Well, I broke out the new i1Pro2 and stumbled thru my first printer scan. (I say stumbled because a) the instructional videos are 4 years out of date; 2) starting in "basic" mode seemed appropriate for a newbie to this particular hardware, but I went down the rabbit hole by trying to adjust the patch sizes (after getting a warning their own (!) default sizes were too small.
Finally, I gave up and just did a MO default all the way across the board, (800 patches) and it scanned perfectly. (In fact, having done this kind of thing with different hardware years ago, I'd have to say I was impressed at how well it performed: I didn't mis-scan a single line.)
OK: so much for the back story. It's time to cut to the chase...
... I printed the same image on the same paper using my newly created profile, and relative colormetric rendering intent... and it looks perfect. The cyans are the correct tone and the "banding" (the "C artifact") is completely gone.
Dropping my new one, and the old paid one into CT, I can see that mine is larger, particularly in the green/blues and generally overall.
So, now I have Epson's profile; my own ColorMunki profile (sold the CM yesterday, now that I have an "oooohhhh shiney" serious tool) and today's newly created profile. None of these exhibit the original issues with RC intent. Only the paid one is wrong.
Everyone here would recognize who did the paid profile for me (and some of you may have easily found it out.)
They are fine folks, and I'd like to pass this along to them, but at this point, the only conclusion I can come to is that there is something wrong with their profiles (since every one exhibited the same RC issue, to a greater or lesser extent.)
Does anyone here have any further comments, before I head off to recreate my profiles (for an exhausting -third- time now) ?
Thanks to everyone for your interest and advice.
OH... and if anyone has tips I might use for my new i1Pro profiling (I'm hand pulling the scanner; just can't afford the automated toy right now) I'd love to hear them as well.
Once again: thanks.
Tracy
www.valleau.gallery