@Rob_Brown, many thanks for your feedback and suggestions. Reading the manual with proper attention really helps!
I have tried a few many settings with gutenprint, and the output is always washed out and yellowish.
On the other hand, TurboPrint does not provide free profiles that match the paper and Photo Black ink that I’m using and I have restricted myself to their Epson Premium Glossy and Semigloss media types. And with that, TurboPrint output looks pretty decent! (provided that I tune on the the TurboPrint printer setting dialog a few control: brightness, contrast and grey tone (I’m printing monochrome)).
Using gutenprint I also tried the brightness and contrast sliders of that interface. But the tonal result was not satisfactory and the color cast was always there.
@ramestica if you are willing to try it, there’s a profiling service that turboprint offers to match your printer, ink and paper (and of course turboprint driver). If your results aren’t quite right, try that.
For black and white things are a little tricky, as I think the turboprint driver doesn’t handle things the same way as the epson driver does. I’m currently struggling to get good bw output on my 3880 (but that printer has dedicated black, light black and light light black). The color output is absolutely perfect, but bw had a cast.
When I posted a question about bw on the turboprint forum they said to use the ‘gray photo’ output (not grayscale). That helped a little, but cast still there.
To help things out I created a separate printer in the turboprint config, and set that one specifically for bw. I adjusted the ink output to lower the colors all the way. But it isn’t perfect and doesn’t look as deep as the epson driver gets. The turboprint gui doesn’t really reflect that I’ve got 8 inks for those adjustments. My final output is better, and the color cast is less but it is still there. To get true bw at least on my printer I think I would likely need to switch to Windows.
@Rob_Brown, yes, I will certainly give turboprint’s profiling service a try. I have read your postings in that forum.
I also had a greenish or yellowish cast with turboprint. Controlling brightness and contrast I came to a tonality close to that on my un-calibrated monitor. And it was by means of the Grey Tone sliders that the cast is very much absent, very neutral result.
All that tuning on TurboPrint’s dialog means to me that something is wrong with my color management workflow. But at the same time, the actual tuning and acceptable looking output from the printer makes me feel in control of that output. Situation which I could not reach when using Gutenprint.
‘Gray Photo’ is what I’m using. And my short understanding is that this setting makes the driver use black, L black, and LL black as much as possible, But it does not mean that all other colors are not used. The driver ‘knows’ how to do it well. Same (but not the same) as the Epson AWZ mode knows how to do it well (Epson probably better). Based on this, I would not look too much to individual ink sliders, but to the sliders associated to Grey Tone toning.
To give you an idea, these are the ‘magic’ tunings I’m using in TurboPrint Config:
I will check out the grey tone sliders rather than the individual ink channels.
Yes calibration of the monitor is a must. I still calibrate mine on my mac (I have a mac pro that I am dual booting with my Mac and Linux is my main system now). I’m doing this because my display (an old Eizo ColorEdge) has internal LUTs in the display that can only be set with software on PC or Mac. When it finally dies I will get one with internal calibration. DisplayCal works for most monitors, so try that. If it allows it, put the target brightness below 100cd/m2
Once your display has a good profile, then theoretically you shouldnt have to mess around with those sliders. However my monitor is calibrated and while my color prints are perfect the black and white ones have a noticeable cast. Perhaps next step is to send out for profile via turboprint.
I didn’t read the thread thoroughly, but as I understand no one have recommended a solid answer to your question.
My current workflow with Gutenprint and Custom ICC profiles is to apply the ICC profile with ArgyllCMS:
cctiff -i r -p AdobeRGB.icc Custom.icc Input.tif Output.tif
with this command I get an image that is corrected in a way that when printed with Gutenprint (color correction is set to “Uncorrected”) matches my calibrated monitor perfectly.