i1 printer profiles offerings

[BernardLanguillier]

Dear all,

I am considering investing into a good quality profiling system for printer papers, and am looking at the i1 offering.

I am a bit consused between the I1Photo and i1Extreme, Different X-Rite sites list different products.

What is the best solution for high quality profile creation (possibly together with the i1iO scanning table)?

Also, what is the recommended lighting when creating the profiles?

Cheers,
Bernard

[nemophoto]

Hi Bernard,

Ever since X-rite bought Gretag-Macbeth, the i1 portion has been massively disjointed and hard to sort out. I guess to be expected with mergers... I have i1 Photo and wanted to upgrade my capabilities to better CMYK profiles. The option of buying the key to unlock that portion was buried in their site (at the time - now it's listed as an option). It actually took chatting with a rep at PhotoExpo to find out where to actually fins it on the X-rite site.

To answer your question, the primary difference is one of use. Do you plan on profiling mainly RGB printers, or do you want to create profiles for RIPS and other CMYK devices? If your answer is the former, then Photo will suite your needs. If you want/need both capabilities, then, sadly, your best option is the priciest. The most elegant soluton is ProfileMaker, but that's even more expensive than i1, but it is far more extensive, and allows much more tweaking of profiles. i1 Photo has been replaced by i1Xtreme, and is a good place to start. I recommend buying the spectrophotometer with the UVcut. (Mine doesn't have this, and profiles are slightly effected by using papers that have brighteners -- or so I've been told.)

My 2-cents.

Nemo

[BernardLanguillier]

Hi Bernard,

Ever since X-rite bought Gretag-Macbeth, the i1 portion has been massively disjointed and hard to sort out. I guess to be expected with mergers... I have i1 Photo and wanted to upgrade my capabilities to better CMYK profiles. The option of buying the key to unlock that portion was buried in their site (at the time - now it's listed as an option). It actually took chatting with a rep at PhotoExpo to find out where to actually fins it on the X-rite site.

To answer your question, the primary difference is one of use. Do you plan on profiling mainly RGB printers, or do you want to create profiles for RIPS and other CMYK devices? If your answer is the former, then Photo will suite your needs. If you want/need both capabilities, then, sadly, your best option is the priciest. The most elegant soluton is ProfileMaker, but that's even more expensive than i1, but it is far more extensive, and allows much more tweaking of profiles. i1 Photo has been replaced by i1Xtreme, and is a good place to start. I recommend buying the spectrophotometer with the UVcut. (Mine doesn't have this, and profiles are slightly effected by using papers that have brighteners -- or so I've been told.)

Thanks a lot for the answer. So i1Xtreme is the replacement of i1Photo then.

Cheers,
Bernard

[Pat Herold]

It did get pretty confusing.  The i1 Pro line is now pretty much scaled down to the i1Basic (which includes the hardware, and only enough software to do monitor calibration) and the Extreme - which includes everything.  The idea is that you can get the Basic and add on the software modules that allow you to do RGB, CMYK, profile editing, etc. as you need.  Or the Extreme that has everything for a lot less than you'd pay for it all individually.

By the way, it really doesn't hurt to call a dealer and ask them simple questions like this.  They usually know the latest of what's going on in the industry and the reputable ones will answer your questions without any kind of hard sell or anything.

[BernardLanguillier]

By the way, it really doesn't hurt to call a dealer and ask them simple questions like this.  They usually know the latest of what's going on in the industry and the reputable ones will answer your questions without any kind of hard sell or anything.

Good point, I was being lazzy.  Besides I don't have a good network with providers of such solutions here in Japan, among other things because they are typically nearly twice more expensive compared to their US counterparts...

Cheers,
Bernard