My Canon PRO-10 on refill ink - and what happened to my PRO-9500II

[Artur5]

I don't know what happens with Apple/Mac but in Windows most programs don’t apply any kind of color management. For instance, among Internet browsers, I believe that only Mozilla Firefox does it. Neither Google Chrome nor, of course, Microsoft own programs (Internet Explorer/ Microsoft Edge ) care it in the least about color spaces.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

as long as you stay in sRGB there is not much you can do or need to do; you are right that it is not so simple to find out if a particular program is supporting other color spaces - this test image may be of help for this.
Some graphics programs support the color space assigned to an image but wouldn't give you any option to modify it, and other programs don't hide such color space options and let you reassign/recalculate an image as necessary, but you need to know what you are doing in such case - it is better to go with one color space only - using Adobe RGB from the instance you take a photo with your camera, and then doing the photo editing in Adobe RGB, on a monitor which supports that color space, or at least a major part of it.

 

[Artur5]

Yes I know.. having purchased recently a wide gamut monitor (NEC PA242W ) I have to remember all the time this fact. Life was a bit easier with my former sRGB screen. Fortunately, NEC’s Spectraview II software allows the user to save up to 5 calibration presets. So I have one preset for sRGB space and this the one that I use normally in non color aware programs. In Photoshop I select a preset profile for native gamut.
But then, once you see the extra colors that a wide gamut can display, it’s quite frustrating going back to the ‘duller’ sRGB space.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

That's a pretty good monitor indeed; I restrict my photo/printing etc work to sRGB and use a monitor which does just some more of sRGB to be save in this respect, but since most of my larger prints, posters are printed on coated paper or PE film which are below sRGB. But I nevertheless like to test and play with higher performing equipment - camera , monitor and else

 

[palombian]

I replaced the OEM PBK ink with the Octoinkjet Standard Black and profiled my most used papers again.
Re-printed some photos with deep blacks, with the new profile I did not see a difference with OEM PBK.
IMO this means the black was not the deepest possible and the profile could stretch it to the required level.
On the test chart the black spot of coarse was not blacker (on average the OEM PBK measures L=3.5 and Octo STB L=8.2).

I combined a lot of profiles on my Luster papers:
- yellow: my roll of Ilford Galerie Smooth Pearl and - a tad less yellow - my (large) old stock of Pearl made in Switserland (wich I think is Ilford).
- green: what I can print on this paper with the PRO-9500 Precision Colors enhanced inkset (this paper masks most gloss differences)
- blue: Canon profile Luster Pro
- orange: Precision Colors SE profile for same paper
- white and grey: the color space of my EIZO Flexscan EV2336W and Adobe RGB

Order L50, L90, L70, L30, L10

Taken into account that my papers are at least 10 years old (although more recent Tecco SP310 Smooth Pearl didn't have a wider gamut) and I print with 3th party ink, it seems very acceptable to me.
Also the Canon and PC profiles are not made with my Colormunki, and the profiles I made with OEM ink were not as wide as what Canon publishes.
The fact that the PC profile seems to be moved to left under confirms this (should buy the ink to know).

Maybe I must buy a better monitor to see what I print ?

 

[palombian]

Yes I know.. having purchased recently a wide gamut monitor (NEC PA242W ) I have to remember all the time this fact. Life was a bit easier with my former sRGB screen. Fortunately, NEC’s Spectraview II software allows the user to save up to 5 calibration presets. So I have one preset for sRGB space and this the one that I use normally in non color aware programs. In Photoshop I select a preset profile for native gamut.
But then, once you see the extra colors that a wide gamut can display, it’s quite frustrating going back to the ‘duller’ sRGB space.

Hello @Artur5 , that's a Rolls !

I am searching a second hand EIZO 24", but most are 10 year old models with CCFL tubes.
I can find them for about 200, but maybe I better buy a new CS2420 for about € 600.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Maybe I must buy a better monitor to see what I print ?

No, not necessarily, it's a little bit more complex, all these profile diagrams just show you what the printer can print with that ink, paper, driver settings; when printing the color patch files for your ColorMunki or other spectro are printed with all color mgmt turned off in the driver, so the printer can run at its maximum. But once you print an image , with a profile activated the printer is supposed to print the colors as they are delivered by your image you want to print, and as long as that image has no color space or sRGB assigned it won't print outside sRGB. The software you are using to print together with the profile data will not print outside sRGB. You are never printing the patch files for your Colormunki with the profile just created. The xRite software will not let you to read your color corrected patches for a comparison, such verification step is left for software beyond the ColorMunki/i1Studio/i1Profiler packages.

 

[stratman]

I am searching a second hand EIZO 24", but most are 10 year old models with CCFL tubes.

CCFL tubes lose brightness and maybe color gamut as they age. It may be possible to replace them.

 

[Artur5]

Hello @Artur5 , that's a Rolls !

I am searching a second hand EIZO 24", but most are 10 year old models with CCFL tubes.
I can find them for about 200, but maybe I better buy a new CS2420 for about € 600.

You’ll have to take my word for it, but I paid just 212 Euro (shipping included) for a brand new Nec PA242W. It was from an external vendor at Amazon Germany. Beforehand, I wasn’t too confident on ‘what’ will arrive inside the box. You know that if it sounds too good to be true...
But no, the monitor was new, the box untouched. All accessories, CDs and cables in sealed plastic bags. Not a single scratch or mark on the cabinet, zero dead pixels and 0.01 hours of use, according to the OSD menu.

@palombian: The Eizo CS2420 was on my shortlist too, but in the end I decided to get a PA2423W instead, waiting for months what it seemed an impossible bargain, until I stumbled into this PA242W.
For specifications, the CS2420 is more on less on the same level of the NECs PA242/243. What decided me not to buy it was the opinion of a guy from a photography forum, who is a real expert at color management. He warned me that Eizo was able to sell the CS2420 for 200-250 euros less than the NEC PA242W by the way of purchasing very cheap a lot of B grade panels with mediocre uniformity and then boosting the Uniformity Control to achieve an even illumination across the screen. This ‘trick’ has the problem of reducing noticeably the contrast.
Of course, I can’t be positive about those statements but he seems a fellow with a very good knowledge of what’s going on in the factories. Notwithstanding, he says too that the average quality of the panels installed by Eizo in the CS Coloredge series has improved nowadays and are better than two-three years ago.
Therefore, for 600 euros a CS2420 seems a reasonable investment. In fact, my NEC PA242W has a less than stellar contrast too. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why they sold it so cheap. Even if the monitor was brand new from the factory, as it came with a calibration certificate, it’s possible that the vendor saw the contrast data and decided not to risk a possible return by a demanding buyer who wouldn’t be too pleased with a mediocre contrast, if he paid full price.

Anyway, either Eizo or NEC, if you’re after a wide gamut monitor mainly for photo editing purposes, a contrast of 600-650:1 is not a problem at all. There’s no paper/ink combination able to reach this figure by far. If your intended uses are video editing/multimedia, etc, then neither the CS2420 nor my own PA242W would be the ideal choice but, as you know, the alternatives are much more expensive ( Eizo CG series, NEC Spectraview Reference ..). I’m not mentioning brands like Dell, Asus or Benq because I don’t trust at all their quality control.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

It may not be clear enough in my posting #60 above
www.printerknowledge.com/threads/my-canon-pro-10-on-refill-ink-and-what-happened-to-my-pro-9500ii.13542/post-117616
how those vertical bars just in the red channel can impact the blue image background just outside sRGB, here is another view of the same data. The Basiccolor test image with the blue background is displayed as a pixel cloud with the Monaco Gamut Viewer (color space aware), and the sRGB color space is added as an overlay.

You can see 3 distinct pixel groups vertically tilted in the -a-b - the blue quadrant - just outside the sRGB limit which are the test colors