Spot Measurement with i1Photo Pro 2

[hugowolf]

I have never used this feature, what software is used? I see nothing in iProfiler.

I was looking at my studio walls today and thought about touching up a few places. I was wondering if I could match the paint on the walls to those paint color patches available from paint stores and home improvement stores - or is this purely a Pantone patch thing?

Brian A

[howardm]

I dont recall right now but I believe you have to use XRite's Colorport software (or was it the Pantone Manager?).  I forget but it's a major Rube Goldberg anti-feature.  If you have Argyll, consider using its 'spotread' utility; much simpler

[digitaldog]

It's not really possible (easy) to make one spot measurement in i1P, the minimum chart is 400 patches and the darn software will not save that data until you measure all patches. At least no solution I know of. You can create one measurement in the Lighting part of the module (first dropdown, last option) but I don't think that will work for anything but ambient measurement.

You could use MeasureTool (the old software from GretagMacbeth) if you have an older machine that can run it. There's solutions from other's like BableColor or SpectraShop.

If you can get Lab values, presumably you can use that for matching a paint color if whoever mixes the paint can use those values. Unless I'm having a big brain fart, I don't know if there's another trick to do this in i1Profiler.

[Jeff-Grant]

Here's another option: http://www.swatchmate.com I bought one of these as a kickstarter project. There CC app is just about ready.

[GWGill]

I dont recall right now but I believe you have to use XRite's Colorport software (or was it the Pantone Manager?).  I forget but it's a major Rube Goldberg anti-feature.  If you have Argyll, consider using its 'spotread' utility; much simpler

Another option is ColorMeter, which can also do Pantone spot colors if you load it up with a suitable Pantone color library, will give you a delta E between reference and measurement, etc.  You can use your i1pro2 and get an accurate measurement, unlike cheaper color measurement devices which tend to use colorimetry rather than a spectrometer.

[hugowolf]

Howard: I was really hoping my days of using a command line app were done 20 years ago. But thanks, I will keep it in mind. If I ever get the time to look into Argyll for the other interesting things it does, I’ll maybe look into its spot measurement too.

Andrew: I was kinda hoping the i1 Pro 2 would offer software as well as hardware advancements over the i1 Pro, some things seem to have gone down hill.

Jeff, the Cube looks neat, but I am on an internet connected computer 8 hours a day. I really do not need a ‘smart’ phone. I have one of those new fangled flip phones for conversations, and like the disconnect when I am not.

GW, see above comment.

Thank you guys, truly. It was just a thought. I look at the walls and ceiling. View an off white color. Go get a bunch of swatches. Bring them back and none of them are anywhere near the off white I have.

I don’t know what I was thinking, maybe being able to print the color and take that into the store and visually comparing it to the hundreds, if not thousands, of swatches.

Brian A

[digitaldog]

Andrew: I was kinda hoping the i1 Pro 2 would offer software as well as hardware advancements over the i1 Pro, some things seem to have gone down hill.

Hardware yes, very much so. Software? Not X-rite's strength any more. I would love them to prove me wrong!

[Erland]

Try X-rites old i1 share. I use it at work to spot meter, check DeltaE and compare my prints to some Pantone colors. Works great!

[bill t.]

Can't get the old i1Share to work on Window 7 64bit.  Doesn't recognize my old i1Pro puck.  Double checked with the current i1Profiler, the puck works fine with that.  Either the device driver or 64-bitness is not compatible with i1Share.  Will not go through the trouble to revive an old computer, thx.

Glad I'm not the only one who thinks there is something odd about a color management system that can not do the most basic, highly useful measurement.  Seems incredible there is not at least a real time numeric display of the values from the most recent measurement during profiling.  A suspicious person might suspect poor instrument accuracy being mitigated by lots of interpolation over lots of samples.

I'm kinda up for a new profiling system, anyway.  What are the under $2K alternatives?

[datro]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what the OP is trying to do, but here is how I take spot measurements using i1Profiler and my i1Pro2:

Calibrate the iPro2 on the calibration plate.
Insert the spot measurement "Positioning Target" plastic base into the i1Pro2.
Select the Advanced Mode in i1Profiler.
Select Measure Chart option in the Workflow Selector. 
Specify you are using i1Pro2
Create a chart that is the number of patches you wish to measure (can be one patch if only making one measurement).
Go to the next step, Measurement, and Spot Measurement.
Position the i1Pro2 over the spot and make the measurement.
Save the information as a CGATS file (txt). That will allow you to now open up the text file and you will see the LAB values for that color patch.

Note:  The above requires i1Profiler version 1.3.1 or later.

Dave

[Erland]

I1 share works if you download I1 diagnostics and copy the i1 dolll into the 1 share folder instead. X-rites own solution actually.
I'm on W7x64 also, and couldn't be without i1 share.

[digitaldog]

Select the Advanced Mode in i1Profiler.
Select Measure Chart option in the Workflow Selector. 
Specify you are using i1Pro2
Create a chart that is the number of patches you wish to measure (can be one patch if only making one measurement).

OK now I see how this can done, forget about this area. Specifically you go into Measure Chart, select 1x1. Not intuitive but to be expected here 
And of course, like most of this poorly designed application, the settings are not sticky so you have to set 1x1 patch each time and no way in that workflow to save this as a custom target. What a mess. Then you save that one measurement and can't analyze it there, you must go into another module (Data Analysis). It's as if the design of this product was built by someone who would go out of their way to make the entire process more work than what we had years previously from the same company.

[bill t.]

You da Man, Erland!

Here's how Windows 7 users can make i1Share useable:

http://www.xrite.com/i1match/support/d724

You basically need to replace the old version of EyeOne.dll in your i1Share directory with the same named dll that is part of the i1Match installation.

You may already have that dll on your system it's worth a search before you download i1Match which will install an annoying startup nag window that can be removed with msconfig.  It doesn't seem to mess up Spectraview, fortunately.

The version that works for me is:

EyeOne.dll 7/3/2007 10:52am

Just replace the older one in the i1Share directory, found at:

Program Files (x86)/GretagMacbeth/i1/i1Share

Ooh, L = 5.6 on that deep Silver Rag shadow.  Can hardly wait to see what happens when I hit it Premier Print Shield.

EDIT: works with Win 7 64 bit, have not and will not test 32 bit.

[hugowolf]

I am still following this, but more from paper spot reading than my original request for paint sampling. So it looks like there are three ways of doing this:

1. Colorport, which I have tried and seems to work, but it was late on Friday and I haven't examined the results yet.

2. iShare, with a swapped out dll file.

3. iProfiler with a single patch. (I will try this next, and them maybe iShare)

But this leads to another question. When reading a strip of patches, several reading are taken (30/sec) and I presume averaged. How much should I trust a single spot reading?

Brian A

[digitaldog]

In scan mode, yes averaging. Spot is 1 measurement. Sometimes useful to make multiple readings then average depending on a number of factors.

[howardm]

How much of the ProfileMaker package runs in 'demo' mode?  I finally got it loaded
on an *ancient* titanium Powerbook G4 (talk about glacial!).  So MeasureTool obviously
does but how much else?

[digitaldog]

In demo you should be able to measure and save, the reporting might not work and averaging is probably disabled.

[Erland]

About the question about finding the color of your wall paint, I know they talked about metamerism when I went to a EFI education. They said that even though you might get the same color if your local paint-shop blend their own, you might get metamerism error back home. They suggested buying expensive colors that are made to be exactly neutral.

[bill t.]

Just got back from Lowes.  Watched the paint mixer.  My best guess: +- 5 units per channel for a 0 to 255 scale.  Paint the whole wall, save some trouble.

It's very easy to establish confidence with i1Match.  Compare a bunch o' readings taken back to back on the same spot.  Based on limited testing those seem quite consistent, provided the measured surface is reasonably homogeneous, and one always reads the same spot.

Detect short term system drift by reading the calibration tile immediately after calibration, and then at periodic intervals.  But of course the tile can not be used as an absolute color reference, except for calibration.  Have always wondered if the puck needed a warm up time, now I can find out.

Keep some colored surfaces out of light's reach as a reference for long term drift.  The classic Macbeth patches that come with the kit might do, comparing old an new reading sets.

Don't know how to assure quantitative accuracy without a separate calibration instrument, but most of what I want to do is comparisons over the short term where only the deltas matter and I have to trust the tile for profile creation.

[hugowolf]

Just thought I would report back. I have given up on the paint thing, but have successfully used X-rite’s ColorPort software for spot measurement.

It works well. You can set up as many blank white patches as you want, measure them, export the results as a CSV file, then open it in Excel and average the readings from the number of patches you measured. Lab, LCH, XYZ, spectral response 380-720 nm at 10 nm intervals, etc. Excel gives you a better graph of the spectral response than the mini one in ColorPort.

I haven’t had chance to try the other methods yet. I will when I get the chance. I was only in my workplace to fill up the humidifier today, but had enough time for ColorPort.

Brian A