Print-Tool User Guide - 1.1.0
Print-Tool User Guide - 1.1.0
version 1.1.0
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Print-Tool has been developed by Roy Harrington for those of us wanting to retain control
over the print process and overcome or master the differing approaches to printing images
that have been introduced during the last few years by the computer, software and printer
suppliers such as Apple, Adobe and Epson.
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PRINT-TOOL FEATURES
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This guide steps through the stages of using Print Tool to create a print. Throughout this
Guide one printer - an Epson 4800 - is used to illustrate the print setting options. Every
printer has different settings and controls but the principle is the same for all printers. Some
experimentation will be necessary.
There is no substitute for experimentation. You have to try things to see how they work and
to see if they work for you. This guide is NOT written as a recipe for perfect prints using
Print-Tool. It is written to help you understand the options you have to gain control over
the printing of your images.
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WORKSPACE
The Print-Tool Workspace has two regions, the Page and the Control Panel. The workspace
can be resized to fill the screen. It is shown here in the User Guide at its smallest proportions.
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The Page
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The Control Panel
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SUGGESTED WORKFLOW
This section outlines a workflow which will help familiarise you with the operation and
capability of Print-Tool. It focuses on each of the Panes and the selections available.
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Printer and Page Setup - Pane A
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The Paper: Page Setup brings up the window below. Your current settings here can be
saved as the default in the Settings: drop-down. Ensure that the printer in Format For: is
the same as for the printer selected at the top of Pane A.
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Remove an image file by selecting its file name or its image and clicking the - button.
Remove all image files by clicking the bottom right button of the set.
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Sizing and Positioning an Image or Images for Printing - Pane C
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The position and scale of the selected
image is fully adjustable:
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center the image on the paper or to move the image onto the paper.
by using the four Scaling buttons to Scale to Fit, to Scale to 100%, or to decrease or
increase the scaling in steps of 25%.
by using either of the Rotate buttons.
Moving or resizing the image on the page or changing any of the values in the Image
Position and Scaling window will automatically cause the other values to be recalculated.
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a) Select your Color Management policy.
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Options are:
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b) Select the ICC profile you want to apply to the print.
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The drop-down contains all of the ICC Profiles available in your profiles folder. Select the one
you want to apply. The option to select a profile is only available if you have selected
Application Managed above.
Print-Tool: Roy Harrington
www.quadtonerip.com
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c) Select the Intent to apply to the print.
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Options are:
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Perceptual Intent
Relative Intent
Relative Intent with Black Point Compensation
Saturation Intent
Much has been written about the different Intents and under what conditions they are best
applied - all of which can easily be found on the internet.
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d) Proofing.
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Soft Proofing immediately applies the Print Color Management settings (only available in
Application Managed - above) to the representation of the print giving an indication of the
final look of the print. The value of this check depends on several things including whether
your monitor is correctly profiled. This should only be treated as an indication of how the
final will print will be rendered.
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The Soft Proofing options here are:
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No Soft Proofing
Soft Proofing
Proofing + Ink Black
Ink-Black simulates the darkness (dMax) of the black ink. Its effect is the same as "Simulate
Ink Black in PhotoShop.
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e) Epson ABW.
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If your Epson Printer supports Epsons Advanced Black & White (ABW) for your print, and you
will be using ABW settings for your print, be it a finished print or a target for profiling, this
box must be checked. It enables access to the ABW settings in the Epson printer driver.
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f) Negative - Invert and Flip.
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Checking Negative simply inverts all data and flips left-right for an emulsion down
negative print.
Print-Tool: Roy Harrington
www.quadtonerip.com
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g) 8/16 bit.
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Bit control selection determines the bit depth for the color management computations. The
bit control options are:
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Auto 8/16-bit
16-bit
8-bit
Auto is recommended which uses 16-bit for all color management computations sent to the
printer driver. Selecting 16-bit in the QTR drivers and Epson drivers will determine the bit
depth sent to the print driver.
Selecting 8-bit forces all computations to be 8-bit for time/speed reasons, 16-bit may be
needed for drivers other than QTR or Epson to force 16-bit to driver.
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PRINTING
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Once you have made all of the settings click either of the Print buttons at the top or
bottom of the Control Panel. This brings up the printer driver for your selected printer where
there are more settings to review before the print is made. This works the same as if you are
printing directly from any other program such as PhotoShop.
Make your selections from the printer driver (see EXAMPLES in the next section), load your
paper in the printer. Hit Print - this time the one in the printer driver window - to make your
print.
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EXAMPLES
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The next section shows examples of printer driver settings for a selection of different prints.
The examples dont cover every facet of your print drivers. Experimentation and testing will
reveal which selections/options most suit your requirements.
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An RGB color image to be printed on 14 x 11 Harman Gloss Baryta Warmtone paper using
the profile supplied by Harman for the Epson 4800 with the PK black ink
(HAR_Eps4800_PK_GlossBarytaWarmtone). This example can equally apply to a Greyscale
print for which an appropriate ICC profile is available.
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The Layout drop-down in the printer driver has 8 entries of which only Color Matching and
Print Settings will be discussed here. You must ensure that all 8 drop-downs are reviewed
for your selections.
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Color Matching
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Print Settings
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A grayscale image to be printed on A2 paper using the QuadToneRIP driver for the Epson
4800 using Epson UltraChrome inks - QuadToneRIP printer name is Quad4800-UC.
1. It is a System
Managed print (Pane
D). This means that NO
ICC profile will be
applied to the print. If
there is a profile
displayed in the dropdown immediately
below it will be grayed
out and WILL NOT be
applied to the print.
Color Management
settings selected in the
printer driver WILL BE
applied to the print.
Intent and Proofing options are unavailable (grayed out). Selecting System Managed
is the equivalent in PhotoShop of Printer Manages Color.
2. The printer driver is the QuadToneRIP driver available from Roy Harrington (follow link in
the footer). It is used, in the context of Print-Tool, in the same way as any other printer
driver. It has its own settings which are illustrated briefly below and are fully explained in
the documentation accompanying QuadToneRIP.
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Clicking Print brings up the Quad4800UC printer driver where you will make your
final print selections. The printer driver
window overlays the Print-Tool workspace.
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Color Matching
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QuadToneRIP
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Color Matching
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QuadToneRIP
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Example 4: A Grayscale Patch Target printed with ABW for ICC Profiling
This is a variation on
Example 3 - a 21x4 step
random patch target is to
be printed on A4 Ilford
Smooth Pearl paper using
the Epson 4800 driver and
Epson UltraChrome inks.
This patch file is to be used
to make an ICC profile for
prints utilizing Epsons
ABW settings to tone the
final print. To make an ICC
profile suitable for the tone
settings required it is
necessary to check the
Epson ABW Mode box (in
Pane D) to enable the
settings to be selected in
the printer driver for
printing the patch file.
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Color Matching
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Note: in this example against Presets: the settings you make can be named and saved for
reuse - in this case: ABW - ICC - H4V4 - A4 Tray.
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Under the Print Settings are two tabs Basic and Advanced Color Settings.
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IMPORTANT: Examples 3 & 4 are both about printing 21x4 step random patch targets
for creating ICC profiles. Whatever settings you make in the driver (QuadtoneRIP,
Epson ABW or any other) for printing the patches you should use the same driver
settings for your final print matched with its ICC profile. Naming and saving settings as
Presets is recommended.
Print-Tool: Roy Harrington
www.quadtonerip.com
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NOTES
The workflow above is suggested but the actual sequence in which these steps are carried
out is not important. It is important is that you have made all the selections before hitting the
final Print.
If you have placed more than one image to print on a page then all of the selected settings
will be applied to each and every image.
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COLOR MANAGEMENT NOTES
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Color Management is mostly thought of for printing color but the ICC standard has always
included a grayscale format that can control the lightness/darkness tonality - essentially like a
grayscale PhotoShop Curve. Hardly anybody cared about this so it was not supported much.
QTR added some tools for creating grayscale ICCs way back. They were a bit harder to use
on Windows but on the Mac it all worked just like color profiles. It all worked beautifully until
CS4 - a long time ago. Due to a lot of internal changes like 64-bit programs, the grayscale
CM stopped working when printing from Photoshop to QTR driver. I spent a lot of time with
Apple and Adobe to have them fix this but no such luck. In fact later on they even made it
hard on the color people by dropping No Color Management from Photoshop. So you
couldn't print the color targets for making custom ICC profiles. All this led to me writing
Print-Tool - first as a CM fix and then as a general easy to use layout program.
Color Management has become increasingly difficult to understand. Conceptually its not that
complicated but in practice its hard to know which component of the whole system is doing
what, and how. In general there are 3 main CM players - the application(PhotoShop,
Lightroom, Print-Tool, or something else), the operating system OS X (with Colorsync as
Apple's Color Management System) and finally the driver (for example an Epson printer
driver or QTR printer driver for B&W). Unfortunately they all want to get in on the act - but
you need EXACTLY ONE to do the actual color management conversion.
The concept is to print out a target with no color management happening, measure it and
then create a profile. From that point on you print introducing ONLY THIS PROFILE into the
print workflow. The important thing though is that all the settings while printing have to be
IDENTICAL to those that were used when printing the original target.
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Print-Tool: Roy Harrington
www.quadtonerip.com
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or if you have a different driver version something may have been changed.
Not that all these things are likely to be a problem but sometimes, unpredictably, they are.
In practice it usually depends from where the profile came. Epson profiles for Epson papers
for a specific driver tend to work well. Downloaded profiles from someone/paper
manufacturer are harder to know how they were made. A personal example for a custom
paper showed one printer's profiles too light and one too dark. Profiles made with Print-Tool
made both printers work correctly.
It is important to always use OS X Print Presets to make sure you have consistent settings.
CS6 is particularly tricky here because there are settings in the Preset and settings stored
with the image. Make them all the same. Most of the settings show up on the Print Settings
print dialog pane but the Color Matching pane can also be important. CS6 Manages Color
will force Color Matching to ColorSync so if you want Print-Tool the same you should check
this and make it ColorSync as well. If you have a working setup its hard to give a guaranteed
answer - try various ways to see what works. Experimentation is the key.
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QuadToneRIP versus Print-Tool
On Mac there are now two separate products. The long time QTR driver runs as an ordinary
print driver in the OS. Its a specialized print driver for B&W output. You can print with any
program you like - naturally PhotoShop has been the usual. In late 2012 I introduced a new
program for high level image layout. I've used the name QTR-Print-Tool but to be less
confusing Ive now dropped the QTR part of the name. Print-Tool is somewhat like the
QTRgui front-end (for Windows) but its capabilities are a lot closer to something like
Qimage. Print-Tool and QTR are completely independent, so you can do PhotoShop to QTR
driver, Print-Tool to QTR driver, or Print-Tool to Epson driver.
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Roy Harrington
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