I've just moved from the world of black and white printing on Epsons with QTR to colour printing on my new Z3100, and am trying to figure some things out. In the past, I always had a sloppy but effective workflow in colour--use an OEM icc profile and make changes based on hard proofs.
With the built-in profiling on the Z3100 (no APS), I've tried to be more efficient. Problem is that I find the Z3100-generated profiles for several papers (Ilford GFS, Hahn PhotoRag 308, Epson Ultra Premium Lustre) aren't as good as those supplied free by the manufacturer. The Epson papers with OEM profiles on my Epson 3800 are regularly much closer to the screen than the Z3100-generated profiles on any paper. (BTW, carefully calibrated NEC MultiSync LCD monitor.)
So here's the question: What is a good profile? The Z3100 profiles have slight overall colour casts, colour shifts in the shadows and the highlights, and unacceptably sharp density shifts from light tones to highlights. Recent reviews of gear like the ColorMunki say incredibly vague things like "good for the target audience of wedding photographers." What does that mean?
I'm willing to forget the built-in profiling in my Z3100, buy quality custom icc profiles, or to go back to making changes based on expensive and time-consuming hard proofing. First, though, I'd like some idea of what's reasonable to expect from a profile.
Responses much appreciated.
Terry Byrnes