- Joined
- May 29, 2007
- Messages
- 2,597
- Reaction score
- 1,315
- Points
- 313
- Location
- Ghent, Belgium
- Printer Model
- Epson SC-P800,WF-7840,XP-15000
Today I took some time to took some pictures of my method to create a pretty good printer profile with ArgyllCMS.
ArgyllCMS is a free to use program with a myriad of possibilities on pair with commercial available software packages in terms of quality of output. Unfortunately the cryptic terminal commands can be sometimes a bit confusing. The standard targen command will produce 836 patches if no amount of patches is defined with the -f argument, when choosing for the printRGB as colour space for the printer profile, which you will need to choose when using standard commercial photo printers: these printers expect RGB input, despite the confusing possibility of CMYK profile, which you want to choose when using RIP software/driver.
The target of 875 patches, I am using in manual, is created with 729 colour patches in mind: if you consider the RGB colour space as a 3D-model with the XYZ-axes, the colour samples are taken with 9 steps in each XYZ-axes: for 0% for no ink ("white") and 100% for maximum saturation of one of the colours in mind: Red, Green and Blue (RGB). This means that you will have 9x9x9=729 colour patches to encompass all the possibilities in the RGB-colour space when making steps of 10% for sampling the colour space, by which the profile will be calculated on. The target is enhanced with 128 grey steps to neutralise black and white printing and to obtain a smooth gradient. There are 10 white patches and 10 black patches to fill up the target up to 875 patches in total.
Print the target with example Qimage with the printer profile option set to: OFF (raw data send to the printer, no color management) and choose in the prints tab: original size and also in the printer driver: disable color management, choosing the option: NONE. This way will ensure the target is printed without any colour management and the raw data is sent properly to the printer without any correction (this is what you want). Choose: the size setting: original size and in the printer driver: borderless, no expansion: retain size. The target is be printed on a single sheet of A4 (210x297 mm).
After printing: let the target to be properly dried for at least 1 hour to be sure all the colours patches are properly settled before scanning the patches with the i1Pro2 device.
Align the target under the scanning table jig with the left paper border aligning to the first mark of the scanning ruler (actually the second one, but the first one is almost towards the border), so the paper is properly aligned: this way the movement of the i1Pro2 physcially confined by the ruler when moving the scanner from completely left to completely right and the scanning eye of the i1Pro2 will start from a white area of the target and ends perfectly on a white area of the target to ensure proper reading of the corresponding colour strip by ArgyllCMS.
The first thing we will do is to ensure the ArgyllCMS driver is installed by changing the standard X-rite driver into the ArgyllCMS driver: To force installation of the driver, Windows has be to restarted with the shift button pressed down and choose restart to disable driver signing: Windows will disable drivers that are nog signed by default and you will not be able to install the ArgyllCMS driver.
Open a DOS terminal and go to the directory where you have downloaded the target with the corresponding *.t1, *.t2, makeprofile.bat, AdobeRGB1988.icc files are located.
Type in (see above): "chartread -v -H -T0.4 875-target" and press enter and ArgyllCMS is asking you to put the i1Pro2 device onto the white calibration tile to calibrate the device:
Now start scanning, starting with colour strip A: be sure the i1Pro2 is completely moved left or right of the scanning ruler. You can move from left to right or vice versa. Press the scanning button firmly and hold for about 1-2 seconds before moving the i1Pro2 completely to the opposite side with a constant pace (not too fast) and while pressing the button wait for about 1-2 seconds before releasing the button to register the reading by ArgyllCMS. This will give the i1Pro2 time to activate the internal scanning lamp, otherwise the lamp is only lit, maybe from the second colour patch on, throwing a reading error, because the first patch is not registered. So it very importantly, when pressing the scanning button to wait for about 1-2 seconds before you scan the corresponding strip and wait again 1-2 seconds before releasing the button when you have reached the other side of the strip and the scanning eye is above a white area of the paper, so ArgyllCMS is sure the end of the strip has been reached and the scanning data can be registered.
In my example the first reading failed, because I moved the scanner too fast or not consistently enough. Press on the spacebare to retry the reading.
You will move from a white area of the paper and ends the reading by the eye reading the opposite white area of the paper. If the reading is succesfull you wil be asked to continue with reading colour strip B:
After you have read all the strips succesfully you will get this message:
Now press "d" to ensure the reading is written to the corresponding *.ti3 file. The scanning is now complete and we will now generate the printer profile. Be sure the AdobeRGB1998.icc + makeprofile.bat files (included in the package) is in the working directory, otherwise the process will stop when generating the target. Now type in: "makeprofile" (batch file included with the package):
The batch file will ask for you the internal and external name to be used. Either use a continous name without spaces and if you want to use spaces in the name, please place the name between brackets. For example: My_first_printer_profile_with_ArgyllCMS or "My first printer profile with ArgyllCMS".
The file name is 875-target
the copyright option be be left empty or you can fill in whatever you want: either continously or between brackets (if you want to use spaces in your name).
Now wait for a few minutes for your computer to calculate and generate the printer profile. Unfortunately this process is quite slow, even on fast machines.
The profile process has now completed and your profile can be installed (right click and choose: install profile):
The ArgyllCMS 875 patch file set is included with the topic. Have fun.
ArgyllCMS is a free to use program with a myriad of possibilities on pair with commercial available software packages in terms of quality of output. Unfortunately the cryptic terminal commands can be sometimes a bit confusing. The standard targen command will produce 836 patches if no amount of patches is defined with the -f argument, when choosing for the printRGB as colour space for the printer profile, which you will need to choose when using standard commercial photo printers: these printers expect RGB input, despite the confusing possibility of CMYK profile, which you want to choose when using RIP software/driver.
The target of 875 patches, I am using in manual, is created with 729 colour patches in mind: if you consider the RGB colour space as a 3D-model with the XYZ-axes, the colour samples are taken with 9 steps in each XYZ-axes: for 0% for no ink ("white") and 100% for maximum saturation of one of the colours in mind: Red, Green and Blue (RGB). This means that you will have 9x9x9=729 colour patches to encompass all the possibilities in the RGB-colour space when making steps of 10% for sampling the colour space, by which the profile will be calculated on. The target is enhanced with 128 grey steps to neutralise black and white printing and to obtain a smooth gradient. There are 10 white patches and 10 black patches to fill up the target up to 875 patches in total.
Print the target with example Qimage with the printer profile option set to: OFF (raw data send to the printer, no color management) and choose in the prints tab: original size and also in the printer driver: disable color management, choosing the option: NONE. This way will ensure the target is printed without any colour management and the raw data is sent properly to the printer without any correction (this is what you want). Choose: the size setting: original size and in the printer driver: borderless, no expansion: retain size. The target is be printed on a single sheet of A4 (210x297 mm).
After printing: let the target to be properly dried for at least 1 hour to be sure all the colours patches are properly settled before scanning the patches with the i1Pro2 device.
Align the target under the scanning table jig with the left paper border aligning to the first mark of the scanning ruler (actually the second one, but the first one is almost towards the border), so the paper is properly aligned: this way the movement of the i1Pro2 physcially confined by the ruler when moving the scanner from completely left to completely right and the scanning eye of the i1Pro2 will start from a white area of the target and ends perfectly on a white area of the target to ensure proper reading of the corresponding colour strip by ArgyllCMS.
The first thing we will do is to ensure the ArgyllCMS driver is installed by changing the standard X-rite driver into the ArgyllCMS driver: To force installation of the driver, Windows has be to restarted with the shift button pressed down and choose restart to disable driver signing: Windows will disable drivers that are nog signed by default and you will not be able to install the ArgyllCMS driver.
Open a DOS terminal and go to the directory where you have downloaded the target with the corresponding *.t1, *.t2, makeprofile.bat, AdobeRGB1988.icc files are located.
Type in (see above): "chartread -v -H -T0.4 875-target" and press enter and ArgyllCMS is asking you to put the i1Pro2 device onto the white calibration tile to calibrate the device:
Now start scanning, starting with colour strip A: be sure the i1Pro2 is completely moved left or right of the scanning ruler. You can move from left to right or vice versa. Press the scanning button firmly and hold for about 1-2 seconds before moving the i1Pro2 completely to the opposite side with a constant pace (not too fast) and while pressing the button wait for about 1-2 seconds before releasing the button to register the reading by ArgyllCMS. This will give the i1Pro2 time to activate the internal scanning lamp, otherwise the lamp is only lit, maybe from the second colour patch on, throwing a reading error, because the first patch is not registered. So it very importantly, when pressing the scanning button to wait for about 1-2 seconds before you scan the corresponding strip and wait again 1-2 seconds before releasing the button when you have reached the other side of the strip and the scanning eye is above a white area of the paper, so ArgyllCMS is sure the end of the strip has been reached and the scanning data can be registered.
In my example the first reading failed, because I moved the scanner too fast or not consistently enough. Press on the spacebare to retry the reading.
You will move from a white area of the paper and ends the reading by the eye reading the opposite white area of the paper. If the reading is succesfull you wil be asked to continue with reading colour strip B:
After you have read all the strips succesfully you will get this message:
Now press "d" to ensure the reading is written to the corresponding *.ti3 file. The scanning is now complete and we will now generate the printer profile. Be sure the AdobeRGB1998.icc + makeprofile.bat files (included in the package) is in the working directory, otherwise the process will stop when generating the target. Now type in: "makeprofile" (batch file included with the package):
The batch file will ask for you the internal and external name to be used. Either use a continous name without spaces and if you want to use spaces in the name, please place the name between brackets. For example: My_first_printer_profile_with_ArgyllCMS or "My first printer profile with ArgyllCMS".
The file name is 875-target
the copyright option be be left empty or you can fill in whatever you want: either continously or between brackets (if you want to use spaces in your name).
Now wait for a few minutes for your computer to calculate and generate the printer profile. Unfortunately this process is quite slow, even on fast machines.
The profile process has now completed and your profile can be installed (right click and choose: install profile):
The ArgyllCMS 875 patch file set is included with the topic. Have fun.
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