Fixing flesh tones on Epson Velvet Fine Art paper using Capture NX2

I really like the Epson Velvet Fine Art paper; however, I haven't been happy with how flesh tones are reproduced.  They seem a bit jaundiced and washed out.  Granted, part of that may be with my editing.  But, I use a profiled monitor, and they look fine on the screen.  Plus, I am able to get acceptable flesh tones with other papers.

At first I attributed it to the fact that the Epson Velvet Fine Art is not pure white, it's more of an off white in color.  But, the more I thought about it, I decided that using the "SPR2880 Velvet Fine Art Paper.ics" color profile for the paper should compensate.

So, I set out to see if there are other edit adjustments that I could make to make flesh tones more acceptable.  I wanted something easy and reproducible in other prints.  First I played around with the white balance - but I opted against that since the white balance is dependent on the light source use when the image was taken.

Since I use Nikon Capture NX2 as my primary image editing tool, I decided to tweak the Picture Control settings.  The neat thing about NX2 is that you can use Picture Control on any NEF file - not just those taken with camera's that have Picture Control built-in (which my Nikon D80 does not).  I found that increasing the saturation by 2 and decreasing the hue by 1 resulted in very acceptable flesh tones.  The difference these simple changes make are nothing short of remarkable.

I imagine that it would be possible to do something similar in PhotoShop.  I also have a problem with flesh tones on the Epson Watercolor paper - the next time I print on that paper I am going to try these same adjustments.

I am using the 13" x 19" sized paper and size the image at 12½" x 16½".  This size fits nicely in a 16" x 20" frame with a 2" mat border.

Printing from Adobe PhotoShop Elements 7

These are instructions I've devised when printing from Adobe Photoshop Elements 7.  Presumably the steps should be similar with other versions

1. Click on File->Print

• Make sure Printer is set to Epson Stylus Photo R2880
• Under Color Management
• Color Handling is set to Photoshop Elements Manages Color
• Printer Profile is set appropriately according to paper type
2. Click on the Page Setup ... button

• Verify paper size is set correctly
• Verify paper source is set correctly
• Sheet when printing on normal paper
• Manual - Roll for most fine art papers (8x10 or larger)
• Manual - Front for thick media (between 1.0mm and 1.3mm)
• Verify portrait vs landscape print orientation
• Click OK on the Page Setup window
3. Click on the Printer Preferences button

• On the Main tab, verify the following
• Media Type is set according to the paper being used
• Color is set to Color or Advanced B&W Printing
• On Print Quality select Quality Options

• Set Speed according to paper type, usually 4 for most fine art papers, 5 for canvas type papers
• Verify High Speed and Edge Smoothing are unchecked.
• Click OK on the Quality Options window
• Back on the Main tab
• Set Mode to Custom and Off (No Color Management)
• Verify Source and Size are set correctly according to paper type
• Optionally click on Borderless if desired. Note: Borderless can only be selected for certain media (such as 4x6 glossy). If the media does not support borderless then a warning message will be displayed
• Optionally check "Print Preview"
• On the Page Layout tab

• Verify Orientation is set appropriately
• Verify Paper Size is set correctly
• Verify Output Paper is set to Same as Paper Size
4. Click OK on the Printer Preferences window to return to the Adobe Print window
5. Click the Print button on the Adobe Print window, a print windows will appear

6. Click the Print button on the Print window

• A printing window will display for a few moments. Do not press Cancel unless you need to cancel the print.
7. If "Print Preview" was optionally selected then the Epson Print Preview window will be displayed
• Verify the output is as expected (orientation, filling page, etc.)

•  If correct the click Print
• if a problem then Click Cancel and go back to step 1. 
  Note: Colors will appear to be off since the printer color profile has been applied
• A Printer status window will appear while printing

• The printer will begin printing - when complete the paper will be ejected and the print status window will go away.

Color management check list

As I stated once before, I am no expert when it comes to color management.  But, I have done quite a bit of reading about it and have evolved the following steps which I use

1. Use a color profiled monitor
   

   I use a the, now discontinued, Monaco Optix XR system for profiling my monitors.  Monaco has since been bought out by x-rite.  It's not formally supported under Windows Vista/7 - but there is a work around to get it to work.
   
   

   The biggest problem I have is that the monitor profile doesn't seem to stick. I'm not sure what causes this - if different applications load their own monitor profile or what - but I have found that I will need to run the MonacoGamma tool to reload the monitor profiles whenever doing photo work. This application is normally in the Startup folder; but, I've copied it to my desk top so that I can double-click on it whenever needed. It's pretty obvious whenever the monitor profiles have been overridden because my two monitors look very different when not using the color profiles I created.

2. Use paper that has an ICC profile specifically for the R2880 printer
   

   I've addressed this in another blog post titled ICC color profiles.  This can get confusing if you have a large number of ICC color profiles loaded.  Initially I bought several sample paper packs and had all of the different ICC color profiles loaded.  I've since deleted all ICC color profiles except for those for paper I specifically have on hand

3. Configure application to manage color and select the appropriate ICC profile for the paper being used
   

   For Adobe PhotoShop Elements, select "Photoshop Elements Manages Color" in the Color Management section of the print dialog window.  For Nikon Capture NX2 select "Use Color Management" on the Color Mangement tab on the print dialog window.  I usually use "Relative Colormetric" and select "Black Point Compensation".  I confess that I don't really understand what that all means - but it seems to be the generally recommended setting from what I've read.

4. In the print driver make sure color management is turned off
   

   On the Epson R2880 printer preferences window, under Mode select "Custom" and then "Off (No Color Adjustment)"

Something to be aware of is that a hardcopy print will never look exactly like it does on the monitor. This is because two devices (monitor vs printer) use very different technology to produce colors. The monitor uses red, green, and blue dots of varying intensities to produce colors. The printer lays down Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black ink in varying sizes.

One problem that is discussed periodically on the internet is applying color management twice. This can happen if you have configured the application to manage color and didn't turn it off on the printer preferences window. But, it can also occur with the monitor color profiles; for example, if you have used Adobe Gamma (a software monitor profiling solution) and a hardware based monitor color management solution.  There can also be differences in brightness and contrast between the monitor and print.

Other things that can affect color accuracy on the final print

• The color of the paper.  Not all whites are equal.  The color of white paper can range from having a slight blue tinge to a slight cream tinge, or even a slight gray tinge.  It seems like ICC color profiles should be able to compensate for this; but, my experience is that skin tones are difficult to render accurately on papers with cream colored tinge, often referred to as 'natural'.
• The quality of the ICC color profile.  Some paper manufacturers do a better job with their supplied ICC profiles than others. My, admittedly limited, experience is that Inkpress ICC color profiles do not render as accurate colors as those from Red River or Moab. I suppose the best solution is to have your own custom ICC color profiles for your specific printer and paper combination. There are a number of places that will do this for you for a typical cost of around $25 to $50.
• The lighting the print is being viewed under.  Colors look different under fluorescent light verses incandescent lights verses sunlight.  Often in our homes we can have mixed lighting - such as sunlight streaming in through a window and both incandescent and fluorescent artificial lighting.  This is particurly becoming a problem as CFL's (fluorescent) light bulbs are becoming more common as they come in different colors (warm, bright, cool, etc.) and can even exhibit a different color when they are first turned on verses having been on for a while.

Printing on canvas

My experience with printing on canvas is, admittedly, sparse - limited to 3 sheets of 8½ x 11 sheets that came with sample packs.  But, that experience has been less than encouraging.

The biggest problem I'm having is getting the canvas sheets to feed properly into the printer.  The sheets are just too floppy and the printer can't seem to grab them properly - resulting in the image printing crooked on the page.

I've done a bit of research (i.e. google) into this and wasn't able to find much; but, I did find a site that suggested taping a "guide sheet" to the front of the canvas. I'm out of canvas samples; so, I can't try this just yet. But, I would like to figure this out. The instructions were specifically for the Epson R2400; but, it seems like it would be apropos to the R2880 as well

Loading Canvas in the Epson Stylus Photo R2400

I haven't yet decided if I even like the look of canvas.  Its heavy texture can, IMOHO, be a bit distracting depending upon the image.  Red River Paper has a River Linen paper which has a similar, albeit more subtle, texture.  But, it's still a paper and not a canvas.

Cost to print (ink only)

Unfortunately, I haven't been keeping track of how much ink I'm using vs how many sheets of paper I've printed; but, there have been several studies of ink costs

In a study of the cost of printing, Red River Paper determined that ink costs for the Epson R2400 - the predecessor of the R2880 - to be about $0.0113 (that's 1.13¢) per square inch if using photo black and $0.0095 (that's 0.95¢) per square inch if using matte black at $12.75 per ink cartridge

A review of the R2880 on Nikonians tracked how much paper and ink was used during the review.  Converting the results from metric to US works out to about $.0.0114 (that's 1.14¢) per square inch - which was a combination of both photo and matte black at $12.75 per ink cartridge

Finding ink for the R2880 can be a challange because it is not typically carried at stores like Office Depot.  I have found it locally at Fry's Electronics - but they tend to be more expensive.  I can also get it at the Red River Paper outlet store.  But, I typically order directly from the Epson online store because they work out to be the cheapest.

Online Epson Store - $13.29, no sales tax and free overnight shipping on 3 cartridges or more
Red River Paper - $12.90, plus Texas sales tax
Amazon - $14.25, eligible for free super saver shipping on orders greater than $25

Bottom line, I figure it costs about 1.5¢ per square inch for just ink, not including paper - a conservative estimate that allows room for inflation and waste.

To put it into perspective - I can print 4x6 at CostCo for 13¢ - it would cost me 36¢ to print that same picture at home.  And that's just ink cost, doesn't include the cost of the paper.  So, for snap shots I print at CostCo - for fine art printing on specialty paper I print at home.

Paper feeding

There are essentially 4 ways of feeding paper into the Epson R2880 not including the ability to print on CD's and DVD's

Sheet Feeder - This is the feed used primarily for plain paper. You can stack multiple sheets and it will feed them one at a time. Personally, I rarely use this as I use my R2880 almost exclusively for photo printing on fine art paper.

Single sheet guide - This is the method of feeding paper that I use 99% of the time. Unfortunately, this method is also the most finicky. Basically, you place a sheet of paper into the rear sheet feeder being careful to keep it up against the right guard rail. You push it down into the printer until it won't go any further and then hold it there until the printer senses it and pulls it a bit further into the printer. So far so good. When you print, the R2880 pushes the paper out a bit and does this back and forth thing. Then, if you're lucky, it will start printing. Once it actually starts printing then all is good. But, what happens to me 50% to 75% of the time is that the R2880 will do it's back and forth thing and then stop - the printer light will start flashing and the Epson status window will display an error. To address the paper feed error

1. Press the paper eject button (the one on the far right) - the printer will eject the paper, be sure to pull the paper out the rest of the way so that printer sensor doesn't detect the paper.
2. Press the paper button (the one on the far left) - it will go from blinking to steady
3. Try feeding the paper again - if it takes then the printer will automatically start printing. But, it may take 2 or 3 tries (or more).

The media I have the most difficulty with is canvas. I bought a sample pack of Moab paper which included a sheet of their canvas. I don't know if it's too floppy or what, but the R2880 just couldn't grab it to pull it into the printer. Once I did finally get it to print, it printed crooked on the sheet. That's the only time I've had a problem with crooked printing.

Roll feeder - I've never actually used the roll feeder. Buying paper by the roll doesn't offer any real cost advantage over sheets; in fact, it can be more expensive per square inch. So, the only reason to use it is to be able to print non-standard sizes. For example, if you want to print at 12" x 24" then you really don't have any other choice. You'll also be limited on paper choices as most papers do not come in rolls. But, it's there if you need it.

Front sheet feed - this one is a bit of a mystery. Apparantly, you can only use the front sheet feed for Super B (13"x19") paper that is fairly thick - between 1.0mm and 1.3mm (according to the Epson R2880 User's Guide). That's actually quite thick for paper. To put it into perspective, that's just slightly thinner than mat board (which is 1/16" thick, or 1.5875mm). Even if you have paper that thick, you still can't use the front sheet feed if it is smaller than 13" x 19". Trying to use the front sheet feeder using any other size or thickness of paper is an exercise in frustration and futility. Been there - done that.

Printing on CD's and DVD's - I've never done it; so, I don't really have anything to say about it. If I ever do then maybe I'll come back and update this.

ICC color profiles

ICC color profiles can be very confusing.  I'm not going to try to explain what they are nor why to use them - primarily because I'm not sure I understand them 100% myself, plus much has been written already and is just a google search away.

Suffice it to say that I only print on my R2880 printer using paper that the manufacturer has specifically provided ICC profiles for the R2880 printer.  I use my laser printer when printing everything else.  Or, if I need color but it doesn't have to be photo quality then we have an old Epson C86 printer which I'll use.

Fortunately, there is a wide variety of papers available that meet this criteria.

I plan to post detailed instructions for printing using Nikon Capture NX2 and PhotoShop Elements; so, I'm just going to keep this post generic.

To install an ICC color profile, simply download it, open Windows Explorer and navigate to the directory.  Then right-click on it and click on "Install profile".  I assume it's just as easy with an Apple computer.

Using the ICC color profile is a matter of selecting it from a list of all of the ICC color profiles you selected.  It will have the same name as the filename of the ICC file which, in most cases, is rather obvious.  Even if it's not intuitively obvious - you downloaded a specific file for a specific paper, so you can make a note of which profile to use for that paper.

The exception, ironically, is Epson - which doesn't provide ICC profiles directly.  They provide an application that you download and run which then installs the ICC profiles.  The problem with this approach is that it's not obvious which ICC color profile goes with which Epson paper.  They have a naming convention they use for their ICC color profiles; but, it's rather cryptic and they don't always conform to it.  So, I've attempted to decrypt which Epson ICC color profiles go with which Epson paper

First off, there are some default ICC profiles for R2880 that are automatically installed when you installed the print driver for the R2880 printer.  Generally you don't want to use these as there are better profiles that can be downloaded from the Epson web site.  Also, I don't know what the difference is between an ICC file and an ICM file

SPR2880 Double-Sided Matte Paper.icm
SPR2880 Matte Paper-HW.icm
SPR2880 Photo Paper Glossy.icm
SPR2880 Photo Qlty IJP.icm
SPR2880 Premium Glossy.icm
SPR2880 Premium Luster.icm
SPR2880 Premium Semigloss.icm
SPR2880 Ultra Premium Presentation Matte.icm
SPR2880 Ultra Smooth Fine Art Paper.icm
SPR2880 Velvet Fine Art Paper.icm
SPR2880 Watercolor Paper - Radiant White.icm

Here is what I've been able to dicipher about Epson color profiles

GLOSSY PAPERS

Premium Photo Paper Glossy
- SPR2880 PrmGlsy Photo.icc (when printing at quality level 4)
- SPR2880 PrmGlsy SprPhto.icc (when printing at quality level 5)

Premium Photo Paper Semi-gloss
- SPR2880 PrmSmGls Photo.icc (when printing at quality level 4)
- SPR2880 PrmSmGls SprPhto.icc (when printing at quality level 5)

Ultra Premium Photo Paper Luster
- SPR2880 UPrmLstr Photo.icc (when printing at quality level 4)
- SPR2880 UPrmLstr SprPhto.icc (when printing at quality level 5)

MATTE PAPERS

Ultra Premium Presentation Matte
- SPR2880 UPrmMtte Photo.icc (when printing at quality level 4)
- SPR2880 UPrmMtte SprPhto.icc (when printing at quality level 5)

Premium Presentation Matte
- SPR2880 PrmMtte Photo.icc (when printing at quality level 4)
- SPR2880 PrmMtte SprPhto.icc (when printing at quality level 5)

FINE ART PAPERS

Water color - radiant white
- SPR2880 WtrclrRdWht Photo.icc (when printing at quality level 4)
- SPR2880 WtrclrRdWht SprPhto.icc (when printing at quality level 5)

Velvet Fine Art
- SPR2880 VelvtFneArt Photo.icc (when printing at quality level 4)
- SPR2880 VelvtFneArt SprPhto.icc (when printing at quality level 5)

Ultra Smooth Fine Art Paper
- SPR2880 UltrSmth Photo.icc (when printing at quality level 4)
- SPR2880 UltrSmth SprPhto.icc (when printing at quality level 5)

CANVAS PAPERS

Premium Canvas Matte
- SPR2880 CnvMt-UtlSm Photo.icc (when printing at quality level 4)
- SPR2880 CnvMt-UtlSm SprPhto.icc (when printing at quality level 5)

Premium Canvas Satin
- SPR2880 CnvStn-Lstr Photo.icc (when printing at quality level 4)
- SPR2880 CnvStn-Lstr SprPhto.icc (when printing at quality level 5)

EXHIBITION FIBER PAPER

- SPR2880_EFP_PK_5760

There are a few ICC color profiles which got installed that I don't know which paper they go with

Unknown ICC profiles
- SPR2880 Photo Qlty UP
- SPR2880 Matte Paper-HW
- SPR2880 Double-Sided Matte Paper

And there is a paper available from Epson (although, it is actually manufacturered by PremierArt) that I'm not sure which ICC color profile to use with

- Matte Scrapbooking Photo Paper