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Author Topic: Comparing i1Profiler and ArgyllCMS  (Read 46607 times)

VitOne

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Comparing i1Profiler and ArgyllCMS
« on: April 14, 2011, 07:23:23 pm »

I am an ArgyllCMS user. I am working only with RGB printers (Epson 4880 and 7900).

I am happy with the results that I am getting with ArgyllCMS and I would like to have some more informations about i1Profiler (the new software) because I'd like to buy it but I am not sure. I am using an i1Pro and a ColorMunki.

This is my ArgyllCMS workflow (an example):

targen -v -d2 -G -f2232 -g128 name
printtarg -v -ii1  -t360 -p310x450 name
chartread -v -H -B -T0.4 name
colprof -v -qu -i D50 -o 1931_2 -S AdobeRGB1998.icc -cmt -dpp -f -D A-E7900-Bamboo-2880dpi-i1Pro name

One of the thing that I like of this software is that I can repeat the readings that have a large DeltaE2000 using the -r paramter in chartread (I found the worst patches using profcheck) so that I can get a max Delta2000 lower than 1. Is it possible, with the Profiler software, to re-read only the worst patches (using spot reading)?

I read that OBA compensation will only work with the i1isis device. Is this true?

Is there any ArgyllCMS user that already made a comparison between this 2 softwares? 
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digitaldog

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Re: Comparing i1Profiler and ArgyllCMS
« Reply #1 on: April 14, 2011, 07:55:58 pm »

This is my ArgyllCMS workflow (an example):

targen -v -d2 -G -f2232 -g128 name
printtarg -v -ii1  -t360 -p310x450 name
chartread -v -H -B -T0.4 name
colprof -v -qu -i D50 -o 1931_2 -S AdobeRGB1998.icc -cmt -dpp -f -D A-E7900-Bamboo-2880dpi-i1Pro name

Greek to me. Speak English <g>.

Quote
I read that OBA compensation will only work with the i1isis device. Is this true?

Sort of, yes. There is a module called OBC which only works with the iSis. It consists of targets you visually examine. See: http://www.colorwiki.com/wiki/Optical_Brighteners_2_-_X-Rite_OBC

There is no software OBA compensation like we had in ProfileMaker Pro.
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Ernst Dinkla

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Re: Comparing i1Profiler and ArgyllCMS
« Reply #2 on: April 15, 2011, 04:36:24 am »


I read that OBA compensation will only work with the i1isis device. Is this true?

Is there any ArgyllCMS user that already made a comparison between this 2 softwares? 

If you are already familiar with ArgyllCMS and use its reversed FBA compensation starting from a new UV-enabled Eye1 Basic measurements, the total purchase sum will be lower, no learning curve and more features in total. Covers calibration/profiling of wide gamut monitors too. I actually want to go that route more. So I am also interested in the answer tot that last question.

met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst


New: Spectral plots of +250 inkjet papers:

http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
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VitOne

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Re: Comparing i1Profiler and ArgyllCMS
« Reply #3 on: April 15, 2011, 05:57:33 am »

Thanks for the answer Andrew.

I will try to explain the commands that I am using with ArgyllCMS, you can for sure find a better and probably more correct description in the very good ArgyllCMS online documentation here:  http://www.argyllcms.com/doc/Scenarios.html#PP1

targen -v -d2 -G -f2232 -g128 name

I am making target test values optimized for an RGB printer (-d2) with 2232 patches and asking to have 128 patches with R=G=B (“nominally grey, of course they are not, otherwise the printer would probably need no calibration). I saw that a good number of patches with same RGB values allows to get a neutral BW later.

printtarg -v -ii1  -t360 -p310x450 name

I am using the previously generated patches to make an i1Pro-compatibile(-ii1) 360dpi 8bit TIFF image file (-t360) whit all the patches. This file will measure 310x450 mm. This is the file that I will print with PhotoshopCS5 (making myself sure to disable colour management, I personally use the “double-assign” method using 2 times the AdobeRGB profile to have as result a null transform).

chartread -v -H -B -T0.4 name

This is to read the previously printed test chard made with printtarg and printed with no colour management applied. I am using high resolution (-H) spectral mode to read it and I am asking for a very low tolerance (-T less than 1). So if the instruments gets big DeltaE 2000 errors while reading I will be asked to read again. I don’t exactly know (I have asked but I received no answer) what tolerance is –T 0.4, but I think that it should be something around max 5 DeltaE2000.

colprof -v -qu -i D50 -o 1931_2 -S AdobeRGB1998.icc -cmt -dpp -f -D A-E7900-Bamboo-2880dpi-i1Pro name


Here I am making the ICC profile. Quality is set to “Ultra”, illumination spectrum is D50, observer is the second , I am asking for OBA compensation (-f) and it will work for the selected illumination spectrum (D50 in this case, but I can use the actual illuminant if I want, there is the specific illumread utilty: http://www.argyllcms.com/doc/illumread.html) . Here: http://www.argyllcms.com/doc/FWA.html you can find more about how ArgyllCMS works with OBAs.
-cmt is telling Argyll to use as “input profile” a “standard monitor” and –dpp is telling to Argyll to use as “output” a “print observed under about 500lux”.
-S AdobeRGB indicates that I want the AdobeRGB profile to be used to manage the perceptual and saturation rendering intents.

Now the profile is ready to use. A very interesting function in ArgyllCMS is that I can check how the profile behaves using a validation process (comparing the Lab values to generate the profile to the Lab values that the profile is using). This is the command:

profcheck -v2 -k -i D50 -o 1931_2 -w profile.ti3 profile.icm > logfile.log

As output I will have a 3D graph with vectors (the more the length, the more the DeltaE is) so that I can have an immediate “idea” of how the profile performs and I will also have a log file called “logfile.log” that I can export to Excel (or other similar program) to read all the worst DeltaE patches. In this way I can decide to re-read the patches with the high DeltaE errors. You can locate the patch and read it again. You will have to run charread with –r parameter (re-read) and you can read again in spot mode just the patchs that you want to.
After this step you can get results like this:

Profile check complete, errors(CIEDE2000): max. = 0.925663, avg. = 0.200191, RMS = 0.228265

This is for an Epson 7900 with Hahnemuhle FineArt Baryta paper, patch used were about 2500.

Notice that there are many other interesting tools and possibilities in ArgyllCMS.

For example:
1)   The mailing list is very active, you get fast answer to your questions.
2)   All the files that you generate are text files that you can open and edit. For example you can add new patches to a previously generated test chart.
3)   You can use the average tool to average measurements files.
4)   Graeme Gill (software author) is always listening, adds new functions and corrects previous bugs or weakness according to users’ needs and reports. Look this discussion (and all the mailing list :)): http://www.freelists.org/post/argyllcms/PurpleBlue-shift-problem-with-Epson-printer
« Last Edit: April 15, 2011, 06:03:07 am by VitOne »
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VitOne

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Re: Comparing i1Profiler and ArgyllCMS
« Reply #4 on: April 15, 2011, 06:02:19 am »

If you are already familiar with ArgyllCMS and use its reversed FBA compensation starting from a new UV-enabled Eye1 Basic measurements, the total purchase sum will be lower, no learning curve and more features in total. Covers calibration/profiling of wide gamut monitors too. I actually want to go that route more. So I am also interested in the answer tot that last question.

met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst


New: Spectral plots of +250 inkjet papers:

http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm

Thanks Ernst. I am trying to learn to use ArgyllCMS but I am also interested in the whole “market” of colour management programs, so I think I will give i1Profiler a chance, also because I read many positive comments about the quality of final profiles. The software seems to have its weakness (I really don’t understand why there is no OBA compensation if you don’t have an i1isis and the EULA seems to have some “strange” stuff in it) but I read that profile generated with this software are the best ever seen…
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Ernst Dinkla

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Re: Comparing i1Profiler and ArgyllCMS
« Reply #5 on: April 15, 2011, 06:13:49 am »

but I read that profile generated with this software are the best ever seen…

By reviewers not familiar with ArgyllCMS.  Packed as subjective judgements so far. Given the lack of features it can not have covered trials on a wide range of print conditions either.



met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst


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http://www.pigment-print.com/dinklacanvaswraps/index.html





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Ethan Hansen

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Re: Comparing i1Profiler and ArgyllCMS
« Reply #6 on: April 15, 2011, 02:40:33 pm »

I have made more than a few profiles with Argyll, and for the past weeks, we have been mirroring many of our in-house software profile builds with i1Profiler. That effort has pushed a few hundred profiles through i1Profiler (an incredibly painful process, I might add, given the poor usability of the i1Profiler software). The targets have been measured on various instruments: iSis, Spectroscan, and iCColor. We are only using the i1Profiler-generated profiles for internal evaluations, not for public use.

For papers containing significant levels of optical brighteners, i1Profiler-generated profiles produce a yellow cast unless the OBC module is used or UV-filtered measurements are made. The OBC feature, as with much of the software, is designed with a single user, profiling his own readily-accessible printer in mind. To give X-Rite their due, the resulting profiles do indeed compensate very well for OBA in standard viewing conditions. The problem is the workflow. The printers we deal with are located remotely or, in the case of a press, not something that one wants to stop production on at regular intervals. The i1Profiler OBC module assumes a linear workflow: measure the target, build a profile, generate and print an evaluation target, check it, enter the parameters back into the software, and, finally, produce a corrected profile. Needless to say this does not fly when the printer you are profiling is thousands of miles away. There is no easy way of storing and managing a large number of intermediate measurements and OBC module outputs, so thanks, but no thanks.

The software-based OBA compensation algorithms in ProfileMaker did a reasonable job on the majority of inkjet and RA-4 paper stocks. The resulting profiles were more accurate, visually smoother, and offered improved neutral rendition over using UV-filtered measurements. Some commercial press papers threw ProfileMaker for a loop. Now with i1Profiler one needs to either go through the prolonged and painful OBC module (which only works on an iSis) or go back to the cover-your-eyes and pretend UV does not exist process of UV-filtered measurements.

ArgyllCMS has powerful OBA compensation routines. Our own software borrows from this approach. It is not perfect, and for highly brightened papers or strange illuminants the X-Rite OBC gives visually superior results in neutrals. (This is largely based on previous profiles we made with Profiler or ProfileMaker and the OBC module -- i1Profiler has problems loading custom illuminant spectra). For the majority of real-world printing applications, however, I submit that the software-compensation approach makes for happy photographers and customers. Were X-Rite to improve the usability of their OBC module, it could be a valid contender. Of course, it only works with an iSis. This presents yet another example of i1Profiler's muddled marketing: it lacks high-end functionality of the previous generation of X-Rite products (PMP and Profiler), offers a workflow designed only for the please-lead-me-by-the-hand beginner, yet omits crucial OBA compensation support for the very mass-market measurement device that the software aims at.

Comparing the overall Argyll profile quality to i1Profiler gets tricky. As you are no doubt aware, minor changes to the profiling parameters in Argyll can have significant effects on the profile quality. If you are willing to burn through a large amount of time and paper, Argyll profiles can be stunningly good. For our own usage, we decided that Argyll was too brittle; i.e. the amount of fiddling with customized targets, remeasuring, rebuilding profiles with a range of input parameters, and the amount of paper needed to evaluate the results simply was not worth the performance. If you are a one-person shop, print on a limited set of papers, and use stable printers (e.g. Epson inkjets), the Argyll may make sense. Devote a few days to optimizing the process for your environment and artistic taste, and you are set.

VitOne

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Re: Comparing i1Profiler and ArgyllCMS
« Reply #7 on: April 16, 2011, 05:41:33 am »

Thanks for the answer.

I am mainly making profiles for me, and I am interested in profile quality, of course I don't want to loose tons of paper.

I didn't understand why you said that you need a lot of paper with ArgyllCMS. Once you have printed the target and read it you can use the same readings, add other readings, and make many profiles with different settings (you can also make a profile with OBA compensation and one without, or many profiles for different illuminants).

Did you mean that with Argyll you need a bigger number of patches? I saw that with 2000 patches you can get very good results.

Are you talking about RGB printers? What kind of rendering intents have you experimented?
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eronald

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Re: Comparing i1Profiler and ArgyllCMS
« Reply #8 on: April 16, 2011, 09:30:39 am »

To cut a long story short, Argyll is typical Unix command-line software, hugely powerful and infinitely flexible but a pain to setup.
To use Argyll you need to read the documentation, then you really need to read the documentation again, and by the way did I mention that the documentation is sometimes wrong, so you need to read the forums.
On the other hand Argyll is *free*, mostly works, gives give decent results, and you can use it to supply clients with profiles.

MP, PMP, i1Pro and cousins are basically expert systems in a box, and you are paying not only for the profiling engine but also for the work that went into pre-configuring your workflow into the common mouse-selectable use-cases.

Edmund



Thanks for the answer.

I am mainly making profiles for me, and I am interested in profile quality, of course I don't want to loose tons of paper.

I didn't understand why you said that you need a lot of paper with ArgyllCMS. Once you have printed the target and read it you can use the same readings, add other readings, and make many profiles with different settings (you can also make a profile with OBA compensation and one without, or many profiles for different illuminants).

Did you mean that with Argyll you need a bigger number of patches? I saw that with 2000 patches you can get very good results.

Are you talking about RGB printers? What kind of rendering intents have you experimented?
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Iliah

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Re: Comparing i1Profiler and ArgyllCMS
« Reply #9 on: April 16, 2011, 11:09:59 am »

> Is there any ArgyllCMS user that already made a comparison between this 2 softwares?

I prefer ArgyllCMS by far. However I add manually a lot of patches that are close to "neutral" to those created by targen, as well as the whole set of Munsell original colours and CMY gradients. For some printers I found using Argyll "Calibrating Printers" workflow to be very beneficial.
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Ernst Dinkla

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Re: Comparing i1Profiler and ArgyllCMS
« Reply #10 on: April 16, 2011, 03:30:16 pm »


This presents yet another example of i1Profiler's muddled marketing: it lacks high-end functionality of the previous generation of X-Rite products (PMP and Profiler), offers a workflow designed only for the please-lead-me-by-the-hand beginner, yet omits crucial OBA compensation support for the very mass-market measurement device that the software aims at.


Ethan.

Thank you for the short review.  The day Argyll gets nice GUIs for some platforms ............

One wonders if its monopoly in CM hard and software causes this muddled marketing. The products will sell anyway. Even when alternative software can be used the spectrometers are X-Rite models, Qualux supports two X-Rite models and only recently the Spyder3. The majority of the spectrometers supported by ArgyllCMS are X-Rite models. There are Barbieris and  Spyders but they fall in other categories. There was a time when 3 or 4 spectrometers of an equal quality competed in the Eye 1 Basic market. In hindsight one may wonder if the EU should have allowed this merger. On the other hand a HongKong based software company could resurrect the SpectroCam with better electronics and produced cheaper in China.


met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst


New: Spectral plots of +250 inkjet papers:

http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
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Iliah

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Re: Comparing i1Profiler and ArgyllCMS
« Reply #11 on: April 16, 2011, 03:44:13 pm »

It is difficult to create a GUI for ArgyllCMS without dumbing it down to less flexibility and functionality.
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Alan Goldhammer

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Re: Comparing i1Profiler and ArgyllCMS
« Reply #12 on: April 16, 2011, 04:57:13 pm »

It is difficult to create a GUI for ArgyllCMS without dumbing it down to less flexibility and functionality.
Why? I've done a fair amount of C and C++ programming and Microsoft has made the GUI stuff very easy so that one only needs to worry about what you want the program to do rather than the interface.  From what I've seen of the Argyll documentation, application of a GUI interface should not be that difficult (and don't ask me to do it; I'm retired from programming).  Most of the commands are basic switches that can be dealt with in a straight forward manner.
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Iliah

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Re: Comparing i1Profiler and ArgyllCMS
« Reply #13 on: April 16, 2011, 06:04:33 pm »

The difficulty has nothing to do with programming difficulty. To me, ArgyllCMS strength is in allowing many different workflows. It is impossible to wrap a GUI around all those, especially when it comes to printers. However it is easy enough to make a GUI for a "regular" user who for some reason can't use command line. Such GUI exists for monitor calibration for example - http://hoech.net/dispcalGUI/
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PhilipCummins

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Re: Comparing i1Profiler and ArgyllCMS
« Reply #14 on: April 16, 2011, 09:35:37 pm »

Well, maybe it is time to start getting all the CM experts to design what they want, and start tailoring something to make Argyll (or adapt Argyll) to suit. If there are issues with i1Profiler then a decent Argyll front end that does 90% of what people want (with the option to CLI it for special options) would certainly force a bit of healthy competition. If people are interested let me know and I can see about devoting some time to this.
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Greg_E

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Re: Comparing i1Profiler and ArgyllCMS
« Reply #15 on: April 17, 2011, 01:40:34 am »

Here is one GUI:
http://www.digifab.com/ArgyllCMSGUI/

FYI, Steve is the one that writes the RIP that Digifab sells.

Some more info on GUIs for Argyll:
http://colorhacks.blogspot.com/search/label/ArgyllCMS
« Last Edit: April 17, 2011, 01:44:48 am by Greg_E »
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Iliah

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Re: Comparing i1Profiler and ArgyllCMS
« Reply #16 on: April 17, 2011, 11:40:13 am »

> Some more info on GUIs for Argyll: http://colorhacks.blogspot.com/search/label/ArgyllCMS

The link to JavaScript wrapper is changed to http://x3.ntf.uni-lj.si/~gojc/ArgyllCMS_GUI/
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VitOne

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Re: Comparing i1Profiler and ArgyllCMS
« Reply #17 on: April 17, 2011, 12:53:15 pm »

To cut a long story short, Argyll is typical Unix command-line software, hugely powerful and infinitely flexible but a pain to setup.
To use Argyll you need to read the documentation, then you really need to read the documentation again, and by the way did I mention that the documentation is sometimes wrong, so you need to read the forums.
On the other hand Argyll is *free*, mostly works, gives give decent results, and you can use it to supply clients with profiles.
MP, PMP, i1Pro and cousins are basically expert systems in a box, and you are paying not only for the profiling engine but also for the work that went into pre-configuring your workflow into the common mouse-selectable use-cases.
Edmund

Thanks for the answer to all of you. I think that ArgyllCMS results are much more than "decent". I am interested in the “long story”, if you have time to write it I will be happy to read it.

I am more interested in profile quality than in usability, although I personally think that ArgyllCMS is very flexible also because of his workflow based on command lines. After some painful time spent trying to understand how the whole thing was working I am getting very nice and fast procedures that allow me to get excellent results in a short amount of time. I have different workflows already set in a simple txt file, and I already reported one (that I found good for many fine-art papers).

At the moment I am happy with ArgyllCMS the way it is and the author, Graeme Gill, told many times on the mailing list that a GUI for this software is far from being released by him. I know just some basics about programming, but I think that it is much more difficult to make a software like Argyll than to make a good and complete GUI for it. I found dispcalGUI a clear example of a nice and complete GUI for Argyll. Anyway I am not really interested in this topic, my original question was more about profile quality than usability of the software. Anyway of course usability is an essential requirement for a successful application.

I should receive soon the new i1 Publish software, and I will for sure compare the 2 software.


I prefer ArgyllCMS by far. However I add manually a lot of patches that are close to "neutral" to those created by targen, as well as the whole set of Munsell original colours and CMY gradients. For some printers I found using Argyll "Calibrating Printers" workflow to be very beneficial.

I would be very happy to know something more about the patches you added and how you did it. Can you please explain? Are you using txt2ti3? Can you describe what patch are you using and the whole procedure? Thanks.
« Last Edit: April 17, 2011, 12:58:22 pm by VitOne »
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Ethan Hansen

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Re: Comparing i1Profiler and ArgyllCMS
« Reply #18 on: April 17, 2011, 01:47:29 pm »

Edmund is absolutely correct in his assessment. Argyll's strengths and shortcomings both stem from its flexibility. The reason why I mentioned having a large roll of paper on hand before starting your first Argyll profiling effort is that the multitude of adjustable parameters strongly influence profile quality. Determining the optimal configuration requires several iterations of profiling and test printing.

i1Profiler and other commercial packages include more intelligence about workable construction parameters. You need to supply the smarts with Argyll or, as Edmund says, read the forums and mailing lists.

My experience with Argyll is that the printer module is better optimized for CMYK than RGB. You can indeed get good RGB results, but doing so requires tweaking the target. If you are working on your own printer where patch and page count are not critical, adding a series of neutral and near-neutral patches helps. I have not used Argyll's target creation utilities, so I am not the one to ask for advice on that count.

VitOne

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Re: Comparing i1Profiler and ArgyllCMS
« Reply #19 on: April 17, 2011, 03:01:20 pm »

Thanks.

I don't understand why you say that you need to tweak the target to get good RGB results. I know many ArgyllCMS users and just a few of them does more than “targen -d2  -fXXXX name” to build their target. The –d2 parameter already makes optimized patches for RGB printer, and, also if I have experimented a lot, I saw just small improvements in using more and different parameters.

The –G parameter might be good (but it does not change a lot the final profile if you are using a number of patches above 2000 for what I saw). I personally got no increase in profile quality using more than a preliminary profile in targen and, for what I saw, it is also difficult to see improvements using a single pre-conditioning profile (-c parameter) if you are using 2000 patches or more in the first profile. Anyway the “nice” thing about Argyll is that you can reuse the targets you have printed expanding them with new ones without having to do everything from the beginning, because all the files that the software make are easy-editable txt.

Please consider that I am talking about people that need calibration for printers like Canon ipf series, Epson Stylus Pro, HP Z, so ink jet printers for photography; and I have direct experiences only with a few printers. What I said is related only to my limited direct experience, and maybe we are talking about different “printing environments”.

I would like to have a clarification about the procedure of adding neutral and near neutral  patches: do you mean R=G=B patches or what?

I have no personal experience in CMYK so I will not say anything about it.
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