@KumsaJack thank you. It looks like Turboprint has its reputation.
As for now I have noticed that manual is out of date. There are more options in the software (2.46) than manual describes.
I will need to sacrifice a dozen or so prints to see how it behaves. First of all unfortunately I have chosen Apple RGB (gamma 1.8) as color space thinking it is Adobe RGB (gamma 2.2) so that all prints were too bright. I was in hurry. My wife and children were watching and waiting I guess that I need to pick ‘none’ for rendering intent since color management is done in GIMP/Darktable.
As you have a ColorMunki Photo, could you elaborate more on why you couldn’t achieve good results with your Epson XP-960 using the libre Gutenprint but managed to using the closed-source TurboPrint? Have you tried contacting the Gutenprint developers to identify and fix the issue?
@Claes
I have played with my Selpy CP1200 and turboprint driver (gimp plugin) today using various rendering intent.
The question for you is if you’re using predefined rendering intent or maybe pass-through mode which is called no rendering indent(?). Do you set the sharpening method or switch it off?
My experience with Turboprint after a lot of experimentation:
I stick with Relative Colorimetric. Of course, I’m printing ProPhotoRGB TIFFs, and that probably helps some.
All sharpening is done prior to printing, none is added through Turboprint. I think sharpening is quite an aesthetic judgment, and my intention changes by several factors–print size, noise, color vs. B/W, and media (e.g., the very forgiving canvas versus glossy). Any large print (13x19 and up) I always print first to a 5x7.
@KumsaJack Oh, I see. So far for my Selphy, which is not good at shadows, Relative Colorimetric gives poor results. Images contains generally dark flat areas with rapid transition to midtones. Perceptive seems to be more suitable. I know it depends on the image. I have tried both sRGB and Adobe RGB images.
One thing I found strange is that Turboprint sets ‘Color: Refence Light’ to D65 by default and after switching to D50 the results are far more better. Have you changed this or left as it is?
Generally the results with Turboprints are very good and I guess I’ll stick to it (rather Studio version for more options). Of course I will do additional profiling either with Turboprint or by external service.
Normally, a print will be a little darker than the monitor, just the difference between a radiant versus a reflective image. I haven’t touched the Reference Light configuration, though I think it’s quite reasonable. I think I’ve used Turboprint for so long, that I’m used to getting the result. E.g., canvas is always going to block up shadows, and I know I need to lighten them up. So, as I mentioned, I print up a test image before doing something larger. Honestly, I can remember doing a 5 foot canvas print, and just depressed that the final output was terrible with the shadows. Newbie canvas trial. Most of the paper profiles in Turboprint do fine.
Pretty much I print in ProPhotoRGB TIFF, per my earlier posting. But, there are times that it’s not my image, and then I print in sRGB. For your purpose, sRGB is great.
I use the Turboprint Studio because I can add custom paper profiles and larger sizes.
Profiles: you have to use the Turboprint service or create your own. OEM profiles are not applicable.
I was trying Gutenprint + Gimp 2.10 without any luck so far. I have create dedicated ICC profile however I just can’t make it work with Gimp. Printing sRGB JPG and Selphy ICC converted JPG gives me exactly the same results while on darktable if I set the profile the results are very different (more accurate).
I did a lot of exercises and always got the same results with Gimp - the same as with no profile. If I try to use colord for automatic conversion then the printing never starts (hangs somewhere after leaving Gimp)
Turboprint on the other hand works almost out of the box. The results are good. However I’m not able to print photos directly from darktable (it hangs).
Turboprint is quite slow on printing (conversions?). It needs time to think. Gutenprint prints almost immediately.
It looks like Turboprint has an advantage here. However I don’t like the licensing model since I have at home 2 laptops from which I may print.
Hmm… I think I figured out that conversion done using jpgicc works as I expect. Prints the same as with darktable. Now I curious why ‘Convert to profile’ inside Gimp does not give me similar results.
In the end I find printing with gutenprint quite peculiar.
Hi, I’ve just joined pixls.us. I’m the project lead for Gutenprint. I’d certainly like to hear about issues people are having and what we can do to help out.
It’s quite possible that this printer would actually work with an existing driver. The L1800 is the one I think is most likely to be compatible, but it’s possible that the Stylus Photo 260 or Stylus Photo RX680 drivers would work (although those would be limited to A4/letter width, something that’s easy to remedy).
If you’d like, please try those options above and let me know whether it works, in which case it would be a simple matter to add it (and I could give you instructions about exactly what you’d have to edit – it’s all text files only).
I am using the profiles from Rolf from “Meet the GIMP!” (see https://blog.meetthegimp.org/episode-185-the-52-02-error-printing-with-profiles/), because I am using the same printer and ink and a very similar paper selection. The reason for buying the printer actually was this episode. I do not worry about getting new profiles once the printer works, so first things first …
OK. If you want to try Gutenprint, don’t use that profile. It will not do the right thing.
The profile needs to be specific to the driver as well as printer, ink, paper, and (usually) resolution. That’s because the ink generation is done in the driver, and different drivers may not generate the same output from the same input.
In the end I managed to succeed with Gutenprint and I’m glad with that. I’m quite lucky that support for Selphy was recently added.
Long story short: The biggest problem was to simply choose Print with Gutenprint instead of using Print entry in menu. I have wasted like 5 dozens of Selphy sheets and lost like two weeks with that. I just couldn’t figure out why after Convert to profile prints look like without this operation. Then just almost accidentally I tried different method and choose Print with Gutenprint and it worked! Well that was trivial…
I print with gimp so that I can convert to profile, rescale, resharpen and so on before print. I prefer gimp so that I can safely rescale image to avoid problem I’m describing below.
Main difference for Selphy between Turboprint and Gutenprint is that photos from Turboprint are a bit blurry and from Gutenprint are sharp. I thought it was nice until I have discovered that there could appear stepping around some shapes with high contrast (white collar, hand in the air). I don’t really know what causes this issue but rescale in gimp to be 300dpi helps a bit.
Of course I have profiled my Selphy with Gutenprint and that gives great results. I tried once a profile done on Adobe Printer Utility and with gutenprint it was way off.
It was just the opposite. The image’s resolution was significantly higher than needed to print in Selphy (4x6"). Thus maybe it was printer itself?
Nonetheless now I use Gimp for printing and scale images to match the final print.
I guess that I need to pick ‘none’ for rendering intent since color management is done in GIMP/Darktable.
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