Madman leaving profile biz

[howardm]

I haven't seen it posted previously but I was just over on Eric's website and he's put up a note that he will be exiting the printer profile creation biz as of April 30.

[Scott Martin]

Remote profiling is a really hard business to be in. It's simple in concept but in reality it's astonishing how many different ways people screw it up and how much support people want for that ~$20 profile. I've run a private remote profiling service for over a decade so my clients that are trained can get fresh profiles when they need them. I can't image running a service that's open to the general public. People often need much more help than just a printer profile. We gotta help people see the bigger picture on all of this. There's lots of nuance to discuss.

[Tim Lookingbill]

Remote profiling is a really hard business to be in. It's simple in concept but in reality it's astonishing how many different ways people screw it up and how much support people want for that ~$20 profile. I've run a private remote profiling service for over a decade so my clients that are trained can get fresh profiles when they need them. I can't image running a service that's open to the general public. People often need much more help than just a printer profile. We gotta help people see the bigger picture on all of this. There's lots of nuance to discuss.

In the amount of time it takes to "discuss the nuances and train your client" the client will feel they should be billing you for their time. This technology is suppose to make all this very efficient. After 14 years studying this and dipping my toe in the color management consultant waters, I can understand why Eric's bowing out.

I've heard someone actually charges $600 a day as a color management consultant. Wonder how it's working for them right about now.

[Evanford]

Darn,  I tried several different profile services and found Eric's to be the best.  I just replaced my old Canon RS9000 with a RS9000 Mark II.  I decided to try not being so picky and test some of the paper manufacturer's profiles on their papers.  Canon papers look good, as do Red River.  Ilford, not so much.   I did however find Eric's profiles for my replaced printer look okay on the new one.  In the end I decided I didn't need any additional custom profiles, but l liked the thought of Eric providing his service if I ever changed my mind.  

I always joked that to understand color management and create a proper color management workflow you need a PhD in Color Theory.  Then I looked at Eric's credentials and I see I wasn't half wrong.     Thank you Eric for helping me out in the past.  I really appreciate that you took the time out of your busy schedule to help a shmo like me.  

Evan

[Scott Martin]

He really is a great guy and we're lucky to have him in our industry. I look forward to seeing what he's coming up with next.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Amen to what Evan and Scott said! I got some great profiles from Eric, but I'm happy now to let him spend more time just making LR better for all of us.

[JohnBrew]

Seriously sad news, but I do understand from where he is coming. Eric has performed a great service with his profiles for many of us. Those profiles have contributed so much to making my bw prints sing. I hope he will leave up the profiles on his website or somewhere else on the internet in case I ever have to back date my printer.

[jpegman]

Seriously sad news, but I do understand from where he is coming. Eric has performed a great service with his profiles for many of us. Those profiles have contributed so much to making my bw prints sing. I hope he will leave up the profiles on his website or somewhere else on the internet in case I ever have to back date my printer.

Why do you need Eric to warehouse your profiles? 

Can't you make backup copies now (like image backups) in case you ever need them in the future?

Jpegman

[Samotano]

Remote profiling is a really hard business to be in. It's simple in concept but in reality it's astonishing how many different ways people screw it up and how much support people want for that ~$20 profile. I've run a private remote profiling service for over a decade so my clients that are trained can get fresh profiles when they need them. I can't image running a service that's open to the general public. People often need much more help than just a printer profile. We gotta help people see the bigger picture on all of this. There's lots of nuance to discuss.

Seriously?! You mean folks go as far as knowing what a profile is and does but then doesn't know how to use it?

[Rhossydd]

Seriously?! You mean folks go as far as knowing what a profile is and does but then doesn't know how to use it?

Actually, they sometimes don't know what a profile is either, but have been told a custom profile will solve their problems.

Building the profiles is the easiest bit of remote profiling, handling the support issues is the time consumer. It's very, very rarely the profiles that have issues, just the way they're used or the wrong expectations of the clients.

[Alan Goldhammer]

Seriously?! You mean folks go as far as knowing what a profile is and does but then doesn't know how to use it?

You only have to look at a lot of naive comments on this forum to realize that there are significant number of users who do not have a clue about color management and this includes those who have paid a lot of money for wide format printers.  Pretty disturbing actually.

[smilem]

Eric seems to be using i1iO to make the profile I wonder what average and max dE he gets when reading multiple times the same target?

I had major problems on some targets. Now I have modified the i1iO table (made new one) and used the arm with it. I had to do major modification to make the arm read on same height on all table surface, and make stable results.

I think when you pay as much as i1iO cost you expect that at least the white surface to last, but I measured that after just 2 years the surface is not up to standard and must be replaced. Now because it is not removable you need to buy new backplate, and because i1iO glider ring cost 100$ I did not even dare to ask X-rite how much the backplate costs.

Perhaps my table was faulty, but given how cheap it looks (how thin the plastic is) I don't think I got a lemon. I think that not much thinking was put to making it in the first place.

[MHMG]

Well, when you think of all the forum discussions devoted to angst and hand-wringing while trying to print untagged target files on Mac Snow leopard and Lion over the past couple of years, other discussions on how to correctly choose media settings for third party papers, problems with sticky and non-sticky driver settings where what you thought you set (and printed) wasn't what actually happened, and then even more discussions lamenting patch sizing errors with Adobe Color Utility such that it wasn't a panacea for would-be profile customers, you can readily see that leaving the target generation step to a remote site client who hasn't had extensive instruction is very often a fatal error.  I can't imaging trying to do custom profiling on a commercial basis except where client and profile provider have an ongoing consulting relationship.  If remote profiling could be done easily without reliance on considerable knowledge on the part of the customer or the consultant hired to help, it would have been nicely automated on some website already.

just my 2 cents

Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com

[madmanchan]

Thanks for the kind words and support. For the past few years I've been trying to help photographers get the most out of their prints. This started with a set of notes I wrote up on my experiences printing with the Epson 3800 (I still have it, still use it, and it's going strong after 5 years!), and continued with a custom profile service.

These days, I'm involved in more photography projects at Adobe than ever. Regrettably, there are only so many hours in a day (my clone machine didn't work!), so I had to give up something. This turned out to be it.

On the plus side, being involved in Lightroom means having an opportunity to improve printing for a broader group of photographers (e.g., adding soft proofing to Lightroom in version 4).

[Alan Goldhammer]

On the plus side, being involved in Lightroom means having an opportunity to improve printing for a broader group of photographers (e.g., adding soft proofing to Lightroom in version 4).

+100000000000 (and many more zeros).  Thanks for all the hard work on LR4; from my perspective it was great reengineering of an already good product and I like the new workflow.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

+100000000000 (and many more zeros).  Thanks for all the hard work on LR4; from my perspective it was great reengineering of an already good product and I like the new workflow.

Add my thanks, too. I love the profiles you made for me, and I couldn't function without your 3800 notes, but best of all is the continued improvements in LR!

[Rhossydd]

Well, when you think of all the forum discussions devoted to angst and hand-wringing while trying to print untagged target files on Mac Snow leopard and Lion over the past couple of years, other discussions on how to correctly choose media settings for third party papers, problems with sticky and non-sticky driver settings where what you thought you set (and printed) wasn't what actually happened, and then even more discussions lamenting patch sizing errors with Adobe Color Utility such that it wasn't a panacea for would-be profile customers, you can readily see that leaving the target generation step to a remote site client who hasn't had extensive instruction is very often a fatal error.  I can't imaging trying to do custom profiling on a commercial basis except where client and profile provider have an ongoing consulting relationship.  If remote profiling could be done easily without reliance on considerable knowledge on the part of the customer or the consultant hired to help, it would have been nicely automated on some website already.

This comment could be regarded as rather insulting, both to the providers of remote profiling services and to their clients.

Sure, Remote profiling isn’t a great answer for those needing complex end to end colour management solutions, or who need help linearising their specialist RIPs, but that’s just one segment of the market for custom printer profiling.
Remote profiling can and does provide a valuable service to a great many people who can’t afford specialists visiting their, sometimes very remote, premises and/or haven’t the time to learn how to build printer profiles themselves and/or can’t afford the big investment in profiling gear.
This doesn’t mean they are in any way incapable of printing targets or using the resultant profiles effectively and knowledgably.

Given that the printer’s output has to be physically measured by a spectrophotometer; The download the charts > print them out > send them back > get a profile by email system really is as close to being “nicely automated on some website already” as is possible.

Don’t knock it, it works for very many people. The comments on how good Eric’s profiles are in this thread is a testament to that and there has been plenty of praise for other remote profilers like Ethan, Cathy etc on LuLa over the years.

Paul
www.colourprofiles.com

[MHMG]

This comment could be regarded as rather insulting, both to the providers of remote profiling services and to their clients.

My sincere apology. No insult was intended. I was actually trying to be supportive of those who provide custom profiles at often surprisingly low rates given how many things can go wrong and how many ways the provider may have to interact with customers at different knowledge and skill levels.


best,
Mark

[Rhossydd]

My sincere apology. No insult was intended.

Thanks

I was actually trying to be supportive of those who provide custom profiles at often surprisingly low rates given how many things can go wrong and how many ways the provider may have to interact with customers at different knowledge and skill levels.

After nearly ten years offering the service we've seen all the common issues and have support documents to resolve the issues with usage.
Most of the really tricky problems you've cited are connected with recent Mac upgrades, yes they're a pain if you haven't kept up with the latest problems reported on sites like this, but overall Mac users are only a minority of customers and not all upgrade immediately anyway. These complex issues usually become apparent in usage after an upgrade, rather than when taking delivery of a new custom profile, so we don't get bothered much by it.