File Format: .tiff 16bit
DPI: 360
OS: Windows 11
Printer: Epson 3880
Ink: Piezography Pro
I’ve been noticing some odd outlining in certain areas of my printed images and I’m trying to understand what it is. I’ve attached two magnified images of a test print I made. On the picture of the cat nose there is a white outline around the left nostril and the image of the fur has some white outlines next to some of the fur.
This has been a present on many of my prints around fine details and can make some things look a little strange or crunchy. Is this something produced by QuadToneRIP? At a glance it looks like certain sections of the image are oversharpened, but the original image file has no such sharpening artifacts. It also isn’t present across the whole image, only specific details. I wouldn’t think QuadToneRIP or the Epson 3880 would add sharpening so I’m wondering if this is something QuadToneRip is doing to attempt to preserve fine details that would normally be too small to render.
Anyone know what this is and how I might be able to stop this from happening?
QTR does not sharpen… Can you send your full resolution image file from above to Rachel at [email protected]. Use wetransfer or similar so that the file ks not compressed during the send.
Jon
@jon-cone
I just sent an email. Thanks!
Hi Connor,
I received the image file and it is not over sharpened. It is quite smooth. Can you send me screen shot of your QuadTone RIP settings including curves that was used to print the artifact-ed print.
Rachel - IJM TechSupport
Hi Rachel,
Here is the exact settings I used. I also repeated this print from a Mac using the same settings. The results were the same. As part of a different test I did invert the curves for warm shadows and cool highlights. This also produced the same artifacts.
-Connor
Hi Connor,
It is really unusual from my experience. I asked Jon and he said Ordered dithering is the norm and should not be adding such a large amount of visible dithering and artifacts to the printing. He suggests trying the adaptive to see if makes a difference. He then asked whether your printer is in alignment as that could be responsible for what it happening. In other words, some dots of ink are not printing where they should be.
Is this a printer that you have been using regularly and this problem just began, or are you resurrecting a used printer for this purpose? Have you performed a recent alignment?
Rachel - IJM TechSupport
Hi Rachel,
I did try adaptive dithering and that didn’t change anything. I also performed a manual print alignment and nozzle check before printing that image.
I just dug through some of my test prints when setting up the printer and maybe this will be helpful. This is a different image on matte paper. The first was printed using the Epson Inks using Epson ABW. The second was using Epson Inks using QTR. And the third was using the Piezography inks with QTR.
The third Piezography ink image shows a white line under the eye. The Epson inks are not. Could it be something with the ink curves? The underline is visible without magnification and is a bit more obvious than what I managed to capture with my phone.
Piezography’s “.quad” ink curve files are special instructions that tell your printer exactly how much of each Piezography ink shade to put down for every single dot. They’re not about aligning ink channels or changing the dithering pattern itself. The magic of “.quad” files with so many shades of ink is that they help your printer lay down a lot more ink, effectively filling in the gaps that you’d normally see with standard printer dithering (like in QTR or Epson ABW modes). This significantly boosts the resolution of your prints, almost tripling it! While this higher resolution brings out amazing details you wouldn’t see otherwise, it also makes your prints much more revealing. This means that any subtle imperfections in your image files, like over-sharpening or minute masking lines that would be practically invisible with regular QTR or ABW, become much more noticeable with Piezography. It’s possible that the anomaly you’re seeing is a result of this increased detail but owing to hardware rather than imaging. Unfortunately, without knowing what the specific anomaly is, I can’t offer a direct solution. This is certainly a first on this community.
Rachel - IJM TechSupport
So I’ve done some more inspecting and testing and I think this is starting to look like a hardware related issue. To rule out a software issue I decided to reprint one of these images upside down (flipped the image in software). My thinking is that if this was software related then the picture would come out looking exactly the same with the same artifacts in the same places.
What actually happened is the “underlining” I’m seeing has effectively flipped. For example, if there was an underline below a hair, it is now above it. This is telling me something is probably misaligned.
I wanted to see if the issue was ink specific so I tried a cool tone only print and a warm tone only print. I don’t see a difference between them.
Looking really closely at all the prints, I think the medium tone inks are printing slightly above where they should be. The “underlining” I’m seeing might just be the ink-less void that is left.
At glace my nozzle tests look good, but under very close inspection I noticed something. For each ink, the next shade/color will print one step below the previous. But between the dark warm (5) and medium cool (6) inks there isn’t a step. They are in-line. Could this be the cause? If it is, how does this even happen?
I printed a digital negative and the issue is pretty obvious under magnification. The medium inks are clearly printing with a bit of an offset. I don’t know what I can do about this. As far as I’m aware the nozzles are fixed together. Maybe an old factory defect? Frustrating since I just spent a bunch of money on the printer and ink to fill the printer 
