR - and that would of course affect the output when you are printing with a Piezography curve.
I originally had you print this to see if you had an inks issue. But it is indicating instead a software issue that may be related. In any event, if you can not print the calibration mode image correctly I can’t see if you have an inks issue. Obviously you need find the software issue to determine if it is only related to this test or is also affecting your printing.
That’s perfect. So your inks are correct and without contamination. I did want to try and isolate whether you had an ink contamination problem or not. That you do not then leaves software / workflow issues… Try reinstalling QTR and see if the problem goes away.
Did you update your OS X coinciding with the color shift?
I reinstalled QTR and cleaned the printhead, ink pad etc., reinstalled my printers. It is still printing out cool neutral ink for the entire image. I haven’t updated my software recently on my mac OS.
This is a scan from a print I printed earlier this year on the left and on the right a print from today. I used only the neutral quad curve for the corresponding paper.
Ok, I think Ive figured it out. There is an older post I found that I believe points to the issue. It seems the ink may have settled in the cyan channel. I’m going to try and flush it out and see what if that takes care of the issue.
That was it. I purged the Cyan channel in calibration mode for a few pages to get some fresh ink in the lines. I guess some of the dark cool tone ink did settle in the dampers. I’m going to top off my carts and be more mindful of the settling.
EDIT: I had swapped out the dampers and did a couple power cleans. Its back to normal now.
