ImagePrint vs ColorMunki

[Paul Ozzello]

Is there any advantage to using ImagePrint RIP vs making my own profiles with a ColorMunki ? As good as ImagePrint sounds, I will be using an Epson 9890 and $2400 for a RIP is a little hard to swallow. How much better is it ?

[startkapital]

a RIP is not neccessary or Anywhere compareable with and basic Colormanagment routine.
 actually a rip always contains a complex colormanagement system itself.

In most case a RIP acts as a designated Printer driver: means you wont longer print tru the epson/Hp/canon drivers the RIP itself communicates on a most rudamentery level with the printer itself (bits and byte)

most rips push the printer speed to another level wit imageprint your are able to Prints up to 100 feet, most rips render the output image to the printer native/hardware based resolution

some quotes i found on Imageprint "The printer driver has been completely re-written for ImagePrint 9.  I can see a subtle but definitely noticeable improvement in the quality of my prints using version 9 versus version 8.  I have also found that ImagePrint 9 spools faster to the printer, so I am getting better prints faster.  It is all good."

fact is I am not Sure what you are looking for.

If you need a complete Workstation solution for your wide format epson printer you should really read into

a.) Colormanagement
b.) Printing Management
c.) Batch Job and Print Job evaluation


I didnt need a RIP solution as for right now BUT if I should buy me a 24" or wider printer I am shure it would be mandatory for my kind of printing.

I do alot of batch jobs with colorcritial applications BUT print with 3rd Party bulk inks only to push the price to a minumum.

[Stefan Ohlsson]

Is there any advantage to using ImagePrint RIP vs making my own profiles with a ColorMunki ? As good as ImagePrint sounds, I will be using an Epson 9890 and $2400 for a RIP is a little hard to swallow. How much better is it ?

I have access to an i1Pro2 and do a lot of profiling for clients, but I use the profiles supplied with ImagePrint for almost all of my own printing. I find that these profiles are quite accurate. The B&W profiles are great, better than Epsons Advanced B&W.

[Czornyj]

I have access to an i1Pro2 and do a lot of profiling for clients, but I use the profiles supplied with ImagePrint for almost all of my own printing. I find that these profiles are quite accurate. The B&W profiles are great, better than Epsons Advanced B&W.

I had SP7880 before I went to iPF, but didn't like IP profiles nor dithering at all. Profiles showed showed L*a*b "blue turns violet red turns orange" issue, dithering wasn't as smooth as Epson driver dithering. The only real advantage was B&W more neutral and smooth than ABW, plus it worked in a batch of mixed colour and b&w images, so there's no need to print them separately.

[gigdagefg]

I find that the IP profiles enable my prints to match exactly the color that appears on my always calibrated Ezio monitor. I wasn't able to achieve this by making my own profiles with Color Munki

[digitaldog]

Profiles showed showed L*a*b "blue turns violet ...

The blue shift was always an issue, I had hoped they would have 'fixed' this by now. I told them this years ago but it kind of fell on deaf ears although the appearance on the print is pretty apparent. The guys there just feel their color engine is the best ever, despite what is seen on the output. The profiles built using even a ColorMunki should be better in that respect.

[PeterAit]

Spend $2400 on ImagePrint? Gimme a break. I ran some tests of IP demo version vs. the "canned" profiles that I got for my 7900. I could stare at those prints all day and not see any meaningful difference. In fact, it was hard to see any difference at all. Why not just take your $2400 and set it on fire? Toast some marshmallows, heh?

[Paul Ozzello]

Spend $2400 on ImagePrint? Gimme a break. I ran some tests of IP demo version vs. the "canned" profiles that I got for my 7900. I could stare at those prints all day and not see any meaningful difference. In fact, it was hard to see any difference at all. Why not just take your $2400 and set it on fire? Toast some marshmallows, heh?

Ha ! yes, the price is outrageous, and so is their pricing structure. But if it can save me days of frustration and gallons of ink... When the new version that's compatible with the 9890 (supposedly next month) I'll test the demo version and compare.

[Paul Ozzello]

a RIP is not neccessary or Anywhere compareable with and basic Colormanagment routine.
 actually a rip always contains a complex colormanagement system itself.

In most case a RIP acts as a designated Printer driver: means you wont longer print tru the epson/Hp/canon drivers the RIP itself communicates on a most rudamentery level with the printer itself (bits and byte)

most rips push the printer speed to another level wit imageprint your are able to Prints up to 100 feet, most rips render the output image to the printer native/hardware based resolution

some quotes i found on Imageprint "The printer driver has been completely re-written for ImagePrint 9.  I can see a subtle but definitely noticeable improvement in the quality of my prints using version 9 versus version 8.  I have also found that ImagePrint 9 spools faster to the printer, so I am getting better prints faster.  It is all good."

fact is I am not Sure what you are looking for.

If you need a complete Workstation solution for your wide format epson printer you should really read into

a.) Colormanagement
b.) Printing Management
c.) Batch Job and Print Job evaluation


I didnt need a RIP solution as for right now BUT if I should buy me a 24" or wider printer I am shure it would be mandatory for my kind of printing.

I do alot of batch jobs with colorcritial applications BUT print with 3rd Party bulk inks only to push the price to a minumum.

I don't run a shop, I sell large format prints of my work (black and white) and want the highest image quality possible. I want the prints to be similar to what I see on screen without spending hours f-ing around changing hundreds of setting in photoshop and still not getting it right. $2400 is steep but if it's as good as some pros say, I'll spend a lot more on ink alone.

[Paul Ozzello]

What I don't get is how can one set of profiles be compatible with every Epson 9890 made ? Aren't there variances among individual printers ?!

[Czornyj]

What I don't get is how can one set of profiles be compatible with every Epson 9890 made ? Aren't there variances among individual printers ?!

No. That's why you don't need a RIP

[Czornyj]

Ha ! yes, the price is outrageous, and so is their pricing structure. But if it can save me days of frustration and gallons of ink... When the new version that's compatible with the 9890 (supposedly next month) I'll test the demo version and compare.

Modern waterbased pigment LFPs are extremly easy to set up, you really don't need a RIP to get decent results in a couple of minutes.

[digitaldog]

What I don't get is how can one set of profiles be compatible with every Epson 9890 made ? Aren't there variances among individual printers ?!

The pro Epson printers are impressively consistent. When we (Pixel Genius) built the profiles for Epson's units for Exhibition Fiber, a number of different sites around the US output over 5000 patches to build the profiles. The average dE was less than .5!

[Stefan Ohlsson]

I don't run a shop, I sell large format prints of my work (black and white) and want the highest image quality possible. I want the prints to be similar to what I see on screen without spending hours f-ing around changing hundreds of setting in photoshop and still not getting it right. $2400 is steep but if it's as good as some pros say, I'll spend a lot more on ink alone.

If you do a lot of B&W printing, you will like ImagePrint. It's not only that it has good B&W profiles for many papers, it's also the tinting that is far superior to the Epson Advanced B&W. Compared to printing with the print driver and using a normal ICC-profile, you get a print that doesn't fade as fast.

[robgo2]

Another real advantage to ImagePrint is that it allows soft proofing of gray scale images using their excellent gray paper profiles.  Soft proofing can be done either within IP or Photoshop, which is my choice.  This is not possible with ABW, at least on a Mac.  (I'm not sure about Windows.)  ABW is a bit of a black box.  You don't know what a print will look like until it comes out of the printer.  I use IP on a 3880 and am getting the best B&W prints since I started printing.  I consider its cost to be money well spent, but that is for the smallest size printer that the software supports.  I truly don't understand the justification for the progressive pricing structure, but every potential customer has to decide whether it is worth the expense.

Rob