Colomunki - edit profiles?

[Jeff Magidson]

I don't own a colormunki. When creating printer profiles with the munki, is it possible to tweak the profiles (adding or subtracting saturation for example) either during the profile creation process or after the fact?

If not, is there other software that I can use to edit the profiles?

~ Jeff

[digitaldog]

Not really. Yes, you can alter the perceptual table with differing settings (well you can in some versions, certainly i1Profiler). You can optimize the profile by printing more patches and updating the profile. But after creating the profile there is no editing functionality.

[John Nollendorfs]

Jeff:
If you want to be able to create true custom profiles like you describe at a "reasonable" price, look at Data Color's SpyderPrint. Once you have read the patches, you have the options for many different sliders to fine tune the resulting profile including saturation and color balance and split toning. For B&W lovers, there is an extended gray patch set for creating precision toned B&W profiles.

Even though my Z3100 has the EyeOne Spectro built in, I prefer to use SpyderPrint because of these "tuning" capabilities. I would say the "default" profile with no tuning from the Spyder is just a touch better than that of the built-in spectro.  

[digitaldog]

Spyder needs profiling editing (for a number of reasons, like the fact they don't provide a real Spectrophotometer like the ColorMunki and have to make a lot of assumptions). The question I'd ask the OP is WHY he feels the need to edit a profile? A good profile should not need any such editing. There are tweaks one can make to the perpetual table as this is fair game. So you can in some products do minor saturation editing that only affects that one table. But by and large, profile editing shouldn’t be necessary and is a high level function. It's sometimes needed for CMYK profiles to edit the paper white or when doing what is called cross rendering: Make my Epson match a CMYK proof. In such a case, minor tweaking is useful to force the match. But short of that, stay away from editing profiles.

[Paul Ozzello]

The question I'd ask the OP is WHY he feels the need to edit a profile? A good profile should not need any such editing.

I'd like to be able to do this myself to convert a neutral profile to a 'toned' profile based on a color patch read from the Colormunki. The toning feature in ABW is pretty poor as it applies the tone globally with no ability to split tone. In my case, I have an old Canon printer that is totally NOT neutral with bluish shadows and off white highlights (that look fantastic), I would love to scan that Canon print with a ColorMunki and apply those hues to my neutral Epson profile. The feature from SpyderPrint looks interesting, can you enter a L*a*b* value directly ?

[Jeff Magidson]

The question I'd ask the OP is WHY he feels the need to edit a profile? A good profile should not need any such editing. There are tweaks one can make to the perpetual table as this is fair game. So you can in some products do minor saturation editing that only affects that one table. But by and large, profile editing shouldn’t be necessary and is a high level function. It's sometimes needed for CMYK profiles to edit the paper white or when doing what is called cross rendering: Make my Epson match a CMYK proof. In such a case, minor tweaking is useful to force the match. But short of that, stay away from editing profiles.

Andrew, thanks for your comments and question.
Why do I want to edit a profile?: I have always felt that my Epson 3880 printed a tad low in saturation on luster paper with a custom profile based on printing the same file on other devices and comparing the output to my calibrated/profiled monitor. This was also reiterated when I purchased an IPF8300 and had Eric Chan make a custom profile for it and compared the output to my Epson 3880.

My goal it to get my Cannon IPF8300 and my Epson 3880 to match better.

[Jeff Magidson]

Jeff:
If you want to be able to create true custom profiles like you describe at a "reasonable" price, look at Data Color's SpyderPrint.  

Thanks John, Are the Spyderprint patches easy or difficult to read with the device that Data Color provides?

[digitaldog]

I'd like to be able to do this myself to convert a neutral profile to a 'toned' profile based on a color patch read from the Colormunki.

Why not tone the image and send it thought the profile?

[digitaldog]

I have always felt that my Epson 3880 printed a tad low in saturation on luster paper with a custom profile based on printing the same file on other devices and comparing the output to my calibrated/profiled monitor.

So the issue might be the preview portion of the profile isn't in sync with the output (it shows more saturation). A good profile tuning app can control either table (preview or output). Or you could apply a tiny saturation tweak to the profile with the available sliders for the perceptual table but if it up's the soft proof, you're back in this vicious cycle. But there's nothing out there that's inexpensive and easy to use that provides the capability to do such edits ala Kodak's old Custom Color ICC. Now that was an easy to use albeit not inexpensive profile editor. You might just have to soft proof, then add an output specific saturation layer tweak to match output to soft proof. Not ideal but simple and inexpensive.

[Paul Ozzello]

Why not tone the image and send it thought the profile?

The files were converted from RGB to Grayscale, I didn't want to reconvert them back since the action is desctuctive - but maybe my fears are unfounded...

[digitaldog]

The files were converted from RGB to Grayscale, I didn't want to reconvert them back since the action is desctuctive - but maybe my fears are unfounded...

IF they are grayscale, why an ICC profile output profile I presume is RGB?

[John Nollendorfs]

Thanks John, Are the Spyderprint patches easy or difficult to read with the device that Data Color provides?

The last iteration of the hardware/software works quite well. They do provide a "scanning" guide, which helps, but I found kind of clumsy. A visual scanning of the patches after reading to pick out misreads on screen is helpful and only takes a minute (the software also highlights major misreads). BTW, you can do readings in a "scanning mode" by line, or individual patch modes. It's very quick and easy to go back and re-read any patches you are suspicious of using the single patch mode and you will notice if there was a misread if the patch changes.   

I have not used a Colormunki, so I could not tell you if the Spyder is easier or less so. But the ability to customize profiles, and to do extended gray scale calibrations for B&W printing are major plus' for the Spyder. If you are trying to match two prints from let's say, fine art paper, and canvas just using "straight" profiles you know how difficult that can be. Or as one poster noted, matching prints from two different printers, Spyder's profile customizing helps considerably.

As for the "accuracy" of the readings from the Spyder, I can't comment, but the resulting "straight" profiles from the Spyder & the EyeOne in the Z3100 are quite close.

Also, I've found that the 225 patch target does a good job vs. the 729 patch target. And when I've made profiles using both patch targets and compared, I've not seen an advantage to the larger set.

[digitaldog]

If you are trying to match two prints from let's say, fine art paper, and canvas just using "straight" profiles you know how difficult that can be.

Shouldn't be but you have to first find the profile with the smaller gamut, then cross render to that profile with an Absolute Colorimetric intent for paper white matching. You'd have to trim the non printable paper too. If you send two profiles 'as is' to two different papers, if they have differing gamuts and contrast ratio’s, you're going to see differences. Cross rendering is the process used to make printer A match printer B. Printer A has to have as large or larger gamut than the printer it hopes to match (you can't go backwards).

[John Nollendorfs]

Shouldn't be but you have to first find the profile with the smaller gamut, then cross render to that profile with an Absolute Colorimetric intent for paper white matching. You'd have to trim the non printable paper too. If you send two profiles 'as is' to two different papers, if they have differing gamuts and contrast ratio’s, you're going to see differences. Cross rendering is the process used to make printer A match printer B. Printer A has to have as large or larger gamut than the printer it hopes to match (you can't go backwards).

Sounds like "goobly gook" to me Andrew!

But speaking from "real world experience", keeping the gamuts, contrast ratio's etc in mind, you can quickly and easily create modified profiles using Spyder, which you can't with the ColorMunki. Of  course it won't be perfect, but a lot closer, depending on the medias you chose. And if you properly label and file your Spyder patch reads, you can go back in the future and modify the profile very quickly for other purposes.

[digitaldog]

Sounds like "goobly gook" to me Andrew!

Many concepts you don't understand seem like "goobly gook". Read this:
http://www.imagescience.com.au/kb/questions/88/Cross+Rendered+Proofing
http://www.computer-darkroom.com/ps8_proof/proof_1.htm
Cross rendering has been in Photoshop since version 5!

[Paul Ozzello]

IF they are grayscale, why an ICC profile output profile I presume is RGB?

I'm not sure I understand, how else can I softproof my print ? I use an Epson icc profile for Hot Press Bright and was going to make my own profile with Colormunki. What should I be using ?

[digitaldog]

I'm not sure I understand, how else can I softproof my print ? I use an Epson icc profile for Hot Press Bright and was going to make my own profile with Colormunki. What should I be using ?

I've never tried it, but you're sending grayscale data through an RGB profile within the Print Dialog in Photoshop? Why soft proof if you're sending essentially grayscale data to the printer? Or to put it another way, IF you're sending RGB data, and the soft proof shows differences when you use different rendering intents, why not just stick with RGB documents? Now if you want to tone the prints as you suggest, I'd stick with RGB and do it in Photoshop proper (or Lightroom), then use the RGB ICC profiles in an attempt to match that. IOW, they are B&W toned images, treat them as RGB color images, which they are. That's how I handle toned images. Then you don't have to futz with profile editing. You use the same profile for both color and toned B&W work. You'll have far more control over the toning using an image editor than an ICC profile. If you're on a Mac, you could look into Quartz filters but again, compared to using an image editor for toning, it's not very powerful.

[Simon J.A. Simpson]

I don't own a colormunki. When creating printer profiles with the munki, is it possible to tweak the profiles (adding or subtracting saturation for example) either during the profile creation process or after the fact?

If not, is there other software that I can use to edit the profiles?

~ Jeff

Why not make printing adjustment layer to fine tweak the output ?  This is what I do.  As recommended by the eminent Jeff Schewe in ‘Real World Photoshop’.

[Paul Ozzello]

I've never tried it, but you're sending grayscale data through an RGB profile within the Print Dialog in Photoshop? Why soft proof if you're sending essentially grayscale data to the printer? Or to put it another way, IF you're sending RGB data, and the soft proof shows differences when you use different rendering intents, why not just stick with RGB documents? Now if you want to tone the prints as you suggest, I'd stick with RGB and do it in Photoshop proper (or Lightroom), then use the RGB ICC profiles in an attempt to match that. IOW, they are B&W toned images, treat them as RGB color images, which they are. That's how I handle toned images. Then you don't have to futz with profile editing. You use the same profile for both color and toned B&W work. You'll have far more control over the toning using an image editor than an ICC profile. If you're on a Mac, you could look into Quartz filters but again, compared to using an image editor for toning, it's not very powerful.

Hi Andrew, I tried your suggestion over the weekend and I'm runnning into a strange problem. When I convert the grayscale image to RGB, some shadow detail is getting lost. Looking at the histogram, I get a sharp spike on the very left after the conversion and the end result is a "muddied" shadow. I've tried all sorts of conversions with differenct RGB color spaces and rendering intents. Any idea what might be going on ? Is there a better way of converting to RGB ?

[digitaldog]

What is the source for the grayscale? Gray Gamma, dot gain?