A basic guide (see post #1) to setting up ARGYLL CMS profiling on your computer

[Emulator]

@pharmacist

Here are the results of my tests:
The 480 proved very easy and quick to read. I printed the .tif on my Pro9000 II, with a new printhead (the old one finally gave up the ghost) and 8 IS inks (Pro Platinum on Sihl).
I have attached some Gamutvision screens, which show excellent results, no dog leg in the B&W density and good linearity. Generous, smooth colour gamut and good simulated colour checker.

 

[pharmacist]

@pharmacist

Here are the results of my tests:
The 480 proved very easy and quick to read. I printed the .tif on my Pro9000 II, with a new printhead (the old one finally gave up the ghost) and 8 IS inks (Pro Platinum on Sihl).
I have attached some Gamutvision screens, which show excellent results, no dog leg in the B&W density and good linearity. Generous, smooth colour gamut and good simulated colour checker.

View attachment 1190 View attachment 1189 View attachment 1191

So it seems that Less is indeed more with this set. Just have a test print with these images to test the real world print quality:

http://outbackprint.outbackphoto.com/printinginsights/pi048/essay.html

and this one for B&W:

http://www.ilfordlab.com/images/Ilfordlabmon.jpg

Any errors in the profile will be reveal bij the occurence of strange colour transitions or colour casts in the B&W image.

I have excellent results with this set on my Epson 1500W CcMmYK 6-colour printer and the B&W prints are very neutral without the slightest colour cast.

 

[Emulator]

I have printed and scanned the images you suggested and added the circular quadrants as an extra. They all look excellent. It was a good illustration of the need to let the prints mature for 6 to 8 hours minimum. As they came off the printer parts looked distinctly off colour and off grey, however they progressively improved and are now quite remarkably good, see for yourself.

 

[pharmacist]

I have printed and scanned the images you suggested and added the circular quadrants as an extra. They all look excellent. It was a good illustration of the need to let the prints mature for 6 to 8 hours minimum. As they came off the printer parts looked distinctly off colour and off grey, however they progressively improved and are now quite remarkably good, see for yourself.
View attachment 1199 View attachment 1201 View attachment 1200

Yes I too experienced some strange colour cast immediately after printing, but it went away after a time and It is perfectly neutral. So it does indeed live up "Wabi Sabi". Why I don't know...

 

[Emulator]

Yes, I think we still have a lot to learn about the command parameter settings. Good that you have removed the dogleg.

 

[mikling]

The ideal way is to generate a subsequent targen out of the profile first created. Use the first generated profile as a precondition file. See what fruit that bears....that is in fact recommended by the author of Argyll... more work but better results....or little difference depending on how "lucky" the initial targen was.

 

[Emulator]

pharmacist, I generated a 480 target batch file and profile along the lines of your earlier one, to see if the magic was still around.

This is a scanned combined print result. and the .bat file CAP480.txt

The .tif file image contains 480 patches 10mm square, in a 20 across by 24 down A4 layout (when cropped and resized) as opposed to your 13 by 8 mm in 24 by 20. The results are very close in Gamutvision and final print quality, so 480 must be a magic number??

 

[pharmacist]

pharmacist, I generated a 480 target batch file and profile along the lines of your earlier one, to see if the magic was still around.

This is a scanned combined print result. View attachment 1213 and the .bat file CAP480.txt

The .tif file image contains 480 patches 10mm square, in a 20 across by 24 down A4 layout as opposed to your 13 by 8 mm in 24 by 20. The results are very close in Gamutvision and final print quality, so 480 must be a magic number??

Yes, it is indeed very intriguing. Now with this emperical knowledge one can create pretty good real world printer profiles with just 480 patches on just one sheet of A4 paper. I have made a similar profile with 960 patches and there was no improvement at all (2x480 on 2 sheets of A4 paper). Especially the B&W printing quality is very good indeed. I had a spyder4print before and even with the B&W optimisation chart it never produced good B&W.

Actually the neutrality is even better compared to a Colormunki with 2 optimizations (including a B&W neutralising image).

Now what I have done is using the "-N0.75" argument in the targen command to increase the amount of neutral points around the neutral axis.

 

[Emulator]

Diverting to another of your topics for a moment, when using you cartridge conditioning mixture, is it acceptable to re-use the mixture after conditioning a clean cartridge. In other words will the mixture be degraded or just depleted in quantity?

 

[pharmacist]

It does degrades gradually, so I suggest to throw it away after 3 usages.