Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2007/08/20

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Subject: [Leica] I can't print my petunias!!
From: pklein at 2alpha.net (Peter Klein)
Date: Mon Aug 20 00:02:07 2007

I wrote:
>I just could not believe these petunias.  Even in the shade, they seemed 
>to be florescent.
<http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/pklein/album170/L1001127UVPetunias.jpg.html>

My printer couldn't believe the colors, either.  I just tried to print the 
above picture, and the colors came out very different from the 
screen.  Instead of the florescent magenta-purple, I get very red 
flowers.  Red like a Poinsettia at Christmas.  The only place a few petals 
look purple is on the very left, at the top right, where the flowers are a 
little faded or shaded.  But not jaded.

Have I encountered the dreaded out of gamut conundrum? Did the ghost of Dr. 
Fourrier, immortalized in my print driver, take a look at the RGB numbers 
and refuse to transform?  "No way," he'd say. I'd overflow my 
register.  I'd divide by zero and disappear into a Black Hole.  And my cat 
would die!"

I had the same results on two different printers, an R200 and an 
R1800.  The R1800 did a little better, but had basically the same 
problem.  I printed from a 16-bit TIFF. I generally use sRGB color space 
for workflow simplicity.  Might I have a better chance of getting the 
colors right if I used Adobe RGB? Or if I tweaked the rendering intent?  Or 
are the printers just not capable of reproducing this color?  Is this a 
case of The Effect of Out of Gamut Rays On Man-In-The-Moon Purple Petunias?

Seriously, this is not a huge deal, but I'm curious what to do about 
it.  This is only the second time I've encountered a color that totally 
weirded out my printer.

--Peter


Replies: Reply from don.dory at gmail.com (Don Dory) ([Leica] I can't print my petunias!!)
Reply from hoppyman at bigpond.net.au (G Hopkinson) ([Leica] I can't print my petunias!!)
Reply from kcarney1 at cox.net (Ken Carney) ([Leica] I can't print my petunias!!)
Reply from mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner) ([Leica] I can't print my petunias!!)
Reply from images at comporium.net (Tina Manley) ([Leica] I can't print my petunias!!)