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- Dec 27, 2014
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I got into contact with a member of the German Druckerchannel forum discussing this and that, profiling, the effect of the gloss optimizer, 3rd party vs. genuine Epson inks and the accuracy of profiling software packages in comparison. Let me call this member 'Robert', we continued our discussions by email and exchanged prints, profiles and such by mail for mutual inspection. Robert is using the Spyder Print V.5 package to create icc-profiles and was very much interested to understand how accurate these profiles are. There are basically no tools (freeware) to do such an evaluation. I'm using an old 3D-tool - Monaco GamutWorks - to display gamut properties , and to a smaller degree the old Gamutvision software. Both are old and only support V.2 icc-profiles, I'm not aware of any newer affordable inspection software for V.4 profiles. Anyway - this was a starting point, Datacolor is not offering much in this respect to their users. Robert is not really happy with the stripe reading mode of the SpyderPrint software and the quite frequent data/scan rejects by the software which requires him to reread a particular stripe. I'm using the X-Rite i1Studio package with the i1io robot arm to scan the target sheets which a significant advantage - this hardware offers a fixed scan speed with a very low level of rejects. Most rejects are of the type - ' colors deviate significantly from the target values - do you want to continue ?'. This may happen on normal paper with a small gamut - smaller than the software is apparently expecting. Some other error conditions trigger an automatic rescan at a slower speed for a particular stripe.
I'm not going into any technical details and differences between the Datacolor colorimeter and the X-Rite Si1 Pro or i1Pro2 spectrophotometer.
I did a simple test with Robert - we wanted to profile regular normal copy paper for comparison - I was using a P400 for this purpose . I printed the X-Rite target sheet and as well the Datacolor target sheet from a .tiff file Robert gave me. I sent the print out to him to let Robert process the profile with his software, and he returned the icc-profile to me he created with his Spyder software. We were using the same paper with the same inks on the same printer this way.
These are some of the findings:
This is the gamut of normal paper printed on a P400 and profiled with the i1 software, the volume is pretty small but there are otherwise no particular problem areas, the shape is typical, the surfaces and edges are smooth and even. This is just a 2D view, but there are no problems hidden on the back side of the gamut volume either.
This is the gamut of the icc-profile as created with the Spyder package - and what a surprise - there is a big hole in the gamut volume which I never have seen before like that. The red border outline at the cut through the gamut at a luminance of about L*=45 shows a significant indentation. This is a pretty significant problem with this profile although the Spyder software did not report any unusual problem during the measurement and calculation process. And there is some other deformation visible in the upper part of the gamut.
Please let me continue with another posting to show you another picture of this profile.
I'm not going into any technical details and differences between the Datacolor colorimeter and the X-Rite Si1 Pro or i1Pro2 spectrophotometer.
I did a simple test with Robert - we wanted to profile regular normal copy paper for comparison - I was using a P400 for this purpose . I printed the X-Rite target sheet and as well the Datacolor target sheet from a .tiff file Robert gave me. I sent the print out to him to let Robert process the profile with his software, and he returned the icc-profile to me he created with his Spyder software. We were using the same paper with the same inks on the same printer this way.
These are some of the findings:
This is the gamut of normal paper printed on a P400 and profiled with the i1 software, the volume is pretty small but there are otherwise no particular problem areas, the shape is typical, the surfaces and edges are smooth and even. This is just a 2D view, but there are no problems hidden on the back side of the gamut volume either.
This is the gamut of the icc-profile as created with the Spyder package - and what a surprise - there is a big hole in the gamut volume which I never have seen before like that. The red border outline at the cut through the gamut at a luminance of about L*=45 shows a significant indentation. This is a pretty significant problem with this profile although the Spyder software did not report any unusual problem during the measurement and calculation process. And there is some other deformation visible in the upper part of the gamut.
Please let me continue with another posting to show you another picture of this profile.
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