Barry Siegel
New member
I understand that Perceptual rendering preserves the relationships between colors whereas relative colorimetric remaps only the out of gamut colors. In theory, I would think that many of my photographs would print better with the relative colorimetric setting, yet I always find that this setting has less contrast and grayer blacks and perhaps a little less saturation than the perceptual rendering. I am printing on an Epson 1280. Of course, when I am printing at home I use the perceptual rendering and all is good. The problem is when I need an archival print. I send these out (to WHCC) and the result is always a print with poor contrast and a not very deep black. I have used the soft proof and tried to adjust the files with only limited improvement. I think part of the problem may be that they are probably using a relative colorimetric rendering intent. I printed a black and white tonal range chart on the 1280 recently and saw little difference between the the two rendering intents (perhaps a little more graduation in the blacks with the relative colorimetric). I set the printer for color inks (which includes black), not black ink only. I was somewhat surprised that I could only barely observe the 2 level (0,2,4,6,8,etc.) graduation lines starting at about level 12, but really couldn't see them clearly until about level 24 or so. I always use black point compensation no matter which intent I use. Today I tried to add a levels adjustment with the output (not input) set at 12 for the shadows with no discernible difference. Is there some way to get a contrasty print with deep blacks when using the relative colorimetric setting? Any thoughts?
