Latest ICC color profiles for HP Designjet dye printers

Printing

HP updated these recently

While I have been a happy user of HP’s branded papers exclusively for my Designjet 90 18″ wide dye printer, HP does not entirely neglect the aftermarket for paper makers.

Indeed, HP has recently updated a bunch of color profiles for some well known papers which feature the swellable/absorbent surface of HP’s paper, allowing the printer’s dye inks to be properly absorbed. These are for use with the Designjet 30/90/130 series of printers.

Here are the papers supported, with details of how to feed the paper into your printer – tray, rear slot or roll (by the way, I always use the tray to (multi-)sheet feed my 13″ x 19″ and 18″ x 24″ HP Premium Plus Photo Satin paper and have had no issues):

As you can see, HP recommends that many of the heaviest papers are loaded one sheet at a time. For reference, HP’s Premium Plus Photo Satin weighs in at 286 grams/sq. meter, whereas the heaviest William Turner is 310. I suspect, but cannot confirm, that HP’s papers are made by Hahnemühle which has been around since 1584, so they just missed making the stock for Gutenberg’s bible, printed in the 1450s.

Here’s their data sheet on the heavier William Turner paper:

Many stockists carry it, not least of all Atlex which I have found to be reliable. The William Turner comes in sizes up to 17″ x 22″ or in larger rolls – these you would have to cut down first. Sounds like an interesting option for HP users and, as I mentioned recently, I would be a buyer of the HP DJ 90 or 130 (24″ wide) today – it’s not like parts and supplies are about to disappear for a printer which shares consumables with the DJ 30 (13″ wide) which sold in vast numbers to photographers everywhere. And, at its price, the wide carriage HP has no competition.

Finally, why dye based inks in preference to pigments which now dominate the market? Can you say lousy blacks? Bronzing? We dye printer users know nothing of those issues.

In tomorrow’s column I will provide a step-by-step guide to making new profiles of your choice, for non-HP branded papers, display correctly within Lightroom 2 because, goodness knows, HP’s installation instructions are about as wrong as you can get. Suffice it to say that if you follow mine, your profiles will display correctly in LR2 thus:

20 snaps = 1 gigabyte

Cameras

This is getting ridiculous.

The soon-to-be-available Canon 5D/II consumes some 22 megabytes per image. Child’s play. How about 50 mb a pop?


The Hasselblad H3D50 medium format digital camera

So twenty snaps on this baby (made by Fuji, by the way, not by flaxen haired Swedish maidens) dictate one gigabyte of storage. Or, stated differently, your one terabyte hard drive where you store these will hold a mere 20,000 pictures.

And before you stock up on hard drives, what sort of processing power are you going to need to manipulate those huge images? Presumably a top-of-the-line MacPro with multiple CPUs. And, of course, a couple of 30″ Cinema Displays to do justice to the $30k you just blew on the camera. Add another $10k for computer hardware.

My, digital is expensive. Guess I’ll be sticking with the 12 mb images from my 5D/I a while longer. The body and seven lenses ran me under $9k, but really cost nothing in cash outlay as I sold all my Leica and Rollei gear to finance the Canon. Chump change, eh? I suppose I should add another $900 for the MacBook and $300 for more memory and disk storage, but I use that for lots of other things, too. At least my HP DJ90 wide carriage printer should work with the Hassy, no?

The best fisherman

Photographs

This chap knows a thing or two.

Mooching about Morro Bay the other evening and what do I see?

Why, the very best fisherman there is, and he uses no rod or reel.


5D, 24-105mm at 67mm, 1/2000, f/5.6, ISO 400

Wander out to the central California Pacific coast any evening and you will see whole squadrons of these experts, trolling for an easy meal.

Once I saw maybe fifty or so, all hovering at twenty feet, then executing a power dive, wings back, and swimming underwater after their prey. I often get the feeling we have learned little from the animal world.

Camera profiles in Lightroom

Lightroom

Now you can match the manufacturer’s intent.

I have generally avoided using Canon’s DPP Professional software which comes with the 5D. Clunky, slow, limited in application and not integrated with my man processing ‘engine’ – Lightroom – plus all those comedic spelling errors, well, it’s all just too much. Or too little.

Now Adobe has made it possible to view your RAW imports in Lightroom (and this only works for RAW images) emulating the manufacturer’s software. So instead of viewing your images in the latest Adobe Camera Raw profile, you can get to look at them in what DPP Professional would do. The differences are easily seen on the screen.

Point your browser to this address and download the profile package:

Now when you next start Lightroom 2 you will see the following in the Develop panel:

Click the drop down box and the camera specific profiles appear:

So if you are still using DPP, forget about it, download the profiles into LR2 and you have all you need in one place.

Here’s a snap processed using the Camera Landscape Beta 2 profile – note the warmth in the rose:


5D, 400mm ‘L’, 1/500, f/5.6, ISO 250