i1Studio or i1pro2 (Profiling Service) for ICC Printer Profiles

[palombian]

I wouldn't go too far with those comparisons - monitor vs. printer - both are output devices with their own characteristics and performance specifications unless you are working in a commercial environment - fashion - advertising - printing which has its own requirements for color confidence. If you got that much in detail trying to replicate 'correct' colors you would need to start already at the camera and its color rendering, the white point of the studio flash etc.

Agree, start with calibrating the monitor and profiling one or two papers.
Soft proofing should give a fair impression of the print, and helps in particular to choose relative or perceptual rendering intent.
Stick with that and wait until next day (when the ink is dry and you can see it in daylight).

 

[ManuelGoico]

To compare the prints side to side with the image on screen, ideally you should use your normalized light ( the Grafilite lamp ) and the white point in the profile of the monitor should match the fluorescent tube of the lamp, which is D50 in the original Grafilite Mk I. Maybe the tube of the version II is slightly different ( If it were D55, then profile the monitor with a white point of 5500K).
For everyday use of the monitor you can switch to another profile with the white point setting that your prefer ( 6500K or whatever).
Regards.

Thank you Artur, the problem is that with D50 ( the temperature of the grafilite) I see the monitor a bit warmer than the print. With D55 is more accurate. Maybe that change when I do my own paper profiles? Thank you

 

[robwignell]

Hello Angelo
I have come in on this discussion quite late but can give you a few comments on my own experience of diving down the rabbit hole of screen and printer profiling.
My first step was to buy a DataColor Print setup, I chose it instead of a ColorMunki but it was a choice made with little understanding of the differences that might make a difference. It was able to create printer/ink/paper combination profiles using a hand held scanner and had a separate reader, called a Spyder IV Elite, for screen calibration. Within 12 months the plastic on the hand scaner became sticky and needed a lot of effort to repair. I agree with the advice to stay away from DataColor. Screen calibration seemed OK but creating printer profiles was fiddly. Scanning row by row was slow and error prone.
Next I borrowed a ColorMunki from my camera club. It also seemed to calibrate screens well. Patch reading with the ColorMunki was faster but limited patch numbers seemed to be a quality issue and the ICC profiles seemed to have some odd shapes to them that resulted in poor colour rendition.
The really big leap was using ArgyllCMS - command line shareware software that runs on Unix, Mac and Windows. This has the biggest learning curve and the biggest rewards. I have learned a lot about producing good quality printer profiles but I have printed hundreds of pages of patches and used a lot of ink along the way.
I now have the advantage of using an old X-Rite DTP-70 which can scan a page of patches in less than a minute with a high degree of accuracy.
If you want to produce profiles for printing at the level of quality that you can get out of your printer, you need a minimum of an i1Photo Pro2 kit. New, these cost more than your printer but can be found second hand on occasions. The replacement for my DTP-70 is an X-Rite i1Isis V2, costing in excess of A$6000. These are great for a high volume professional printing shop but beyond most of us in the amateur field.
I don't regret my printer profile learning adventure and strongly recommend ArgyllCMS if you have the computer skills to use a command line interface. But, if you just want to get on with printing, your X-Rite screen calibrator is the best first step and professionally made printer profiles for a limited set of papers is by far the cheapest way to go. Some paper companies will make a printer profile for you if you buy their paper. I use Marrutt paper and they offer this service, but I haven't used it so can't comment on how their profiles compare to mine.
Good luck.
Rob

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I only can comment on the Datacolor SpyderPrint package - it is not a reliable program, it can deliver completely screwed up profiles without a chance for the user to recognize the deficiencies in the profiles, scanning the patches appears to be the most unreliable process with this package. I never have used the Datacolor screen calibration version, but comments of other users don't hint to any major problems as I see it.

i1Studio is an entry level profiling package and delivers usable profiles without serious flaws or kinks, based on my testing and comments of other users I know. ArgyllCMS offers more options - one is that you can adjust the number of color patches to your needs - from small to multipage, and it offers some other options which might help to get a 'better' profile and it supports a wide range of input devices , and not just the XRite Spektro. So yes - the choice is there if you want to dive deeper into printer profiling. I'm using a I1Pro2 with a scanning table I1io2 to let the robot mechanics doing the scanning which let me do quick checks of inks and papers w/o much effort.