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Author Topic: What is a good profile?  (Read 2279 times)

terbyr

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What is a good profile?
« on: May 29, 2008, 10:03:28 pm »

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
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neil snape

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What is a good profile?
« Reply #1 on: May 30, 2008, 01:35:51 am »

Why don't you go off to the Z3100 WiKi and try some of the APS profiles or hand made ones there. IF they are better than you have your answer.

I had no major complaints with the APS profiles compared to hand made i1 PMP 5 profiles as they are more or less the same.

In all but matte media APS is much better than the built in profiles for photography IMO.

Now, if I had my way , it would be to have Monaco or better like Argyll  built in over X-Rite APS as they are smoother overall.
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dkeyes

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What is a good profile?
« Reply #2 on: May 30, 2008, 03:09:11 am »

This may be a long shot but I did some printing for a friend on my z3100 and she thought her prints came out redder than what was shown (via my supplied softproof) on her NEC monitor. This was especially true for browns and yellows. The hightlights were a bit clipped as well. The prints matched my monitor quite well, as they always have. (LaCie CRT electron22 IV) Wondering if there is a connection with monitor not working well with softproof file?
BTW, I was printing on HP Pro Satin which I've found to be ideally suited to this printer.
- Doug
« Last Edit: May 30, 2008, 03:10:26 am by dkeyes »
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rdonson

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What is a good profile?
« Reply #3 on: May 30, 2008, 10:10:28 am »

Terry,

To Doug's point are you softproofing?  Is that where you see the differences?

If you're doing the hard proofing you mentioned its tough to imagine ever getting a matte paper print to look like the monitor.  The difference in contrast ratio alone would make that a tremendous challenge.
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Regards,
Ron

terbyr

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What is a good profile?
« Reply #4 on: June 06, 2008, 09:45:08 am »

Thank you, all.

After wasting a lot of paper fiddling with settings, I removed and re-installed all the Z3100 software, including the icc profiles, generated new paper profiles and things suddenly started working. I'm really quite pleased with the Z3100's profiles (non-APS!). They're very close to the screen.

Terry
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