| To create a custom paper type, you launch the "HP Printer Care Utility" that comes with the printer (unless it's one used for trade shows and they forget to send software and you have to download it) and go into the Color Center. We're going to go into the "Manage Papers" section to add a custom paper type. |
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| You give the paper a name and select what category it fits into. Most of the categories are pretty self explanatory. In this case we're doing a photo glossy paper. |
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| The candy stripe - you'll see this a lot. It's adding the paper to the printer's memory - not the computer's (yet) |
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| The first thing you need to do when you create a new paper type is calibrate the printer to that paper. If you read our November 8th newsletter, you'll recall the difference between calibration and characterization (profiling). RIP junkies will recognize the process as linearization. You need a letter size or larger sheet/roll. |
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| Here we are on the printers' control panel (because we need to load some paper) - notice it has levels of gray. We select the "paper" menu. A few years ago someone figured out how to add stuff to a particular Kodak Camera's firmware so you could play DOOM on the view screen - I wonder if you could play gameboy games on this =) |
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| Unlike any other printer I have ever used, loading a new sheet of paper is started on the control panel, rather than just jamming in a sheet or roll. The "locked" options are locked because their paper isn't loaded yet - the "change loaded paper type" option is pretty handy. |
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| Sheet or Roll? in my case it was a roll. |
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| What paper type are we loading? Well, this is a custom paper, so I'll select that one. |
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| Here are the two custom paper types I made so far: our glossy and luster. |
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It as a cool animated movie showing you how to close the sheet feeder and load a roll into the back
To load a roll you just push the end into the feed slot, not aligning or lifting levers - unless it isn't straight, then it tries to fix the skew by having you lift the lever and doing some stuff. If it isn't straight after 2 tries it tells you to unload the roll and try again. |
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17" roll getting ready to load. Here's a fun bit of info: this roll was cut with a pair of scissors so the end wasn't straight. The printer noticed that and trimmed off about 3 inches.
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| Printing the calibration stuff. The first thing my electronics teacher in High School taught us was: never defeat a safety interlock. I'm sad to say I had to to get this shot - the printer notices you opening the top and stops printing. Do not try this at home. |
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| shows the same thing on the computer screen |
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| the calibration target, all printed - it waits a few minutes and then scans it using the Eye-one spectrophotometer built into the head |
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| Good job! |
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| The printer sends out a notice to all the computers connected to it telling them to update the list of papers. |
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| gee look, the candy-stripe bar is back! |
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| Now we can create a custom profile for the new paper. You have the option to print and create the profile, just print or create a profile from a previously printed target. You would so the second option if you wanted to wait longer than the 5-10 minutes the printer is set to wait before reading the patches (and you would do the third when you wanted to finish the second). |
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| It defaults to "Printer Name, Paper Name" - that works for me. |
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| and away it goes! |
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| same thing on the control panel. |
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| waiting for the ink to dry fully - HP says they did a bunch of tests to find the best drying time. |
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| It prints out 464 patches, on the left is the target still in the printer "drying" - on the right is the full thing right-side-up. |
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This is in the process of reading the patches. The circled thing is a cover that normally protects the spectrophotometer from ink spray and is only opened when used. Interestingly enough, on the other side of the head is the optical sensor used for alignment checking and such - so this printer actually has two sensors on the head!
Once the profile is finished it gets saved to the computer's profile folder so it can be used for softproofing. Supposedly it's stored on the printer too, but the Z2100 (according to the specs I saw today) doesn't have a hard drive like the Z3100 does so I'm not certain about that. |
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