Epson Gamut Boost

Mike McNamee checks out Epson's latest

Epson's Vivid Magenta ink technology expanded the gamut of their prints and has now been introduced to the replacement for the 2400, the Stylus Pro 2880. So far so good, now we have a desktop machine with an even wider gamut, although it is at the expense of the cartridge size which has dropped to 13ml each, presumably so they can fit the extra one in. However, and more importantly for professionals, they have introduced a yet larger gamut ink set for the wideformat professional machines, which carry a '9' in their name, eg 7900 or 9900 (note the 7880 and the 9880 are not superseded). The cartridge bay now holds both Matte Black and Photo Black inks, along with the usual suspects, but joined by an orange and a green. Epson UltraChrome HDR now includes:

Pk, Mk, Lk, LLk – C, Lc – VM, Lvm – Y – Orange – Green

The claimed advantages are higher gamut and smoother skin tones. The ability to change from matt to photo ink is also a huge benefit, which has been long awaited.

While we have not yet tested the actual machines, we have had prints made and obtained a provisional set of profiles. The data are outstanding. The gamut is not only the largest that we have measured to date (on a printer), it is also quite a large increment and the gamut volume has surpassed the 1 million unit mark for the first time. Although the look of the print does not change at the 1 million point, it is nice for the advertising boys to have these nuggets of data to boast about (and the end user if they are selling their services as a printer). The measurement and display of gamut and gamut volume is a fickle subject, so bear in mind that our measurements are always done the same way and that our figures are often smaller than those calculated by, say, Monaco Profiler. This is to do with the mathematics expressing Lab and not real differences in the actual colour spaces.

The practical benefits of the larger gamut are as listed below: 1. A larger range of Pantone Spot colours will be brought into gamut  for accurate reproduction in proofing. 2. More out-of-gamut (oog) colours in fine art reproduction will be pulled into gamut giving better discrimination of subtle watercolour tones and the ability to actually reproduce some more of the very saturated, acrylic media. 3. The flexographic users will be delighted. Traditionally they have had to utilise many spot colours and dodges in their massive print runs. They will now be able to accurately proof their concoctions.

 

Above; A series of pigment swatches painted onto watercolour paper and then scanned on a calibrated Epson 10000 GL. The file is then imaged in Photoshop and the Gamut Warning turned on while the proof gamut is set to the target profile. The greyed out areas represent pixels that are out of gamut. The orange is very much out of gamut on sRGB indicating that this would be a poor profile for camera copying of artwork. It highlights the potential benefit of RAW camera capture followed by output into a higher volume workspace such as Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB.

The people who make the packaging mock-ups for focus groups can also get closer to the accurate colours they will eventually print using spot colours. The classic example is Cadbury purple on their drinking chocolate, a fiendishly difficult colour to get right without a spot colour. 4. A larger colour range means smoother gradations between colours. The expanded range should open the possibility of smoother skin tones (and many other colours for that matter).

Above: The intense reds of Linda McCann's amaryllis show a similar trend to the test of the swatches.

The Data

The gamut volumes are shown in the histogram and the 7900 is compared with the 3800. The data on the 3800 are a compilation of more than 50 surfaces and ink combinations. On the left are the results for Matte Black ink sets onto matt and art surfaces. On the right (dark brown) are the results for Photo Black inks onto luster, gloss and baryta surfaces. In each case data from Epson ink and third-part CIS inks are shown. The gamut volume of the 7900 is always best-in-class.

On a more practical (and visual) level we used the soft proofing of Photoshop along with its gamut warning flag to examine the profiles against real images and paint pigments.

ABOVE: A testing set of orange tones soft proofed with the profiles annotated in the top corners of the screen grabs. With the 7900 there is just a small number of pixels flagged at area marked 'A'. Note that none of the greens is out of gamut, indeed we could not find any in our trials!

Pigments

The paint pigments were prepared by Lukman Sinclair. Lukman had experienced some difficulty in reproducing the popular pigment ‘cadmium red’. Differentiating between subtle changes of tones with these reds had been a particular problem with differences in originals not being reflected by differences in the prints made from scans. The colours chosen were Windsor and Newton’s, Cadmium Orange, Cadmium Red, Alizarin Crimson, and a final swatch that was a mixture of the last two.

The Cadmium Orange is almost completely outside the sRGB gamut (people who photograph paintings take note!). A couple of areas are out of gamut on the 3800 but all are in gamut for the 7900. This test was for Watercolour Radiant White media, using matt ink. This pigment set were not fully in gamut for the Adobe RGB colour space.

Amaryllis

This is a scan from Linda McCann's lovely study of amaryllis. Once again the 9600 out-performs both sRGB and the 3800 on the same surface.

Orange Flowers

We took this image from Andrew Williams because it displays intense oranges. The original was an Adobe RGB file and so the right-hand variant of the composite shows everything in gamut for that colour space. The sRGB is well out of gamut, the 3800 just so (on the higher gamut Premium Glossy Photo Paper). The 7900 nearly made it, with just a few pixels showing as out of gamut on the Traditional Photo Paper profile.

For a more searching test we also checked out both the flower image and profiles using Monaco Profiler. This enables us to overlay gamuts, images and pixel 'star fields'. This is a more sophisticated test than soft proofing in Photoshop. The gamut warning view shows the 4800 variant to be spectacularly out of gamut (ie all flagged in grey) but the 7900 onto Traditional Photo Paper does quite a bit better.

BELOW: Data extracted from the profile-building file shows (in 2-D only) the position of the colour values from the Epson 4800. Superimposed is the single, out-of-gamut tone of the orange from the flowers above at 'A'. Although the improvement with the 7900 printer is impressive we are still talking about quite small shifts, such is the starting quality of the UltraChrome ink set.

Commentary

The screen grabs and data should be treated with due caution for although they show the gamut of the 7900 is measurably greater than the previous ink sets, this does not make 3800/4800 prints poor! Such is the accommodating nature of the eye that these subtle variations would pass unnoticed. However, there are two business models where the extra capability might be exploited. If being able to say to an artist, 'I can reproduce your art with more colour precision than my competitors, brings in more business, you are onto a winner. If you are contract proofing where spot colours are going to be measured and perhaps contractually binding, then you are on to a winner. Perversely for contract proofing of CMYK output the additional colours do not help, indeed in many cases the RIP will remove anything other than C,M, Y and K from the equation.

The balance you must find therefore is between the additional cost of investment either as an upgrade or a first purchase, along with slight additional costs of having extra cartridges on your shelf, against the cost benefit to having the greater gamut. There is a twist though. The 7900 and 9990 can also be supplied with a built-in spectrophotometer. While this is good for profiling thirdparty media, the main advantage is that you can proof a job, then audit it with the spectro and print the target and the error data, a requirement for FOGRA, UGRA and GRACoL contract proofing. At the time of writing we were unsure if the spectro and target complied with the latest standards for this.

OTHER FEATURES

In case you think that the 7900 and 990 are just pretty colours, we ought to highlight the other features that come along with them. The number of print heads has been doubled so that 40m2/hr is possible in terms of output. The full feature list is as follows:

11-colour Epson UltraChrome HDR ink set, expanding UltraChrome K3 with Vivid Magenta by adding Orange and Green in 11 individual, high capacity 350ml or 700ml cartridges
10-channel Epson MicroPiezo TFP print head for accurate and reliable imaging with the highest image quality
Epson Variable-sized Droplet Technology for optimum speed, ink usage, efficiency and image detail
Optional Epson SpectroProofer technology powered by X-Rite spectrophotometer
Auto-switching of Matte and Photo Black inks
Epson new Look Up Table technology and super halftone technology for smooth gradations, less graininess and quality greyscale
Epson automatic nozzle check technology
Optimised throughput by use of high-speed rotary cutter

Overall

So far everything about the new HDR ink set and printers looks good, once again Epson have pushed up the bar. This latest step is not about proofing precision for CMYK, but about expansion of the colour range for those colours that have previously been out of reach. Exciting times, we can't wait to get onto a real machine and give it the once over! Prices for the four new printers have yet to be announced.
 

ABOVE: We did, of course, make real prints! Dmax of the new ink set was 2.31 and the metamerism was 0.9 Lab points, both excellent values. The Granger Charts were very smooth. The print onto Epson Velvet Fine Art was particulary smooth and very accurate indeed at 2.3 Δ2000 out of the box!