ImagePrint or i1Pro 2?

[HumptyDumpty]

As I venture further into my printing adventure I am starting to more and more desire better print quality and get more and more lured by syren song of better printer profiles.

I first looked at getting something like i1Pro 2 Photo. Pro is I would be able to create my own profiles. Cons are:

1. It's $1,200

2. It would take time to build them and I have no expertise in building them nor time to become an expert so they would probably not be as good as ones made by somebody like Andrew Rodney

3. I don't make profiles regularly so once I built several I need i1Pro would be sitting in the corner gathering dust and if I ever upgrade to printer model that has built in profiler i1Pro would become redundant

Then I considered paying somebody to make them for me. Pros of that are obvious (I would get better profile than I can ever create in less time). Cons are:

1. Cost wouldn't be as high as cost of i1Pro but it still would be good part of it

2. If I get different printer or want to try some new papers I would have to go through it all over again rising my cost, quickly exceeding cost of i1Pro, and introducing delays

Then I read somewhere that even a best profile can't completely improve print quality, that part of an issue is due to, IIRC, manufacturer's printer drivers are "not linearized" and thus only way to get best quality possible is to go around manufacturer's drivers and use RIP.

So I started looking at ImagePrint. Pros are:

1. For 17" printer (what I have) it's cheaper than i1Pro

2. I don't have to build profiles nor worry about cost of new profiles

3. Allegedly it results in best print quality one can get

Cons are:

1. It supports only Epsons. I don't see myself printing wider than what 3880 can in the near future but if I was to go wider, or if my 3880 died, my next printer would be most likely Canon and at that point in time my investment in ImagePrinmt would be lost and I would be back at square one.

So what are your thoughts / what you would do / recommend?

[digitaldog]

If your aim is ICC output profiles, build your own with a caveat comming. If you need the functionality of IP, that's a different story. It's a good product (well I haven't used nor needed it since version 6). But I don't see the two being on parity. You could spend less and get a ColorMunki which is limited but builds good profiles. Maybe you can live with canned profiles from the paper manufacturers and spend nothing more! Not all profiles are created equally (more about that soon). But it is possible you don't need to spend anything more....

[HumptyDumpty]

If your aim is ICC output profiles, build your own with a caveat comming. If you need the functionality of IP, that's a different story. It's a good product (well I haven't used nor needed it since version 6). But I don't see the two being on parity. You could spend less and get a ColorMunki which is limited but builds good profiles. Maybe you can live with canned profiles from the paper manufacturers and spend nothing more! Not all profiles are created equally (more about that soon). But it is possible you don't need to spend anything more....

My goal is to get best print quality possible. That is why I was considering going beyond paper manufacturer profiles and I am hearing ImagePrint takes that up even further.

[robgo2]

Count me as a very satisfied user of ImagePrint with my 3880. When I printed out of Photoshop with custom profiles, I was very satisfied with the results, but when I made the leap to IP, I could see the difference. Moreover, IP makes the printing process very fast and easy (e.g. resizing and sharpening files with just a few clicks of the mouse). I have found final output soft proofing inside the program to be especially useful, even though I also soft proof in PS using ImagePrint's profiles. What you see is mighty close to what you get. Now are the results better than what you could get creating custom profiles with iLPro? That is a question I cannot answer.

Rob

[Stefan Ohlsson]

So I started looking at ImagePrint. Pros are:

1. For 17" printer (what I have) it's cheaper than i1Pro

2. I don't have to build profiles nor worry about cost of new profiles

3. Allegedly it results in best print quality one can get

Cons are:

1. It supports only Epsons. I don't see myself printing wider than what 3880 can in the near future but if I was to go wider, or if my 3880 died, my next printer would be most likely Canon and at that point in time my investment in ImagePrinmt would be lost and I would be back at square one.

So what are your thoughts / what you would do / recommend?

I do my own profiles and I use ImagePrint. The profiles that I create is for my proofing RIP, not for ImagePrint. I also do profiles for some of my clients. They make smaller prints, using the Epson driver. Then they come to me and we do the large format prints with ImagePrint. When I use the x900 printers I can see a small but significant difference between the prints. It seems like that the Epson profiles don't use that much of the orange and green inks that the Imageprint profiles do. You can see an improvement in some portraits and landscape images. This will also give the prints better light fastness, as those inks don't fade as fast as the yellow ink does.
For B&W there is a bigger difference. For me, one of the big advantages of ImagePrint is the result that I get when I use the narrow gamut tint picker. I can adjust the tint of the image, so I can emulate the effects that I got in the darkroom by choosing different papers, developers and toners. I've tried several other methods for printing B&W images, but I haven't seen anything better.

[Ferp]

Stephan - My understanding is that ImagePrint allows you to print create your own profiles should you wish.  You have to print the charts using ImagePrint, but thereafter you scan and create the profiles the normal way.  Have you ever created your own profiles for ImagePrint, and then compared them with those supplied with ImagePrint? 

[HumptyDumpty]

Thank you guys, this was helpful!

[digitaldog]

Stephan - My understanding is that ImagePrint allows you to print create your own profiles should you wish.  You have to print the charts using ImagePrint, but thereafter you scan and create the profiles the normal way.  Have you ever created your own profiles for ImagePrint, and then compared them with those supplied with ImagePrint?

That's correct (at least back in V6, the last copy I owned). You can build your own and I found them better than the supplied profiles. At least at the time, the IP profiles had the annoying habit of blues shifting magenta.

[PeterAit]

My goal is to get best print quality possible. That is why I was considering going beyond paper manufacturer profiles and I am hearing ImagePrint takes that up even further.

I have never seen anything to come even close to convincing me that custom/homemade profiles offer any advantage. They may well give different results from the paper manufacturer profiles, but different does not mean better - it just means different. Of course the photographer who puts a lot of time and money into custom profiles will be psychologically inclined to prefer them! That's just human nature. And given the huge vested interest that Epson, Canson, etc. have in photographers getting great prints from their papers, and their ability to afford the best profile-making equipment, is it likely that you or "Joe Shmoe's Custom Profiles" can do better?

You want to make better prints? Work at it. See as many original prints as you can, at galleries, museums, and so on (web images don't count). Take a workshop. Sit at your computer and make print after print after print, compare them, figure out what works and what doesn't.

[digitaldog]

I have never seen anything to come even close to convincing me that custom/homemade profiles offer any advantage. They may well give different results from the paper manufacturer profiles, but different does not mean better - it just means different.

Sorry man, that's simply not the case. Here's a prefect example: Epson canned profile vs. custom. These are photo's of actual prints made on a P600. The only difference is the profile, both using RelCol. Night and day:
Look at the mapping of blues, examine the dynamic range and lack thereof from the Epson profile.

[Mark D Segal]

Huge difference Andrew - and I must say kind of surprising. What paper?

[digitaldog]

Huge difference Andrew - and I must say kind of surprising. What paper?

Premium Luster.

[Mark D Segal]

OK that rules out the narrow paper gamut hypothesis.

[digitaldog]

OK that rules out the narrow paper gamut hypothesis.

Oh it's the profile, no question. And it shows up in other profiles generated with the same software used to build it. The color engine isn't so good. And that's one reason why not all profiles are created equally! The name of my next video. Just the difference sending the same spectral data to say ProfileMaker Pro vs. MonacoPROFILER vs. Copra vs. i1Profiler do result in differences on the print, often quite visible, due to their color engines.

[Mark D Segal]

Agree - I've seen this in profiling application comparisons before. But I would have expected Epson would find it in their interest to use and make only the best for their papers in their printers, and as I said, I found their HPN profile for the P800 to be quite OK (in real world photos). So what's going on?

[digitaldog]

Agree - I've seen this in profiling application comparisons before. But I would have expected Epson would find it in their interest to use and make only the best for their papers in their printers, and as I said, I found their HPN profile for the P800 to be quite OK (in real world photos). So what's going on?

Not all Epson profiles are created the same. That's the first issue. You're on a Mac? Double click on Luster, then Exhibition Fiber or as in this example, Metallic:

[Mark D Segal]

I see that - can't argue with the facts, but the motivation seems counter-intuitive.

[Stefan Ohlsson]

Stephan - My understanding is that ImagePrint allows you to print create your own profiles should you wish.  You have to print the charts using ImagePrint, but thereafter you scan and create the profiles the normal way.  Have you ever created your own profiles for ImagePrint, and then compared them with those supplied with ImagePrint?

Several times and 9 times out of 10 it's a draw. But I have found some papers where my custom profile will give a better result than the one provided from Colorbyte.

[Stefan Ohlsson]

That's correct (at least back in V6, the last copy I owned). You can build your own and I found them better than the supplied profiles. At least at the time, the IP profiles had the annoying habit of blues shifting magenta.

You still can do your own, at least for color. And I remember the same magenta skies with my Epson 9600, but I don't see that today.

[Ferp]

Stephan - My understanding is that ImagePrint allows you to print create your own profiles should you wish.  You have to print the charts using ImagePrint, but thereafter you scan and create the profiles the normal way.  Have you ever created your own profiles for ImagePrint, and then compared them with those supplied with ImagePrint?

Several times and 9 times out of 10 it's a draw. But I have found some papers where my custom profile will give a better result than the one provided from Colorbyte.

Thank you.  Much appreciated.  May I ask a follow-up question please?  In your opinion & experience, does it make a difference whether you're using an i1 V1 or V2, and/or UV-cut or non-cut for making your own profiles? 

In some sense, your response is a little surprising. People often praise the ImagePrint profiles, but unless you're doing something unique, your reply suggests that the big difference is in the RIP itself rather than the profiles that they create and supply.