Getting a profile made

[nche11]

Unless you are preparing to spend lots of time in making your own profiles all the time for all the paper you use and you will continue forever tweaking your profiles after making them instead why not just get a set of reasonably good ink and do what fine art photographers do by making fine adjustments in many possible ways in colors, saturation, density, contrast by your favorite software (many prefer Photoshop as an example) then print your final work as produced that way. You probably will make some fine adjustments to colors even if you have a custom profile in place.

When I first got my ip4700 I had serious issues with the colors it printed. The inks were OEM. I kept asking myself if I should get a profile to change it? I decided not to. I could still produce very nice colors if I photoshop my images first. I could try to profile it but I figured it would cause me to want to keep tweaking the profiles still. I ended up refilling it with Hobbicolors inks and forgot about getting profiles. I saved money and more importantly I avoided the trap of getting into endless tweaking of profiles.

 

[rodbam]

Thanks nche I normally enjoy post processing my images but my knowledge base is very low when it comes to things like how to remove a magenta colour cast because when I move the slider away from magenta to lesson the magenta I seem to be adding another unwanted colour. I'm normally very careful to get my exposure the way I want in camera & just have to fine tune the shot in Photoshop & some dodge & burn etc so I was hoping a profile will get me in the ballpark with my after market inks & I can just fine tune, Mind you I will certainly print up some shots with the new inks first to see how they look before buying new profiles.

 

[nche11]

There is a misunderstanding that Photoshop or other software can make "all" the adjustment to match up colors to whatever target image. No. This is impossible. When You move a slider it changes all colors. So one color may be improved other colors may be shifted to a point that they become ugly. However, if you think profile can make one color adjustment without affecting others this is also impossible. Simple profile tools do match up some colors exactly (hopefully) but the majority of the colors are mapped by interpolation, an algorithm that estimates the values for color mapping. This is really another can of worms to get into. Sometimes you will be bumped with a color that is just not right while the skin tone, the sky and the wall and drapery are all correct.

For artistic color photo printing if you can let loose a little in "exact" color match the whole world of wonder is opened up for you. There is no way that a color print cam match the real colors of the scene you captured by your camera. Why do you want to match your print "exactly" against whatever target you are matching to? The target image is already not the same as the real scene.

In fact I don't really care what the colors are in my original scene. When I print I just want to get the most beautiful colors out of the printer. I Photoshop the image. I may crop (that's getting rid of some part of the original scene), lighten up or darken it, move a slider to make the skin tone of my taste, maybe a little more detail (sharpening), blah, blah, blah... All I do is never for the reason of matching up exactly to anything. It is creativity and it is all about photography. This has always been the better approach for getting better prints. This is also the reason I want a set of ink with a widest gamut. It gives me more room for the creativity. The ink I am using from Hobbicolors serves me well for now. I may eventually venture into pigment based printing with Epson printers. For now Canon Pro9000 with Hobbicolors is what I can afford comfortably. In my opinion there is no need to venture into profiling. I guess you can do it. But keep in mind profiling does not change the gamut of the ink. Well, this may not be a correct statement. Profiling can shape the gamut of the ink. But that's not what I need anyway.

 

[l_d_allan]

However, if you think profile can make one color adjustment without affecting others this is also impossible. Simple profile tools do match up some colors exactly (hopefully) but the majority of the colors are mapped by interpolation, an algorithm that estimates the values for color mapping. This is really another can of worms to get into. Sometimes you will be bumped with a color that is just not right while the skin tone, the sky and the wall and drapery are all correct.

Generally agree. To put it another way, my understanding is that the point of profiling is to get your print to closely match what you are seeing on your ... hopefully calibrated ... monitor. With that accomplished, you have higher confidence that when you tweak settings (exposure, saturation, white balance, etc.), the print will closely match what you see on the monitor ... WYSIWYG ... ideally. However, this isn't possible with the limitations of paper compared to a high quality LCD or CRT.

My experience is that flesh tones are important to get right, but less so for other colors. I try to include a WhiBal card and/or SpyderCube in a scene when I can. If you are making images for a catalog, then it becomes much more important ... perhaps critical ... to get colors in the print to match the original.

YMMV.

 

[mikling]

Softproofing is really one of the forgotten key aspects of color management. It allows you to see the weakness of the printed output and adjust it accordingly.
When you make adjustments to your image, you can see whether the printer is able to produce the effect you desire. Unless you softrpoof, you are still guessing whether the printer will print the adjustments made... a few extra steps and you can then softproof the potential result and be in control of the output. You are now truly managing the color output and no longer guessing.

This aspect is often overlooked.

http://www.pixelgenius.com/tipsandtechniques.html

Check the article by the late Bruce Fraser " How to softproof"

 

[rodbam]

I've set my Dell 2408 up to how the photos look good & I'm pleased with how my prints turn out, they're slightly darker than what I see on screen so I just make the on screen photo a touch lighter than I would like & it prints up great to me. I can't afford to buy a calibration device but if my prints are looking good I'm happy.
I tried to view a soft proof in PS & the shot looked nothing like the print out using a Canon profile for the Canon paper, the soft proof looked sort of milky or opaque.
I know it would be best to profile my screen but on the old age pension it's not on my want to buy list which is getting very short that's why I'm sweating that when I order & get my first fill up of IS inks I can get some good looking prints. I will get profiles made if needed from Madman Chan or I will see what Mikling has in the way of profiles for the pro9000 mk 2 When I order my refill kit.

 

[l_d_allan]

Softproofing is really one of the forgotten key aspects of color management. It allows you to see the weakness of the printed output and adjust it accordingly."

Thanks for the info and link. It clears up some fuzziness I had about soft-proofing.

 

[Tin Ho]

Softproofing is an attractive concept. But in my understanding it is but a fantasy. Your printer and your computer display each lives in a very different color space. There are colors printable by your printer that are not displayable by your computer display. Your computer display is doubtful to be able to do a right job to softproof your printer. If we were still living in the old time when our computer displays were black and white your would have easily seen why trying to softproofing your canon colorful inkjet printers on a black and white monitor would not work. This of course is exaggerated to explain why softproofing may not work.

 

[ThrillaMozilla]

Softproofing is an attractive concept. But in my understanding it is but a fantasy.

I don't know anything about it, but I have to wonder. The link on the softproofing demo shows how to do everything -- except softproofing.

 

[RogerB]

Softproofing is an attractive concept. But in my understanding it is but a fantasy.

I don't know anything about it, but I have to wonder. The link on the softproofing demo shows how to do everything -- except softproofing.

Not a fantasy at all, especially if you have a wide-gamut monitor. My monitor can easily display all the colours that my Epson Pro3800 can print on matte paper. Even with gloss papers the monitor comes pretty close, only missing out in some very saturated yellows and green/cyans. More importantly, the colours that are most difficult to print, which are normally dark saturated colours, are well within the monitor gamut. Even an sRGB monitor will accurately render these colours.

As for the printable colours that are outside the monitor gamut, a good monitor profile renders them perceptually, so their relationship with other colours is maintained. In practice even an sRGB monitor (well calibrated/profiled) will allow good soft proofing.

ThrillaMozilla, I don't know if we were looking at different links, but the Bruce Fraser article that I found there explained soft proofing very well. If anyone is serious about quality photo printing that article is very useful, like most of Bruce Fraser's work.