Printer Calabrations ?

[Ink stained Fingers]

if you encounters a problem saturday evening

you may stop printing and rather do something different or even better on a saturday evening.........

- Step one - adjustments by eyesight - gets you over some issues with default monitor settings like a daylight color D65 setting, a wrong gamma etc, it gets you closer to a mode for image editing. But it depends strongly on an individual's color perception. Overcoming this you are required to go for the next step - getting some decent instrumentation and doing the full calibration/profiling job for the monitor - and the printer, if you use any thrid party material - inks or papers.

I have seen that some paper suppliers offer a free profile, if you buy a package of Brand X paper from them , some distributors offer a collection of profiles for their papers for use on a range of standard printers - Canon or Epson, so there are various option possible.

Edit:

 

[Andreas S]

I have seen that some paper suppliers offer a free profile, if you buy a package of Brand X paper from them , some distributors offer a collection of profiles for their papers for use on a range of standard printers - Canon or Epson, so there are various option possible.

Depends on the brand…
Some will provide quite good profiles for use with standard inks and printersettings. They are using good devices with a reasonable number of patches.
Others are using old devices, outdated and not reliable. Maybe still better than nothing but not famous at all.

 

[Andreas S]

A few hints when it comes to creating a printerprofile.
1st and most important question is "for which kind of purpose". (Hobby? Industry? Graphic arts?)
2nd question which depends on the answer to the first one. Are their any certification standards to meet?
3re question is what I want to print (photography color or bw (probably both), spot colors and so on.
When I've got my answers I'm able to choose the right settings in a profiling software.

A) Observer angle edited, I think that I wasn't clear enough.
The commun default setting in the softwares is 2°. Industry standard is 10°, graphic arts standard is 2°.
10° gives better accuracy compared to an human eye for uniform surfaces of 3,5cm square or higher, and will be a better choice for everyone who don't needs to match FOGRA or IDEAliance certification or sign makers. If you have to work for industry you have to use 10° as they will verify your work under their standard condition.
A photographer should use 2° as there are no large zones of uniform colours (pixels) in a photo (excepted a few, very special cases).

B) Illuminant
D65: Daylight at noon. Standard in industry. Approved for certification of conformity. K = 6504
D50: Daylight but much warmer than D65. Reference in printing and graphic arts. Not admitted as standard by the CIE but used for FOGRA, UGRA, IDEAliance certification. These certifacation do not certifies that your job is good, they just say "You do as the others and your are matching our allowances of deviation". To be certified FOGRA or anyhing wont help you if the industry is sueing you to death beceause you dismatched their standard. Luxury goods ∆E74 0,4 for each hue, Fogra ∆E00 2 global. K = 5003
D55/D60 are just steps between D50 and D65 to close the K gap. Might be usefull or not to better match the natual light at your home.

A: Tungsten Lamps. Used at home but now useless within the european community as these lamps ar forbidden there since a few years. K = 2856 (very warm)

F classe. 11 different exists but only 3 of them are communly used. Neonlamps, LED and so on.
F2: Most commun in offices. K = 4230
F7: very close to D65. K = 6500
F11 (TL84): used for shop windows. Admitted for comparaison of samples in industry.

M: See filters below.

D50/2 and D65/2: As D50 and D65 but with applying an M2 filter.

C) Filters
They also use M in their abrevation.
M0: No filter at all. Best solution if you are not involved in quality control. Does an humain eye got UV or Polarizing filter integrated? No
M1: UV filter in two classes, a + b. No on ever understood how this crap became Standard at FOGRA and others. Either I filter out the UV or not.
M2: UV filter. The new standard at Fogra51 and the others. Cave eat: Yellow ink allready works as a f....g good UV Filter too. But this mode will apply the correctif algorithme everywhere. So…
M3: Polarizing filter. you need a physical filter and a second, polarizing, light source with your spectrophotometer. So, if a software proposes this mode, verify first if you have the right device. If not it will mess up serously. Have to be used to measure wet inks.

D) Number of patches
RGB mode: 1500 is a good value, don't go much lower for precission. Up from 2500 you run in the risk of artefacts ar halftone shades. If you want to print bw photos too, pack 150-300 grey steps to the target.
CMYK mode: 2400 at less for real quality. To print b/w too, same as above.

Linearization targets : 50 steps of each channel is good, 100 is perfect. No need to go further. I've tried, for fun, 1000 steps but I never found the device to scan them.

I hope this is helpfull,
Andreas

 

[Artur5]

Fascinating info Andreas. I believe though that your industry standards are several steps above the usual requirements of this forum. My impression is that most people here are enthusiast amateurs trying to get the best of their equipment with a moderate investment. No doubt that the new Konica/Minolta devices would be vastly better than a Color Munki Photo but, speaking for myself, calibrators costing more than 400-500 Euro/$ are out of my scope.

 

[Andreas S]

The goal is to give information. If you don't know what all the abreviations or specifications means you can't do the job.
An enthousiast don't need to buy a device NOW, only profesionals are in the need of buing a device imediately. And a real pro better should spend even €2000 to make sure to earn money with quality than saving 1500 one time but loosing his customers by a lack of quality.
For enthousiasts, enlighted amateurs or however we call them, the best thing to do is having a look at fleabay, Leboncoin,Craigslist or others. There are often i1Pro2 for less of cost than a new Munki. When they are labeled EF you may find them sometimes for €150/$. Ok, they won't work with iProfiler and you might buy a third party software like ours. But even then your are still in the price range. Or just use Argyll, once you knows what all this strange words means scripting for Argyl is not so complicated. With a budget of €400 - €500/$ and some patience one can buy a good equipement.

Edit:

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

With a budget of €400 - €500/$ and some patience one can buy a good equipement.

I got most of my profiling stuff - software and hardware - via Ebay at 20-30% of list price, it just takes a while sometimes until you see a good offer, you just keep a search running at Ebay until you get an email with a hit.

 

[Wisey]

What a fantastic forum this is, truly professional by all concerned and know one trying to get one up on the other like other forums ive been on.

I love taking pictures and have for 44 years but i never for one minute thought i would need to delve into colour calibrating, printers monitors and cameras.

Thank goodness this forum is here with all you guys willing to help us don't knows, this is going to be a new journey for me, and know doubt will present problems that without doubt will be presented on here for all you experts to
sort.. Thank-you.

One question i would like somebody to answer is : will the apple 5k monitor calibrate to a decent monitor for colour management and photography, or would an Eizo or something similar be better. ?

thanks

Andy

 

[Andreas S]

Well, not sure if you are talking ablout the LG 5K monitor Apple is selling too or the built in monitor of your iMac Pro?
Basically both of them can do the job when well calibrated. I couldn't find the entire specs of the iMac monitor to know the real % of P3 or Adobe 98 it can reproduce.
But % are just one thing, the other, maybe more important, point is the monitors uniformity when displaying colours. One should display a given colour "full screen" and mesure it at different points of the screen. This will give you the Delta. Most monitors are good at the center but poor toward the edges.

 

[palombian]

I bought a lowly EIZO Coloredge CS2420 last black friday.
My first monitor with even light and colour over the whole screen.

I preferred this one over a 27 inch Benq (with many complaints on this point).
But my previous EIZO Flexscan was rather poor too (and it came from an EIZO showroom).

Some monitor manufacturers select panels and reserve the best ones for higher level products, others seem to wait until the customer send it back.

Or maybe you just must have luck.

 

[Andreas S]

But my previous EIZO Flexscan was rather poor too

The Flexscan is for office purpose, not for any kind of grapic arts related work.

Or maybe you just must have luck

There are juste 3 brands who use always the same panel in a display model (Eizo is one of them). All the others just put the cheapest they can find in the display. So you can have luck and buy a geat display but another guy obtains crap by buying exactly the same model.

Some monitor manufacturers select panels and reserve the best ones for higher level products

It's the same thing with spectrophotometers too. Model A has an allowance of deviance X. The rejected part will be used in Model B which has allowance XX and so on. That means that you only have a very little chance to find a perfect part in Model B and even less chances to find it in Model C.