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Author Topic: i1 Photo Pro 2 vs Color Munki profiles  (Read 12371 times)

JWest1026

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i1 Photo Pro 2 vs Color Munki profiles
« on: March 19, 2013, 08:30:49 pm »

I recently purchased an X-Rite i1 Photo Pro 2 primarily to develop paper profiles for my Canon iPF8300 printer. Prior to purchasing the new device a friend let me use his Color Munki Photo for a short time where I developed a number of profiles with it.

After purchasing the new device I decided to generate a profile for my printer using Epson Hot Press Bright White paper. Since I had also generated a profile for this paper using the Color Munki I thought it would be a good idea to compare the profiles from the two devices. I did so using the compare tool in i1 Profiler and softproof both profiles using Photoshop CS6.

When looking at the wireframe plots in i1 Profiler the Color Munki profile definitely has a larger gamut in some areas than the i1 device although I can't tell how much larger it really is. When softproofing several images the i1 derived profile seems to show more clipping in some color areas, particularly blues. I have also printed several images using both profiles and find it difficult to see any significant differences.

The i1 profiles were generated and tiff files were made from 2033 color patches. I print the targets using Qimage making sure to disable color management both from Qimage and the iPF8300 print driver. The Color Munki profiles were printed directly from the X-Rite utility using the Canon printer driver. I've done this many times in the past so I don't believe I'm making any mistakes in this process.

I had assumed that the i1 device would make profiles at least as good and hopefully a little better than the Color Munki, particularly since I used a good number of color patches for sampling. Just wondering if anyone may have some advice as to whether or not there may be a problem here or this is just not something to worry about since the prints look like a very close match.

Thanks,
Jim
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Geraldo Garcia

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Re: i1 Photo Pro 2 vs Color Munki profiles
« Reply #1 on: March 19, 2013, 11:07:17 pm »

The big question is not why the i1 Pro2 profile is smaller, but which one is more accurate.
You see, the printer is never going to print colours that the paper/ink combination cannot reach, no matter what the profile says. But the opposite is possible, the use of an imprecise profile may induce clipping of colours that the paper/ink combination could reproduce.

If you cannot see the difference when printing saturated test images probably both profiles are reasonably accurate.

Best regards.
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Czornyj

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Re: i1 Photo Pro 2 vs Color Munki profiles
« Reply #2 on: March 20, 2013, 03:11:03 am »

Large amount of patches scanned by i1Pro2 characterized the shape of iPFs gamut in a more precise way than small amount of CM patches - that's why it's smaller.
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JWest1026

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Re: i1 Photo Pro 2 vs Color Munki profiles
« Reply #3 on: March 20, 2013, 09:03:39 am »

Thank you both for responding to my thread. Both answers seem reasonable to me, in particular Marcin's comment regarding the larger number of patches giving a more precise characterization of my printer's gamut. I'm going to do a couple more papers today and work on becoming more familiar with the i1 Profiler software.

Regards,
Jim
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digitaldog

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Re: i1 Photo Pro 2 vs Color Munki profiles
« Reply #4 on: March 20, 2013, 10:25:09 am »

Just wondering if anyone may have some advice as to whether or not there may be a problem here or this is just not something to worry about since the prints look like a very close match.

I wouldn't worry. Also, what product did you use to view the gamuts as most don't do it correctly (ColorThink does)?
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JWest1026

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Re: i1 Photo Pro 2 vs Color Munki profiles
« Reply #5 on: March 20, 2013, 05:46:49 pm »

I used the comparison tool in i1 Profiler which overlays and compares 3D gamut plots. Admittedly it's pretty simple but at the moment it's the only tool I have for a comparison like this.

Thanks,
Jim
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digitaldog

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Re: i1 Photo Pro 2 vs Color Munki profiles
« Reply #6 on: March 20, 2013, 05:57:11 pm »

I used the comparison tool in i1 Profiler which overlays and compares 3D gamut plots. Admittedly it's pretty simple but at the moment it's the only tool I have for a comparison like this.

It's apples to apples but probably not correct.

See:
http://www.colorwiki.com/wiki/Color_Management_Myths_26-28#Myth_26
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Pat Herold

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Re: i1 Photo Pro 2 vs Color Munki profiles
« Reply #7 on: March 22, 2013, 05:44:14 pm »

You've piqued my curiosity now.  If you send me your profiles in an email, I'll take a look at them in more detail and report back here.  I can even give you a gamut volume estimation on these two so we can put numbers to this issue.
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Pat Herold

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Re: i1 Photo Pro 2 vs Color Munki profiles
« Reply #8 on: March 25, 2013, 08:47:56 pm »



Well, as would be expected, they are very close.  The i1Pro 2 technically has a slightly larger gamut.  This larger gamut is mostly seen in the the shadows, red, cyan and especially yellow highlights.  The ColorMunki is slightly larger in the saturated blues.  The attached gamut plot shows the i1Pro 2 gamut in the white, see-through wireframe, so you can get an idea of both gamuts at once.  Where you see the wireframe, the i1Pro 2 is larger.  Where you can't see the wireframe is where the ColorMunki underneath is poking through.  Like I said there's not a big difference.  It's not surprising that you would not see a difference in the printed output.

Gamut volume:
ColorMunki:       473,000  cubic Lab
i1Pro 2:      487,000  cubic Lab



I then switched the ColorMunki to wireframe and zoomed in on the shadow areas.  There's a divot in the bottom of the gamut.  An outer boundary point suddenly shoots up inside the gamut skin like a little pocket.  What this means is that any color that you want to print in this pocket area (dark orange or brown) won't be printed correctly but will be lighter than it should.  My guess is that when you were measuring with the ColorMunki some light sneaked around when you were going over a shadow patch and it measured too light?  (These are usually caused by measurement errors.)  Again, it's a relatively small error, and you might not notice, depending on what you're printing.  The i1Pro 2 gamut showed no problems like this; everything looked smooth.

I guess I should point out that these gamuts (above) are showing you the total gamut of what the printer is capable of printing, which is different from the rendered gamut.  Below is the rendered gamut, what the profile will do when sending your colors to the printer.  This might be the gamut shape that you're more used to with i1Profiler (though not in such detail).  The rendered gamut is pretty much the same.  Some blue / magenta is stronger with the ColorMunki, and yellows are stronger with the i1Pro.  
« Last Edit: March 25, 2013, 08:49:37 pm by pherold »
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JWest1026

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Re: i1 Photo Pro 2 vs Color Munki profiles
« Reply #9 on: March 26, 2013, 09:58:30 am »

   Thank you for taking the time to do this. Very interesting results. I profiled with the i1 Pro2 using a 2033 patch color chart. The Color Munki uses a very small set of patches, maybe 60 give or take. How can the Color Munki produce such a similar profile? I'm going to guess that it produces color patches somewhere near the boundary extremes of color, measures the response and then produces an iterative set of color patches to get some more sample points. Just curious, but it would seem that this would only work assuming the printer produces well behaved (linear??) response to all of the color values between the sample points.

   Are there situations where having the i1's ability to produce larger numbers of color patches be an advantage over the Color Munki approach?

Thanks,
Jim
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Pat Herold

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Re: i1 Photo Pro 2 vs Color Munki profiles
« Reply #10 on: March 27, 2013, 03:30:21 pm »

You've got it right.  The ColorMunki fine-tunes things with the second round of patches.  This same iterative function can also be used in i1Profiler by the way.  (Most people I think just use a large set of patches to begin with and then they don't need to use the iterative function.)  Most modern inkjets nowadays are very well behaved, don't have sudden shifts of color, don't have huge hue hooks.  That makes it kinda easy to get a good profile with a few patches.
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