Introduction
Do you want to get a little more out of your HP DJ 30/130?
Since it's about color the best approach is to try to tune your workflow, your workstation, and of course your HP profiles. HP deliver profiles with the printer for all the new photo papers and all the other papers that would normally be used with this printer. Quality of the profiles for the media are from; very good for the new photo papers, acceptable for certain other papers, and in some cases quite far off. The goal of this printer is of course archival color photo printing so the HP profiles may suffice for many of the HP DJ 30/130 customers.
Where you would really want to custom profile would be the use of any third party paper.
Why would you want to do this when you can visually adjust the color sliders in the print dialogue box?
Custom profiles describe the gamut and minute colors variations throughout their color range whereas sliders can only globally bias the print leaving deficiencies in specific tones intact. Profiles adjust not only the variations in all colors but also build as neutral as possible (neutral) gray tone from black to white.
Reliable tuning of color can only be achieved on your HP DJ with custom profiles for third party papers.
Color is my specialty and getting great color from printers is my passion. If you need a custom profile or would like to try a set of profiles along with your custom profile then contact me at color@neilsnape.com. You can have your custom profiles made remotely. You need only to print a chart of colors called a target that has blocks of colors that are later to be measured with a spectrophotometer. Mail the chart and after the chart is measured multiple times a custom profile is generated for your media and printer. A series of subjective test images are printed and soft proofed on screen to guarantee validity and quality of the print out. The profile is also subjectively compared to outputs on offset and proofing systems, again to ensure visual color quality and proximity.
This is possible on the HP DJ series as the Automatic Closed Loop Color Calibration allows accurate calibrations bringing individual printers to expected media characterization. Thus the results of media calibrated on your printer will be similar to expected values on any other HP DJ 30/130printer. There will always be differences yet the values obtained by calibration are as a good as you'll ever get between printers. This patented method is unique to the HP DJ printers.
The procedures for calibrations are included in the help section of your printers maintenance tool, on the HP website and on my site. Printing the chart is straight forward. You'll be certain to have excellent results with the custom profiles.
Two types of media profiles are offered.
One is the series of HP Archival Photo which in my experience are by far the best papers for photo printing on this series of printers. I have profiles for the 30/130 driver at Best and MaxDPI for the Photo Glossy and Proofing, Photo Satin and Proofing. Profiles for Photo Matte, Matte Proofing, and Semi-Matte at Best quality mode.
The second set of media profiles are for high quality archival third party papers. So far the following are tested and give acceptable results; Ilford Classic, Epson Colorlife, Kodak Ultima. Ilford Smooth Gloss is also profiled and can be used for presentation prints and proofing where you'd want a water resistant print and an instant dry for putting into plastic sleeves yet these are not archival and exhibit bronzing.
I have also tried various art papers and the results are stunning.
You'll want to profile your third party papers for the ultimate in accurate color and fidelity.
Any art papers will be best custom profiled and a few sample sheets should be mailed with the printed chart if you want to have validation prints done.
For further information please send me an email at color@neilsnape.com