Printer Calabrations ?

[palombian]

...

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.

Yes, but my eyes saw the imperfections of the Flexscan display clearly while the differences between prints from 2 printer/ink combinations both calibrated with the Colormunki are much smaller .
Dry time of ink, ambient light etc give a larger deviation, changing settings based on the first impression often disappoints the next day.
I am no color professional either.
That's why I stick to my - probably less accurate - profiles.

My output does not need to be reproduced 100% the same elsewhere.

Maybe sooner or later we can buy a better spectrophotometer in the same budget category.

 

[Andreas S]

That's why I stick to my - probably less accurate - profiles.

If you don't pretend to produce high accuracy prints the Munki can do the job untill someone other prints the same job with a better profile. The deviance of a Munki can sometimes reach values perceptible by an human eye. Even an i1Pro has deviances you won't imagine. Above I only posted Delta 2000 calculation wich includes calculation factors to simulate an humans eye perception. The Delta 1976, which is based only on measured values, are up to 6 times higher with an i1Pro but constant with the Konica. To create a profile there is no turnaround "human eye ", you need accurate measurings. That's why Xrite includes iteration in their software. I withnessed a test where they had to do 3 iterations to get the same quality as with a Konica Spectrophotometer with only one measure.

 

[ThrillaMozilla]

There are basically 2 different routes you can take - you get familiar to use some instrumentation to measure and adjust the actual color output of your monitor and printer - an entry level package would be the ColorMunki/i1Sutio package by X-Rite - or you go and do manual adjustments to your equipment with the help of some test images.

Hello, Ink stained. What a great coincidence. I'm desperately trying to solve my color problems, having just been forced to farm out a calendar with mediocre results, and basically being unable to print anything to my satisfaction. I'm willing to throw some money at the problem, so I'm thinking of buying an i1 Studio, and lo and behold, you have one.

Question: Can I build a profile for soft proofing with simulated tungsten illumination (somewhere around 3000K? Can the software handle that?

Here's the reason for asking. My PRO 9000 Mk II prints horrible blue-gray colors. It's the same thing with the two printers at my local camera store. The colors appear gray by daylight and pink by tungsten light. They are actually eggplant colored instead of gray until the prints dry for a day or two! Then they tone down, but not nearly enough. As far as I can tell, this is classical metameric failure. It's possible to find an acceptable compromise by a lot of trial and error, but usually the results are just grim. If I could get an idea how the prints would look in different lights (that's where soft proofing comes in), I might be able to do better.

So it turns out that by default everyone profiles their printers for 5000K. I need 3000K.

My house has daylight lighting by day and tungsten lighting by night, and that's not going to change. Same with friends I might give prints too.

I figure there's a good chance a spectrophotometer like the i1Studio might handle the metameric failure, but it's not at all obvious that the software can handle it.

 

[Andreas S]

Question: Can I build a profile for soft proofing with simulated tungsten illumination (somewhere around 3000K? Can the software handle that?

No, There is a build in LED which only allows a D50 M2 reading and the software can't handle any other illuminant.

The colors appear gray by daylight and pink by tungsten light

Normal, they grey axis is printed in composite based on a D50 profile. As your Tungsten lamp has another wave lenght the magenta will be reflected and some others are absorbed.

I figure there's a good chance a spectrophotometer like the i1Studio might handle the metameric failure

Only by using a software able to apply an algorythm to recalculate the spectral values. And even with a software able to do so the result wont be 100%, maybe 90-95 % at best.

Conclusion: Forget the i1Studio with the standard software to resolve your problem. If you are realy on a budget buy a second hand Munki/i1Studio and 3rd party software which also allows the use of smaller and more patches . Cost might be 500 -€ 600.

If you have some money to spend go to MYIRO-1 (best choice) or i1Pro2. Both are around €1900 with the software allowing RGB printer profiles. i1Pro3 is around €2200 but is not as good as the MYIRO nut allow M3 which is useless in your case. If you want to make CMYK profiles instead of RGB the MYIRO will be arround €2000, RGB+CMYK 2500€. i1Pro2 €2700 and iPro3 €3200.
You can PM me to have more information.

Andreas


Edit:

 

[Artur5]

Groucho Marx said once that in this world there’re a lot of things more important than money, but they’re so expensive...

If you have 2K-3K to invest go for a Konica/Minolta or the high grade X-Rite products. For those with a tight budget, ColorMunki Photo/I1studio isn’t bad, even with the original software which, I suspect, could be vastly improved by X-Rite if they wanted to,
Anyway, comparing the profiles I’ve produced lately with the C/M Photo and those made years before with a Datacolor SpyderPrint, ColorMunki wins hands down. No more need to fine tune again and again the profile to achieve barely decent results.
Of course, the human eye isn’t as demanding as a professional spectro but the improvements that we’d got with a €2200 device probably would be hardly detectable with the naked eye ( or so I want to believe, for the sake of my wallet. ).

BTW
Isn’t possible to correct the typo in the title of this thread?.
CALABRATIONS sounds like a story of Calabrese bandits.


Edit:

 

[The Hat]

Isn’t possible to correct the typo in the title of this thread?.
CALABRATIONS sounds like a story of Calabrese bandits.

It is, so what's your choices...

 

[Andreas S]

Of course, the human eye isn’t as demanding as a professional spectro but the improvements that we’d got with a €2200 device probably would be hardly detectable with the naked eye ( or so I want to believe, for the sake of my wallet. ).

The Munki/i1Studio has an allowance of deviance between 2 devices of Delta 2000 = 1,5 conform to the xrite data sheet. A barely skilled eye can see a difference from Delta 2000 = 0,5. If you take on account the fact that the deviance between 2 measurings of the same color with the same device can attempt sometimes Delta 2000 = 0,38/Delta 76 (the real deviance in accuracy) = 1,2 - make your own opinion about the quality of your profile.
You can see the difference with a naked eye. I guess, not everyone has free acces to different devices so it is difficult to judge. If you want I'll send a target to you, you print it out, send the print to me and I will send you the profile. Than compare the results.

 

[ThrillaMozilla]

...Conclusion: Forget the i1Studio with the standard software to resolve your problem. If you are realy on a budget buy a second hand Munki/i1Studio and 3rd party software which also allows the use of smaller and more patches . Cost might be 500 -€ 600....

Thanks for your knowledgeable reply, but I think there's a misunderstanding here. The i1Studio is a ColorMunki spectrophotometer, with 31 or 90+ spectral bands, depending on the setting. (X-rite's model names are so unhelpful.) In theory, that should be able to handle the task. That's why I was hoping Ink stained fingers would reply, since he apparently has one.

I have since stumbled on information that suggests that the i1Profiler software can handle the task. I don't have a confirmation of that, and I don't know what software is included with the i1Studio, or whether it can handle the task. It appears that ArgyllCMS can.

I think I will forego the $1300+ solutions. Someone has suggested that I could get a used (very old) Gretag-Macbeth Spectrolino. I am unfamiliar with it, but I assume for the moment that it might do the job.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I'm using the i1Profiler/i1Publish software together with a I1Pro2 and a i1iO2 robot arm for scanning; I didn't/don't own a ColorMunki or i1Studio so I cannot run direct comparisons. I previously used the Gretag McBeth Profile Maker V5 software and longer time ago the Monaco Print Profiler package, all with a i1Pro, and later with a i1io robot arm. I got all of those either via Ebay or special deals on an exhibition - at about 20-30% of list price.

 

[Artur5]

The Munki/i1Studio has an allowance of deviance between 2 devices of Delta 2000 = 1,5 conform to the xrite data sheet. A barely skilled eye can see a difference from Delta 2000 = 0,5. If you take on account the fact that the deviance between 2 measurings of the same color with the same device can attempt sometimes Delta 2000 = 0,38/Delta 76 (the real deviance in accuracy) = 1,2 - make your own opinion about the quality of your profile.
You can see the difference with a naked eye. I guess, not everyone has free acces to different devices so it is difficult to judge. If you want I'll send a target to you, you print it out, send the print to me and I will send you the profile. Than compare the results.

I think it’s all about the law of diminishing returns. Datacolor SpyderPrint ($250) -> profiles not good at all. CM Photo ($400) -> profiles visibly better than SpyderPrint. Konica Minolta ($2000 ?) -> best profiles but difference between those and Color Munki maybe not as noticeable as between Spyderprint and C/Munki. This is my uneducated guess. Maybe I’ll accept your kind offer, printing that target and we’ll see the differences between your profile an mine (with C/M Photo).

Thanks Andreas.