Good RGB printer profiles with the gear that I own

[J_Hill]

Hi Gang,
I would like make my own custom RGB printer profiles for use with my Epson 9900.  I currently have been making CMYK profiles in Spectralvision Pro, within Colorburst using an Xrite DTP41UV spectro.  That software is limited to CMYK profiles, and they work well within Colorburst.  I also own an Eye One Pro (non UV cut), and can make profiles with the match software.  Just looking for some guidance as to what would be a good step for making quality profiles for RGB output from Photoshop to the Epson 9900.
One of the goals is to use as much of the 9900's gamut as possible.

I do like having the control over ink limits as in Spectralvision Pro.  Is Profilemaker the way to go?  Does anyone know if Xrite is making the Eye One Match software more capable?

Thanks,

John

[digitaldog]

The EyeOne hardware and software should do the job. Pick the biggest supported target and off you go. No control over ink delivery (well there are minor controls within the Epson print driver to do this but that’s about it). For RGB printer profiles, I don’t see the need to go out and spend money on ProfileMaker unless you want to and are aware that a new packages is on its way, you’d get that upgrade for free by purchasing PMP today. I’d give Match a try, if you find it lacking, then we can consider ProfileMaker Pro.

[J_Hill]

The EyeOne hardware and software should do the job. Pick the biggest supported target and off you go. No control over ink delivery (well there are minor controls within the Epson print driver to do this but that’s about it). For RGB printer profiles, I don’t see the need to go out and spend money on ProfileMaker unless you want to and are aware that a new packages is on its way, you’d get that upgrade for free by purchasing PMP today. I’d give Match a try, if you find it lacking, then we can consider ProfileMaker Pro.

Andrew,
Thanks for your advice.  I have been enjoying the 9900 already in the first week.

Thanks,

John

[Scott Martin]

If you are printing from ColorBurst CMYK profiles are excellent - there's really nothing you're missing by not working with RGB profiles. Side-by-side prints with the driver prove that. SpectralVision profiles are very good - the only improvement I see for fine art printing would be increased edge gamut saturation with the Perceptual intent. Monaco Profiler does the best at this right now, IMO, but XRite's upcoming i1Profiler software will be a nice improvement over everything else on the market, and naturally it will support your EyeOne. Something to look forward to.

[Chuck at work]

I'm confused (short trip, that) I thought if you use ColorBurst as a RIP it specifies printing with No Color Management (and would accept either RGB or CMYK input).

cvt

[shewhorn]

The EyeOne hardware and software should do the job. Pick the biggest supported target and off you go.

Is bigger always better? My experience so far doesn't indicate that this is the case. I've tried the 5k+ Atkinson targets on a few different printers (not the 9900 though) and with the newer printers, I've seen a degradation in the quality of the generated profile. The sweet spot I believe is around 1000 to 1250ish patches. I'm guessing for new printers which tend to be a lot more linear than older models, that having fewer patches and letting the software do the interpolation yields a better profile. This seems to be the case with both Argyll, and Eye One Match (using the hack so you can get it to print the Atkinson profiles).

Cheers, Joe

[J_Hill]

Is bigger always better? My experience so far doesn't indicate that this is the case. I've tried the 5k+ Atkinson targets on a few different printers (not the 9900 though) and with the newer printers, I've seen a degradation in the quality of the generated profile. The sweet spot I believe is around 1000 to 1250ish patches. I'm guessing for new printers which tend to be a lot more linear than older models, that having fewer patches and letting the software do the interpolation yields a better profile. This seems to be the case with both Argyll, and Eye One Match (using the hack so you can get it to print the Atkinson profiles).

Cheers, Joe

It is interesting to see you mention a sweet spot of 1000 to 1250 patches.  In Colorburst/Spectralvision Pro I have been using the IT8 target which runs 1617 patches.  Has seemed to work well.  I am going to try Eye One Match with the hack you mention for Atkinson target.

Thanks,

John

[shewhorn]

John, there are two hacks available. In addition to being able to change out the target you can also change the gamut mapping (pointed out to me by someone here):

http://people.csail.mit.edu/ericchan/dp/i1...ping/index.html

You don't need to re-scan for the above hack, just use an existing measurement file and re-render the ICC profile.

Cheers, Joe

[digitaldog]

Is bigger always better?

Not according to my wife <g>

In a prefect world, you’d measure 16.7 million colors. The time to do this let alone the size of the resulting profile obviously make this not possible. Some extrapolation has to take place. Some do it better than others. Some use a small pre-set of patches which are measured to build a resulting set of patches. After all, no reason to ask for color patches that are known to be out of the gamut of the device you want to profile. So no, bigger isn’t necessarily better to a point (there is a point of diminishing return). I’d use the biggest patch target offered by Match.

Is the device well behaved or have issues with gray balance? On well behaved devices like modern, pro ink jet printers, 1500-5000 patches seems to be more than enough. The ColorMunki makes a surprisingly good profile with only 100 patches (using iteration to build the end 50 from the readings off the first 50).

[Scott Martin]

EyeOneMatch is a decent place to start but if you're looking for the best RGB profiles that money can buy I'd measure a 1728 BA target in ColorPort, save it as a CGATS file and send it to someone with MonacoProfiler or soon i1Profiler for profile generation. Unless you can justify the expense of buying one of the apps, the small cost of having someone make a profile from your own measurements could be quite worthwhile. All depends on how picky you are.