Aging Printers and ICC Profiles

[William Seaward]

As our printers start to age, how long do we need to wait before custom profiles are really necessary?

 

[Roy Sletcher]

If you are NOT using OEM inks *AND* your printer manufacturer's OEM papers as defined in your printer's media settings then you need a custom profile, even if day one out of the printer box.

That said, most quality third party paper manufacturers supply profiles for their papers if used on the main stream photo printers.

Precision colors even supplies custom profiles for his CLI-42 INKSET on some third party papers, although in practice you could use the native canon profiles his colour match is so close.

I think we all have a tendency to overthink this "profile thingy", and heaven knows the internet is full of misinformation on the subject. Unless you are starting with a good understanding of colour, colour management and inkjet colour printing you can end up with more problems that you started with.

If you can find a simple solutions that works for you and your printer, just go for it and "damn the torpedos".


rs

 

[William Seaward]

I was more curious to know that as you accumulate more and more prints on your printer, are these original ICC profiles that you've been using from day one, whether its from the original manufacturer (ie, Canon) OR from the ink set provider (ie, Percision Colors), are they still the best to use? Do the various parts of a printer that wear out have any bearing on the print quality.

I invested in the i1Display Pro to calibrate the monitor when I got my new 4K monitor. Then, as my knowledge of printing using the inkjet printers improved, I invested again in a ColorMunki Photo and right now I'm playing around with creating profiles. So, right now, I have these "What If" questions, so I can be prepared to be looking for any inconsistency as my hardware ages.

 

[The Hat]

@William Seaward, The only part of your printer that will wear out is your print head, and that goes from 100% to zero instantly, there is no in between for a print head it eider works perfectly or its bunched and not fit for purpose, it can take as little as months or years to go belly up.

On the other hand, your monitor will need to be recalibrated from time to time to keep it at its best, monitors’ vary in output from constant use and depending on the brand, model it may require to be checked every ? Months.

So the best way to future proof your printing is to have a couple of extra printers still in boxes or a couple of spare print heads and then hope that your ink supplier stays the course, and good luck with your profile venturing, it should keep you busy for quite some time, because it’s an arduous enjoyably task...

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

You can have variations with your printouts - media variations - ink batch variations - hardware aging, printer to printer variations, and if you print commercially you typically agree with your customer on a method to verify and assure color fidelity, typically with a small color patch set per some standard. Epson is supporting such efforts with a built-in spectrometer in particular printers - like SpectroProofer

 

[William Seaward]

@William Seaward, The only part of your printer that will wear out is your print head, and that goes from 100% to zero instantly, there is no in between for a print head it eider works perfectly or its bunched and not fit for purpose, it can take as little as months or years to go belly up.

This is something I didn't know, that there is no "gray" area to the print head... it either works or it doesn't, assuming that I didn't burn it up in the case of the Canon's.

You can have variations with your printouts - media variations - ink batch variations - hardware aging, printer to printer variations, and if you print commercially you typically agree with your customer on a method to verify and assure color fidelity, typically with a small color patch set per some standard. Epson is supporting such efforts with a built-in spectrometer in particular printers - like SpectroProofer

Some of these variations I have no control over, however, right now I do have a few different kinds of paper that I like. But this begs the next question in my quest to learn more about profiling. How much importance does the measuring device, in my case the "ColorMunki Photo", have in the development of new profiles? I have to admit that since I already had the X-Rite i1Display Pro for the monitor, I thought about getting the X-Rite i1Pro2 but the sticker shock over came me so I went with the cheaper (ColorMunki Photo) as I found a really good deal on eBay. I figure that if I start out small, I can always work my way up, learning all the way.

I appreciate all the help that everyone offers.

 

[William Seaward]

On the other hand, your monitor will need to be recalibrated from time to time to keep it at its best, monitors’ vary in output from constant use and depending on the brand, model it may require to be checked every ? Months.

I find that recalibrating every 2 weeks keeps the colors on the monitor looking really good.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

you need a separate profile for every different type of paper, but that does not cover product variations of the same type of paper. The paper manufacturer may have production tolerances as much as the ink supplier, they try to keep the tolerances withing their internal product specs but they are not zero. I have my doubts whether you can visually recognize these differences even if you could measure them. There is lots of information in the internet about delta E, the visible threshold of color changes. You may find this interesting about color tolerancing
https://www.xrite.com/documents/literature/en/l10-001_understand_color_en.pdf
and more theory
https://www.xrite.com/documents/literature/en/L11-029_color_guide_EN.pdf

And don't forget that your profiling process has as well some tolerances, reading variations with your spectrometer. Higher end software allows you to run several scan cycles and to average the readings before the data is used for calculations. You may print your patches several times as well to average them in this process, but I wouldn't expect that this effort would create visibly better profiles.

 

[William Seaward]

you need a separate profile for every different type of paper, but that does not cover product variations of the same type of paper. The paper manufacturer may have production tolerances as much as the ink supplier, they try to keep the tolerances withing their internal product specs but they are not zero. I have my doubts whether you can visually recognize these differences even if you could measure them. There is lots of information in the internet about delta E, the visible threshold of color changes. You may find this interesting about color tolerancing
https://www.xrite.com/documents/literature/en/l10-001_understand_color_en.pdf
and more theory
https://www.xrite.com/documents/literature/en/L11-029_color_guide_EN.pdf

Some interesting reading here... Thanks!

 

[mikling]

These suggested documents have been around for a while. One key takeaway from this document is the attached chart from these documents and it also supports what we actually see in reality....how the chart was made..... and what we see going on in better printers today. Notice how the ellipsoids decrease to smaller sizes as we approach the middle and look at what color is there. Now wonder why Canon decided to say to hell with it, we need gray inks to get good performance despite the superior gamut of dye inks. Hence the Pro-100. By using a gray base color, they are better able to better manipulate the colors within the grey areas given a fixed set of combinations and permutations within the color engine.....I think we are going to see an Epson "K4" printer one day because Epson have less nozzles ( nozzle challenged) to begin with and the only way to get to the accuracy required in the small areas is to have more combinations....via another color channel. It also illustrates why orange is a color channel that is being used today in some printers.