Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Colour Management => Topic started by: Doug Gray on May 16, 2017, 03:40:44 pm
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I1Profiler update fixes high res monitor. No more squinting!
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Really? I updated mine to 1.7 and that GUI is still a load of crap; probably one of the most eye-straining, counter-intuitive piles of rubbish I've seen from the imaging industry. And my eyes are 20/20 corrected, display is NEC PA271W. It makes great profiles, but man do they ever need schooling on design. OK, you've triggered another one of my X-Rite rants; I'll stop there just to keep it polite. :-)
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Really? I updated mine to 1.7 and that GUI is still a load of crap; probably one of the most eye-straining, counter-intuitive piles of rubbish I've seen from the imaging industry. And my eyes are 20/20 corrected, display is NEC PA271W. It makes great profiles, but man do they ever need schooling on design. OK, you've triggered another one of my X-Rite rants; I'll stop there just to keep it polite. :-)
I use a CG318 4096x2160 on a Win 10 and man did I have to squint with V1.6.7. This update makes it look like my other apps. Adobe Bridge had that problem too but they fixed it last year. Other than the tiny fonts, I don't find I1Profiler's layout too much of an issue. But I do wish they would provide more documentation on what exactly many of their sliders do. A technical description instead of generic, flowery words which mean different things to different people. That's my biggest grip. Same with Photoshop and all their "blend" modes with unclear descriptions.
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Yes, the lack of a manual for that application is one of its biggest shortcomings. I've addressed that issue with them, the tech support people agree, but it won't be undertaken. Means spending money. Their help menus are close to useless. They do have some decent White Papers on their website, but it isn't a substitute for a good manual taking one through the purpose and workings of every option in the application. At least with Photoshop there's a slew of good third-party books and videos, but the clientele for this X-Rite stuff is probably too small (and the clientele for a manual smaller yet) to make a manual pay for itself. Whoever writes it will need to put in real time, so selling enough copies to recuperate the value of the time at a reasonable price would be a real risk.
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Really? I updated mine to 1.7 and that GUI is still a load of crap; probably one of the most eye-straining, counter-intuitive piles of rubbish I've seen from the imaging industry. And my eyes are 20/20 corrected, display is NEC PA271W. It makes great profiles, but man do they ever need schooling on design. OK, you've triggered another one of my X-Rite rants; I'll stop there just to keep it polite. :-)
Mark,
Curious as to why you wouldn't use NEC's Spectraview II to profile their monitor?
Rand
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Mark,
Curious as to why you wouldn't use NEC's Spectraview II to profile their monitor?
Rand
I don't use X-Rite software either for monitor profiling. I use BasicColor.
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I don't use X-Rite software either for monitor profiling. I use BasicColor.
Mark, can you explain why you use BasicColor?
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Mark, can you explain why you use BasicColor?
More accurate profiles.
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More accurate profiles.
Hi Mark,
Interesting. How/why have you come to the conclusion that BasicColor makes better monitor profiles than NEC's "own software" for the monitors they manufacture? Not being argumentative here, am in learning mode!
Rand
PS - Apologies to the OP for dragging the thread off main point.
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Comparison of dE results from round-tripping the profiles, and visual observation.
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Comparison of dE results from round-tripping the profiles, and visual observation.
We're talking monitor profiles?
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BasICColor is the only other sw package (AFAIK) that can actually do hardware level calibration on NEC panels.
It is what is sold in Europe (or not USA) as Spectraview.
Mark: could you post your #s or dE comparison results?
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We're talking monitor profiles?
Yes
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BasICColor is the only other sw package (AFAIK) that can actually do hardware level calibration on NEC panels.
It is what is sold in Europe (or not USA) as Spectraview.
Mark: could you post your #s or dE comparison results?
Wish I could, but I can't - it was years ago and I don't have the data any longer.
BTW, BasicColor is what NEC bundles with what were called the "Reference" series displays in Europe. These were more expensive units of what NEC America told me is the same panel but with the BasicColor software and a performance certificate.
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On the subject of i1Profiler 1.7.0, I've been using it since it was released and have no trouble so far. In fact, I used to have frequent crashes under 1.6.x during multi-page printer test chart scanning, while now (touch wood) I have not yet had the application crash or hang once. I'm hoping they've finally corrected some of the basic instability that used to be in there...
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On the subject of i1Profiler 1.7.0, I've been using it since it was released and have no trouble so far. In fact, I used to have frequent crashes under 1.6.x during multi-page printer test chart scanning, while now (touch wood) I have not yet had the application crash or hang once. I'm hoping they've finally corrected some of the basic instability that used to be in there...
My experience is the same. With 1.6 it periodically crashed just at the outset of the profile creation process; to protect against this nuisance I always saved the Workflow up to the point of creating the profile so that when it did crash it would not be necessary to rescan the target pages - just relaunch, pull up the Workflow and carry on. So far with 1.7 there have been no such crashes.
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Same here, Mark. I always save my workflow, post-scanning but prior to generating the profile. So far, I haven't needed to reload once due to a failure of the software. Hope this trend continues... :)
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..........Hope this trend continues... :)
Me too!
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BasICColor is the only other sw package (AFAIK) that can actually do hardware level calibration on NEC panels.
It is what is sold in Europe (or not USA) as Spectraview.
Mark: could you post your #s or dE comparison results?
Ah, now I get it. Thanks!
Rand
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I have a copy of BasICColor and SV. I should do a bake-off.
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What model display?
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272 w/ 1500 hours or so.
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OK, wide gamut, so that should be interesting. BTW, it's National Baking Day here in Canada today, so a propos :-)
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gonna take a while. I'm stacked up over LAX
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I hate to continue the thread hijack, but I will. :D
I just tried Basiccolor and I agree with Mark's assessment. However, I had numerous lockups after profile creation that required a force quit. Also, it did great on profiles with default (max) monitor contrast. But I tried several times to do a 300:1 CR (softproofing) by specifying WP and CR. The black point was way below what it should have been for 300:1 and the dE's were through the roof. Also, Mark, do you switch profiles? SVII loads the different calibrations somewhere else and leaves single linear profile. Basiccolor seems to bake the calibration settings into separate icc profiles. Have you found this to work well?
Lloyd
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gonna take a while. I'm stacked up over LAX
Safe travels.
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I hate to continue the thread hijack, but I will. :D
I just tried Basiccolor and I agree with Mark's assessment. However, I had numerous lockups after profile creation that required a force quit. Also, it did great on profiles with default (max) monitor contrast. But I tried several times to do a 300:1 CR (softproofing) by specifying WP and CR. The black point was way below what it should have been for 300:1 and the dE's were through the roof. Also, Mark, do you switch profiles? SVII loads the different calibrations somewhere else and leaves single linear profile. Basiccolor seems to bake the calibration settings into separate icc profiles. Have you found this to work well?
Lloyd
I've never had a problem with it. I selected my calibration settings, let it make the profile and it is the default profile that loads every day that I start-up the computer. I don't keep any other monitor profiles. If you are having technical problems with it I recommend that you get in touch with them.
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I have a copy of BasICColor and SV. I should do a bake-off.
Please do. I find it mildly depressing to think that NEC provides a non-optimum solution for the American market as opposed to the European market.
Rand
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Please do. I find it mildly depressing to think that NEC provides a non-optimum solution for the American market as opposed to the European market.
Rand
I don't think that's the intent. The background to this, as I recall it from the time some years ago when I pressed NEC on the issue (so I'm saying what I learned then in the context of the PA271W etc. series, which may or may not be valid information today), is that the product distinction between Germany and the USA is largely a function of marketing. They produced this Reference Series mainly for the German market because they could charge a premium price there for a "certificated" product, but they assured me the panel is identical between the two markets. As for the software, they contend that either the US-Spectraview approach or the German-based BasicColor approach should produce equal quality profiles. Here's the reasoning: The version of Spectraview bundled with the US product made matrix-based profiles and the version bundled with the product for the German market is under-the-hood a version of BasicColor, which makes LUT-based profiles. The matrix basis depends on nine points, while the LUT basis uses some 250. The contention is that if the panel's behaviour is completely linear, either approach should be equally accurate, and it was NEC's view that their panels are completely linear, so the choice between the two software products is a matter of taste. That's where I chose to disagree with them, because BasicColor gave me lower dE from their internal validation procedure than Spectraview did from theirs. So this means one of two things: either my panel is less linear than NEC made out, or BasicColor is just better software. To this day I don't know which, nor was I or am I bothered about it. I just use BasicColor and be done with it. Our North American prices are far below the prices of those Reference Series panels in Germany and the performance of what we buy here is stellar.
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I don't think that's the intent. The background to this . . .
Mark,
Thanks. Much appreciated. I'm not sure I understand exactly the technical things involved, but both my PA 271 & PA 302 calibration results are exceedingly close to target values, and the dE's are always below .5 - from what I've heard and read that seems acceptable.
Rand
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Mark,
Thanks. Much appreciated. I'm not sure I understand exactly the technical things involved, but both my PA 271 & PA 302 calibration results are exceedingly close to target values, and the dE's are always below .5 - from what I've heard and read that seems acceptable.
Rand
Yes - you're fine - very acceptable.
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I believe ArgylCMS also writes to the LUT and there is a very nice GUI that Florian Hosch has written that makes it easy to use. https://displaycal.net/
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I believe ArgylCMS also writes to the LUT and there is a very nice GUI that Florian Hosch has written that makes it easy to use. https://displaycal.net/
Windows only?
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Windows only?
Windows, MacOS and Linux are all supported
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Thanks.
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I am pretty sure (95% confidence) that Argyll does NOT write to the NEC panel internals. It just creates a 'regular' profile that drives the graphics card LUT
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I am pretty sure (95% confidence) that Argyll does NOT write to the NEC panel internals. It just creates a 'regular' profile that drives the graphics card LUT
I believe that is correct but the same results are obtainable if one has a good graphics card.
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I believe that is correct but the same results are obtainable if one has a good graphics card.
Yes - if there is a high bit depth path from the video card to the display, then the Graphics card per channel LUTs should end up having similar precision to the Display hardware per channel LUTs.