Is anyone here using Profile Prism with great yielding?

[sampheap]

I am pretty new to Profile Prism - just know it from a friend recently.
I really want to try it as some said it works, and some there said it's not that simple. I have Canon LiDE 110 scanner and VueScan - will these meet the requirement?
I am running a small home printing shop here in Cambodia and I am using many types of paper and a few inks too from Inktec and generic one (no-name) as not many customers want to pay much either. Just currently I am switching to pigment inks too to give more archival quality, but I have trouble to make the color right - honestly I also can't get accurate colors with dye ink either resulting red and green shadow cast ;D

Here are the pictures I tried printed in grey scale which I believe can be improved and corrected with the right profile: http://www.flickr.com/photos/soweic/9334523034/
1. Top left is printed with Epson 1390 and pigment ink using provided Epson Glossy profile (you can see the magenta shadow)
2. Top right is printed with Epson 1400 and Inktec dye ink using provided Ultra Premium Photo Paper Luster profile (you can see the greenish cast)
3. Bottom left is printed with Canon MP600 and dye ink using provided Plain Paper profile (it's the best grey scale I can get, but using plain paper profile is limited which the picture printed is not smooth and high quality though choosing Fine)
4. Bottom right is printed with Canon MP600 and dye-ink again using other profiles rather than Plain Paper! (All profiles beside Plain Paper - Fine, I got all sepia look! - wasted 20 photo papers )

Is there a way I can ask for one ICC profile be made here before I can plunge in to get my own Profile Prism?

Thanks in advance for all the helps.

P.S: I am also looking for a used calibration device to calibrate my LCD.

 

[The Hat]

Firstly the best way to print your profiles is to use smaller prints, say A6 thats four up on one sheet of A4 = 75% saving.

Next is to print in greyscale instead of colour, letting the printer handle it and lastly
change the paper in print setup while printing on the same paper each time,
the printer can give you a vastly different output with these settings.

One other inexpensive thing you can do and that is to convert your pictures to greyscale then tell the printer to use greyscale also
but tweak the colour settings in print setup before hitting the print button,
that will eliminate any colour cast that you may get on your final output.

Using colour profile devices work very well on any given paper but if you use a vast range of different papers
then youll spend all of your valuable time having to profile for each one of them to get the correct colour output..

 

[sampheap]

One other inexpensive thing you can do and that is to convert your pictures to greyscale then tell the printer to use greyscale also
but tweak the colour settings in print setup before hitting the print button,
that will eliminate any colour cast that you may get on your final output.

Yes, I did as you suggested. So you meant if I can print greyscale correctly, the it will be mostly likely that the color prints also fix the color cast with the same tweaking of the color settings?

 

[The Hat]

You can correct quite a lot of colour cast by tweaking the print colours but some can be outside your ability to get the right combinations,
if your use this method youll have to keep exact records of these setting
if you wish to use them again because theyll change once you close your print application.

There are six settings that can be used either a single one or used together
to achieve the desired effects, its not rocket science but its close when you use all six.

The sample type (Picture on left) will change as you make your adjustments

It is important when using 3rd party inks to use the same cyan, magenta and yellow
and especially any greys from the one supplier and dont mix them with any others.

 

[cls]

I tried it8 target scanning with vue scan twice but it was worse than before pretty soon i purchased a used but Mint condition efi es-1000 spectrometre and it works like Magic with argyllcms. color profiling with an ccd or CMOS scanner would not work in my book since the color munki is Not that expensive investment especially if you are doing actually money out if it

 

[sampheap]

Thanks a lot for the inputs. Yes, I am putting ColorMunki in my wishlist now. Anyway, kindly enough, I asked one of the members here and he is willing to create the profiles for me. Now I am printing the targets and will post to him by next week

I am still looking for if someone here who has a Profile Prism to help me test if the ICC profile created also good for my ink and paper then I will be investing in this software instead by now.

Thanks a lot.