Canon TS8300 series: wrong / desaturated colors

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rawi
Posts: 6
Joined: Fri Nov 20, 2020 2:46 pm

Canon TS8300 series: wrong / desaturated colors

Post by rawi »

Hi!

I should maybe start by saying that I'm a total beginner in printing and that this is my first printing experience. So the problem may very well be behind the keyboard :wink:

Evaluation image
http://www.jirvana.com/printer_tests/PrinterEvaluationImage_V002.zip
This is a 16 bit tiff file in the ProPhoto RGB space.The crop in my comparison is not exactly the same but that should not matter.

Printer, paper, monitor
  • Canon TS8380 (local Chinese version of the TS8320 in the US / TS8350 in Europe)
  • Canon Photo Paper Plus Semi Gloss (SG-201) 4x6
  • Canon original ink
  • Viewsonic VP2458 calibrated to 5000 K, 110 lux with Colormunki Display + Displaycal in Linux (profiles are correctly installed, tested with darktable-cmstest, the profile is also correctly picked up by GIMP)
  • Viewing conditions: mostly dark except for a BENQ Screenbar set to ~5000 K and mounted on my monitor
Linux OpenSuse Leap 15.2
  • Turboprint demo 2.50-1 driver for the TS8300 series
  • file loaded into GIMP without conversion (keep embedded profile), print from turboprint plugin
  • print settings: 1200 dpi (3), Apple RGB color mode, perceptual, Canon Photo Paper Plus Semi Gloss
Windows 10
  • Canon manufacturer driver
  • Canon Digital Photo Pro
  • print settings: CMS off, color management set to driver matching, high quality, Canon Photo Paper Plus Semi Gloss (SG-201)
wx_camera_1605800953443-small.jpg
wx_camera_1605800953443-small.jpg (209.96 KiB) Viewed 5971 times
Turboprint on the left, Canon driver on the right. The Canon print looks perfect to me, although I understand that when set to "driver matching" the driver applies some internal optimization to the image to make it look more appealing (it's a consumer printer after all). The turboprint result, well... I do not think that this is the intended outcome, knowing now what this printer / ink / paper combination is capable of.

Next, I wanted to know what would be the approximate "expected" outcome (I don't expect a perfect match between screen and my print!) so I did a softproof in GIMP. Unfortunately for that printer no profiles are available from Canon or from turboprint. Therefore, I used the TS9120 ICC profile for "Canon PhotoPlus Semigloss SG101" from the turboprint website. Afaik both series share the same print head and inks. Amazingly, this softproof matches very well the print made with the Canon (sic!) driver, except for one of the green patches and a bit too much saturation overall in the print. The turboprint print on the other hand has some very clear saturation issues and a strong violet tint in the neutral blues. But apart from that it is not too bad, I'd say.

Could you help me to make sense out of all this?
zedonet
Site Admin
Posts: 2156
Joined: Fri Oct 06, 2006 8:02 am

Re: Canon TS8300 series: wrong / desaturated colors

Post by zedonet »

Hello,

I agree that the TurboPrint printout doesn't look as it should.

The reason is probably that the GIMP TurboPrint print plugin was originally written for an older version of GIMP and doesn't respect the image color space, so it interprets the image as sRGB and not as ProPhoto RGB.

You can either

a) convert the image to sRGB and select sRGB in the GIMP TurboPrint print plugin (instead of "Apple RGB")

b) select ProPhoto RGB as color space in the GIMP TurboPrint print plugin (before you have to import "ProPhoto RGB" in TurboPrint Control -> dialog "Profiles" -> tab "Color spaces")

My colleage has just answered your email request for a softproof profile for the Canon TS8300series printer. The softproof profile will become available when the profile database of our website will be updated.
rawi
Posts: 6
Joined: Fri Nov 20, 2020 2:46 pm

Re: Canon TS8300 series: wrong / desaturated colors

Post by rawi »

zedonet wrote: Mon Nov 23, 2020 11:19 am You can either

a) convert the image to sRGB and select sRGB in the GIMP TurboPrint print plugin (instead of "Apple RGB")
The print is now much better* but, in my opinion, still not up to the Canon driver: 1) the black ramp is better resolved by the Canon driver (hard to see in the crappy photo); 2) 100% red and 100% green (as measured with the color picker in the swatches and gradients) are rendered correctly by the Canon driver but they are lacking a lot of "punch" in turboprint, this is also true for some other colors except yellow, maybe; 3) the skin tones show a slight red (?) cast in turboprint.

Some of these issues already show up in the softproof (I took the TS8150 profile as suggested by email).

* both prints have the same brightness (the middle part with the grey tones is identical!), although it doesn't look like that in the photo I took.
IMG_20201125_074607-small.jpg
IMG_20201125_074607-small.jpg (245.52 KiB) Viewed 5947 times
zedonet wrote: Mon Nov 23, 2020 11:19 am b) select ProPhoto RGB as color space in the GIMP TurboPrint print plugin (before you have to import "ProPhoto RGB" in TurboPrint Control -> dialog "Profiles" -> tab "Color spaces")
This option is not available for me. Would the print quality benefit from the larger color space or will Turboprint perform a conversion to sRGB anyway?
Screenshot_20201125_194325.jpg
Screenshot_20201125_194325.jpg (42.35 KiB) Viewed 5947 times
zedonet
Site Admin
Posts: 2156
Joined: Fri Oct 06, 2006 8:02 am

Re: Canon TS8300 series: wrong / desaturated colors

Post by zedonet »

I am not sure which reproduction is better - the Canon driver tends to exaggerate red a bit.

The option to add color space profiles like "ProPhoto RGB" is only available in the version "TurboPrint Studio". The reproduction of saturated colors will improve, TurboPrint performs a direct conversion from ProPhoto color space to the printer color space.
rawi
Posts: 6
Joined: Fri Nov 20, 2020 2:46 pm

Re: Canon TS8300 series: wrong / desaturated colors

Post by rawi »

I did an additional test using the Wide RGB option in the print dialogue (I kept the original prophoto RGB profile when opening the file in GIMP). The coulours are now indeed very saturated, more than the Canon Print. And unfortunately the print is too dark. Would it have been better to convert to Wide RGB in GIMP before?

One more general question, though, which will maybe stop me from wasting my time with color spaces... I don't have a Wide Gamut monitor (it only covers the sRGB color space). So does it make any sense to go beyond sRGB when editing images for print, knowing that my monitor will not be able to show any (printable) colors if they exceed sRGB?

If I limit myself to sRGB and I want to have saturated colors, the best way is then to edit the softproof until I more or less get what I want?

Sorry, as you see I still have a lot to learn!
rawi
Posts: 6
Joined: Fri Nov 20, 2020 2:46 pm

Re: Canon TS8300 series: wrong / desaturated colors

Post by rawi »

I think I have at least an answer so one of my questions.
rawi wrote: Tue Dec 01, 2020 5:11 pm I did an additional test using the Wide RGB option in the print dialogue (I kept the original prophoto RGB profile when opening the file in GIMP). The coulours are now indeed very saturated, more than the Canon Print. And unfortunately the print is too dark. Would it have been better to convert to Wide RGB in GIMP before?
I did another test with one of my own RAW files. I converted the file to the Wide RGB color space in darktable when exporting as .tif. Then I selected Wide RGB in Turboprint, and brightness, "dynamic range" and saturation of the print are now perfectly in line with the soft proof. The colors are very close, but there is still a slight yellow / red tint on the print. I believe to have a better match I would need custom-made profiles.

Another thing which I noticed: it is absolutely crucial to view the prints under a good quality (high CRI) light source and under constant lighting conditions to judge the color. IMHO, my Benq Screenbar (set to ~5000K) does a pretty good job here. Other (fluorescent) light sources in my apartment show an ugly green cast for the same picture.
rawi
Posts: 6
Joined: Fri Nov 20, 2020 2:46 pm

Re: Canon TS8300 series: wrong / desaturated colors

Post by rawi »

In the meantime I have generated my own icc profiles for a series of Canon papers, using a rented i1Studio spectrometer and i1Studio 1.5.1 (Mac) or argyllcms (Linux, see https://torger.se/anders/photography/argyll-print.html#toc0). Hard to say which profiles are better, but the argyll profiles have a slightly larger gamut volume, in particular in the greens. Test prints made with both software are practically indiscernible.

This has been a game changer. All the color casts are gone and, in particular, skin tones are now as they should be, without the yellowish color cast I had before. Much better than the profiles supplied with Turboprint. The print to screen match is now almost perfect, despite the low cost equipment I've been using.
zedonet
Site Admin
Posts: 2156
Joined: Fri Oct 06, 2006 8:02 am

Re: Canon TS8300 series: wrong / desaturated colors

Post by zedonet »

Thank you for this information. Generally the built-in profiles of TurboPrint should produce good results, but in some cases the color accuracy can be improved by creating color profiles for your printer (there can be a variation in color reproduction between printers of the same model).

Users who don't have access to a spectrometer can also use the ZEDOnet color profiling service which is quite simple:

- add a new entry in TurboPrint Control -> dialog "color profiles"
- print a profile chart and send the printed page to us

This service costs EUR 14.95 (per paper type), before printing the page you have to purchase a "Color profile order code" in our online shop:

http://www.zedonet.com/en_shop_tp_profile.phtml

A detailed description is conatained in the TurboPrint HTML or PDF manual, chapter 10.
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