hello. i did my first paper custom profile using argyllCMS and colormunki photo. i followed this excellent write up:
http://www.ludd.luth.se/~torger/photography/argyll-print.html. i printed 420 patches on 2 A4 sheets and my results are good. i have to get my head around this though.
paper: canson infinity baryta photographique
printer: epson 3880 with K3Vm inks
printing from photoshop with Relative Colormetric and BPC
i'm shocked at the difference between canson's profile and my profile when printing a test page from Andrew's website (2014 Printer Test File | A TIFF RGB 16-bit Adobe RGB (1998) test file (NEW).)
1. my profile appears more quite a bit (i'd say a lot) more vibrant in colors, especially in the Y C M gradients. The B looks about the same, the G looks a little more vibrant and a little darker, the R is just plain more red.
2. my profile has more yellow-green colors and olive greens whereas the canson has almost none.
3. my profile's "darker tones/shadows" appear darker overall but i can still see detail. for example in DD's image, on the lower left corner there is a small chart from blacks to lights right above the word "Date". the prints look similar and i can see colors in the patches, but as you look at the canson profile print it's like the "brightness" was turned up a tad.
4. my profile's dark blues and dark blue/magentas do not look as vibrant as the canson's. but all other dark saturated colors still have color and again appear more vibrant, but less than mid and lighter colors.
5. many of the colors on the canson profile print just look like one big color.
i don't know how to ask this, but is this most people experience when making their own paper profiles? to me, it's a good thing. i like it better. but i'm not looking for "it's your own personal opinnion".
i'm also surprised because my .icm file is 1/2 the size of canson's. partly due to using only Rel Col when building the profile within Argyll, but even with the other rendering intents by including the AdobeRGB profile at creation time, the profile only increased about 20%.
finally, as i've said i only used 420 color patches on two A4 sized prints. perhaps this is too few and i'm getting something that is not accurate?
*all the differences i see in print i also see on-screen when soft proofing in PS.
thanks for your responses. i apologize if this general idea has been discussed before. i've read many things for a long time and when you actually finally do it, it just seems different than what you read about other's experiences