Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Printing: Printers, Papers and Inks => Topic started by: biswas_arup on December 20, 2018, 12:09:18 am
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I first bought ImagePrint 9, years ago, by seeing the claim on Luminous Landscape web site, that Imageprint ICC profiles are better than the vendor provided ones using the printer driver. I was quite happy with it for all these years using it on my Epson large format printers (first Epson 7900 and then Epson SC p-7000).
Last week I had to replace my 16 month old Epson SC p-7000 printer for stubborn printhead clog (that's another pathetic story :-() with a Canon PRO-2000 printer. So far I have been very happy with the printer. I think the Canon Printer is way ahead in terms of precision, sophistication, ethical design and customer support!
Anyways, sorry about the digression. Next step was printing Bill Atkinson printer targets with Imageprint ICC profile on my paper of choice for printing, Canson Infinity Platine Fiber Rag paper. I also compared it with the ICC profile provided by Canson with the media settings file. I am little disappointed to report that Canson ICC profile for that paper-printer combination is better than the Imageprint ICC profile. After running many tests of printing using both ICC profiles, here are the summarry of my observations, so others can benefit from my experience:
1. The Imagprint profile-printed target is little inferior to Canson profile-printed target in terms of:
- saturation in red
- skin tones
2. Imageprint profile on Epson is still slightly better than Imageprint profile on Canon in terms of:
- satuaration in red
3. However, Imageprint profile on Canon is slightly better in gray tone seperation than Canson profile
I contacted Colorbyte technical support team and they were very prompt in their reply. I found out that Imageprint profiles were generated after calibrating the Canon printer with Canon Photo Glossy 170 gsm paper. So, all canon PRO-2000/4000 users, who want to use Imageprint profile, must re-calibrate their printer using that photo paper.
After recalibrating my printer with the above paper, the print targets look slightly improved. But, the above observations still hold true.
I challenged Colorbyte to generate an ICC profile that is better than the Canson ICC profile. If they accept the challenge and provide me a better profile, I would be happy to update this thread. Until then, I would continue using Canson proviedd ICC profile.
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Thank you for the write up. I just sold my Epson P5000 and am considering trying the Canon 2000 next. I like you use Canson Platine and also Canon Baryta, Rag Photographique 310 and Edition Etching. Have you had it long enough yet to judge ink consumption compared to the Epson?
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Digression: Did you sell the P5000 because you were unhappy with it, or is it just a move to wider format?
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Thank you for the write up. I just sold my Epson P5000 and am considering trying the Canon 2000 next. I like you use Canson Platine and also Canon Baryta, Rag Photographique 310 and Edition Etching. Have you had it long enough yet to judge ink consumption compared to the Epson?
I have not compared the ink consumptions. But, Canon provides a nice utility called Accounting Manager that gives you a breakup in ink and paper consumptions for each job. It also calculates the cost of the job in terms of the material used. Though mine shows the cost field as "***". I think I need to configure something for the cost field to be displayed.
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I have not compared the ink consumptions. But, Canon provides a nice utility called Accounting Manager that gives you a breakup in ink and paper consumptions for each job. It also calculates the cost of the job in terms of the material used. Though mine shows the cost field as "***". I think I need to configure something for the cost field to be displayed.
Yes, you need to enter the costs of the ink cartridges and the papers for it to be able to calculate job cost. Please note this data does not include ink used for printer maintenance, except for the CO used to sweep the platen which is included.
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Yes, you need to enter the costs of the ink cartridges and the papers for it to be able to calculate job cost. Please note this data does not include ink used for printer maintenance, except for the CO used to sweep the platen which is included.
Ah! Makes sense. Thanks for the reply,, Mark! BTW, I owe a summary post of my Epson SC-p7000 printhead clog thread. I would do that after the holidays. Trying to keep the spirit up during this season!
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Have never used Q Image with our Canon, Epson or HP machines as it was Windows-only, at one time I believe. I did know that Q Image is really nice printing software.
As we did with our Epson machines, we had custom ICC profiles made for the Canon Prograf 4000 and the results are really good. Since I only print on a handful of papers, the costs of profiling were quite modest. I happen to use a firm in Rochester NY known as Booksmart Studio for the profiles. 100% of my printing is done from Lightroom, as it's been since LR version 1.
My back-of-napkin ink economy calculations are that the Canon 4000 uses very little ink by comparison to what I was used to with the Epson 9900 or 4900, but I think that's a property of the ink making it to the page, rather than to the Maintenance Tank. My experience only, of course.
John Caldwell
Pittsburgh, PA
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I've come to a landing that the only way of really knowing how much ink these machines use for all purposes is by the inventory approach: total ink in minus total ink out adjusted for inventory divided by square footage printed. Requires really good record keeping. Have you attempted such a comparative exercise between your various Epson and Canon models?
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I've come to a landing that the only way of really knowing how much ink these machines use for all purposes is by the inventory approach: total ink in minus total ink out adjusted for inventory divided by square footage printed. Requires really good record keeping. Have you attempted such a comparative exercise between your various Epson and Canon models?
No. I'm just relived to not be doing head cleanings. So I'm in that Close Enough For Government Work phase of the experience: Measure it with a micrometer. Mark it with chalk. Cut it with an axe.
I'm an incredibly undisciplined observer when it comes to how much ink got to paper with the Epson machines. I can comfortably say that no more than 50% of my ink made it to paper. Others have differing experience, naturally.
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No. I'm just relived to not be doing head cleanings. ...........
That's right. The printer is doing them for you. Different people have different views about which technology uses more for maintenance and the companies firmly resist any transparency on this matter.
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I looked at several Canson profiles. They used i1Profiler with a 1728 patch target. This isn't an optimal layout (https://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=118987.msg988447#msg988447) for i1Profiler which makes sense why you are seeing better grayscale behavior with Imageprint. I have not mucked about with IP for years, so my memory of their profiling setup is neither current nor sharp. How many patches does IP use for profiling? That may explain the differences in saturated color handling between the profiles.
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I looked at several Canson profiles. They used i1Profiler with a 1728 patch target. This isn't an optimal layout (https://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=118987.msg988447#msg988447) for i1Profiler which makes sense why you are seeing better grayscale behavior with Imageprint. I have not mucked about with IP for years, so my memory of their profiling setup is neither current nor sharp. How many patches does IP use for profiling? That may explain the differences in saturated color handling between the profiles.
I don't use ImagePrint either, but I am familiar with the company and have discussed their products with them. It isn't only profiling - they've re-engineered the whole process of printing right down to the ink dots. Recall they bypass the OEM driver. So there could be several reasons why their results would differ from OEM profiles.
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I looked at several Canson profiles. They used i1Profiler with a 1728 patch target. This isn't an optimal layout (https://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=118987.msg988447#msg988447) for i1Profiler which makes sense why you are seeing better grayscale behavior with Imageprint. I have not mucked about with IP for years, so my memory of their profiling setup is neither current nor sharp. How many patches does IP use for profiling? That may explain the differences in saturated color handling between the profiles.
I don't know about IP's profile generation setup. But, I was very impressed with their profile for Epson large format printers. So, I don't know why their Canon profiles are not as good. One thing Canon does differently than Epson is that their AM1X media settings file controls ink behavior in addition to feed control. Canson provides special AM1X file specific to each paper. So, the ICC profile in conjunction with Canson paper media settings control the printing. Imageprint, on the other hand, uses a Canon paper as the media settings, which may not completely match with the inking behavior required for the Canson paper. Anyways, Imageprint is looking into the issue. They might produce a better ICC profile.
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It's possible that Canon's additional settings file (so far, I've seen them for Canon OEM papers, as well as for the Canson papers, but not for non-Canson art papers) is doing some of the ink and feed control that makes ImagePrint special on Epson printers. I'm not sure it's possible to load a custom media settings file into an Epson printer without bypassing the driver (I'm not sure it's not, either - but I've never seen a profile that includes a media type settings file - they all use an Epson media type).
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I don't use ImagePrint either, but I am familiar with the company and have discussed their products with them. It isn't only profiling - they've re-engineered the whole process of printing right down to the ink dots. Recall they bypass the OEM driver. So there could be several reasons why their results would differ from OEM profiles.
For Canon printers they still use the OEM driver. They also don’t yet support greeyscale profiles although they have been promising support is coming soon for the last 12 months or more.
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For Canon printers they still use the OEM driver. They also don’t yet support greeyscale profiles although they have been promising support is coming soon for the last 12 months or more.
OK, my information dates from about a year before they started supporting Canon printers and therefore refers only to Epson printers. Thanks for the clarification re Canon.
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Digression: Did you sell the P5000 because you were unhappy with it, or is it just a move to wider format?
Hi Mark. I thoroughly enjoyed using the P5000 and very happy with the prints. The reason for the change is as you suggest, I am after something larger and having never tried Canon thought I might give them a try. I always enjoy trying new products.
Regards
Mark
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Hi Mark - I think you'll enjoy the Pro-2000. Really well thought-out design and functionality delivering fine prints.
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ImagePrint is still using the Canon driver on Canon printers? Then, what's it really doing? Its claim to fame has always been three things, as I understood it:
1.) Really good profiles (still valid even if using the Canon driver, but at least one user here wasn't impressed with how well they profile Canons).
2.) Custom media setup (Canon's Media Configuration Tool does this natively, and some art papers, notably Canson, come with prebuilt media files that are much better than "try to match a Canon paper").
3.) A custom driver that supposedly has much better resizing and screening algorithms than the standard driver (apparently not in Canon's case).
Without the custom driver, if you're using Lightroom (which you probably already have), QImage (a fraction of the price of ImagePrint), or something else comparable to make sure the file is sent at the printer's preferred resolution, and you are using a custom media type from Canson (or somebody else - paper manufacturers will catch on), the only real advantage of ImagePrint is the profiles - and if those are nothing special, you could get a lot of custom profiles made for the price of ImagePrint (or buy a profiling setup).
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In theory they are working on an improved b&w system for canon although it hasn’t shipped yet. Beyond that it’s main advantage for me is the familiar and consistent interface across the canon and Epson printers.
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ImagePrint is still using the Canon driver on Canon printers? Then, what's it really doing? Its claim to fame has always been three things, as I understood it:
1.) Really good profiles (still valid even if using the Canon driver, but at least one user here wasn't impressed with how well they profile Canons).
I do not fully agree with this, at least within my experience and printers I have been using it (Epson 3880 and P800).
Profiles are far from ideal, with number of color inaccuracies including "blue turns violet" shift known for years and severe problems with deep blues. As for B&W, I can achieve much better results with QTR on OEM inks. Just my 2 cents.
I wonder how it looks (will) for Canons...
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Out of ignorance, what is Q Image popular at this time? Since LR's Print module is as good as it is, and since most users will still prefer a custom ICC profile for their chosen paper, how is Q Image useful in 2018?
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Out of ignorance, what is Q Image popular at this time? Since LR's Print module is as good as it is, and since most users will still prefer a custom ICC profile for their chosen paper, how is Q Image useful in 2018?
Imageprint is not Qimage
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Sorry, embarrassed to have not paid greater attention. Suppose my question was posed for Imageprint? The same question does come to my mind, again out of ignorance.
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No problem :). I have no idea about ImagePrint but I watch this thread and anything related to the Canon wide format printers. As for Qimage I find it very useful.
Sorry, embarrassed to have not paid greater attention. Suppose my question was posed for Imageprint? The same question does come to my mind, again out of ignorance.
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I did some more comparison of modified Bill Atkinson target on Hahnemuhle fine art Baryta Satin paper. I printed the target using Hahnemuhle provided ICC profile as well as Imageprint-provided ICC profile. Here is the summarry of my observations:
- Hahnemuhle ICC profile shows more accurate skin tones than Imageprint profile
- Hahnemuhle ICC profile shows better saturation in reds than Imageprint profile
- However, Imageprint profile shows better gray tone seperation than Hahnemuhle profile
The above three observations are in line with Canson and Imageprint profiles comparison results. However, the Canson profiles shows little more saturated reds and better skin tones than Hahnemuhle profile. I am guessing this is because Canson provides custom media setting files to control the ink behavior, but Hahnemuhle uses Canon media, which possibly does not exactly match with their paper characteristics.
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I did some more comparison of modified Bill Atkinson target on Hahnemuhle fine art Baryta Satin paper. I printed the target using Hahnemuhle provided ICC profile as well as Imageprint-provided ICC profile. Here is the summarry of my observations:
- Hahnemuhle ICC profile shows more accurate skin tones than Imageprint profile
- Hahnemuhle ICC profile shows better saturation in reds than Imageprint profile
- However, Imageprint profile shows better gray tone seperation than Hahnemuhle profile
The above three observations are in line with Canson and Imageprint profiles comparison results. However, the Canson profiles shows little more saturated reds and better skin tones than Hahnemuhle profile. I am guessing this is because Canson provides custom media setting files to control the ink behavior, but Hahnemuhle uses Canon media, which possibly does not exactly match with their paper characteristics.
I suggest to build a custom profile for your favorite paper and compare. I do not have experience yet with my new PRO-4000 but I have printed a lot with the PRO-1000 and the custom profiles I ordered are better than the Canson profiles and way better than the Hahnemuhle profiles.
If you go this route don't forget to print the profiling targets with the Canon PSP plugin (with no color correction) as Mark Segal suggested in his PRO-2000 review.
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I suggest to build a custom profile for your favorite paper and compare. I do not have experience yet with my new PRO-4000 but I have printed a lot with the PRO-1000 and the custom profiles I ordered are better than the Canson profiles and way better than the Hahnemuhle profiles.
If you go this route don't forget to print the profiling targets with the Canon PSP plugin (with no color correction) as Mark Segal suggested in his PRO-2000 review.
I am working with Imageprint in the hope that they can improve their profiles for Canson and eventually Hahnemuhle. They have been cooperating so far. I have already spent over $2000 on two versions of Imageprint. I think they should make better profiles for that kind of money. That would be good for their business too!
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Asking out if ignorance: Why spend a few hundred dollars for IP, maybe more, when printing from LR is as good as it is, and a good custom profile is less than $50?
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As far as I can tell, ImagePrint gained a lot of their fan base when they were far and away the best thing on the market (Lightroom having a really good printing engine is comparatively recent). Trying to get a print to look good out of Photoshop 6 (NOT CS 6 - just Photoshop 6) was a real art, and it was never entirely satisfactory. That was (roughly) when IP showed up. IP has improved, of course, but Adobe has put a ton of money into their print engine, such that the differences are much smaller than they once were.
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As far as I can tell, ImagePrint ...........
Could you elaborate on how you are able to tell? Have you compared the printing of printer evaluation targets from the same printer, same size using ImagePrint versus Lightroom or Photoshop within the past couple of years? What were your findings?
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I am working with Imageprint in the hope that they can improve their profiles for Canson and eventually Hahnemuhle. They have been cooperating so far. I have already spent over $2000 on two versions of Imageprint. I think they should make better profiles for that kind of money. That would be good for their business too!
Hi Arup, $2000 is a really substantial investment in printing software. As you have been a user and obviously tried other approaches, I'd be interested to hear more about whether you thought you got your money's worth, and what incremental advantages you either anticipated or achieved by opting for ImagePrint. Basically, I'm asking a very similar question to John Caldwell's.
Full disclosure: as of now I am not an ImagePrint user, so I'm interested in learning of other members' first hand experience, if it has any rigour.
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Hi Arup, $2000 is a really substantial investment in printing software. As you have been a user and obviously tried other approaches, I'd be interested to hear more about whether you thought you got your money's worth, and what incremental advantages you either anticipated or achieved by opting for ImagePrint. Basically, I'm asking a very similar question to John Caldwell's.
Full disclosure: as of now I am not an ImagePrint user, so I'm interested in learning of other members' first hand experience, if it has any rigour.
I first purchased Imageprint 9 in 2013 for my Epson 7900 printer because of the following reasons:
- It provided better icc profiles than other canned icc profiles from Epson and media vendors like canson
- It provided consistency across various papers
- It provided excellent icc profiles for Black and White printing
- The UI for IP was very simple and elegant compared to the Epson printer driver
Then I had to upgrade to Imageprint 10 in 2017, when I replaced my printer with a Epson SC-p7000, as IP 9 did not support the new printer.
Unfortunately, IP 10 did drop the support for Black and white profiles. Now, they have added the Black and White profile support in their new version, Imageprint Black for another $500 upgrade.
If I need to make the decision once again, I would say it would not make sense for an Individual Fine Art photographer printing in just color. It might make sense for someone printing in Black and White. It might also make sense for a print shop making use of their layout manager and the need for printing across dozens of media.
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I haven't used ImagePrint in a while - I've been printing on Canon recently, currently a Pro-2000, and highly satisfied with what I get out of Lightroom, especially with Canson papers that have the custom media configurations.
I haven't tested the same Canson paper with and without the custom configuration file. The only fair way to do that would be if I owned high-end profiling hardware. The Canson profile is made assuming the custom media settings, so using it with a Canon media setting would be a mismatch. I HAVE tested Canson Platine (my present favorite) against comparable papers (notably Hahnemuhle FineArt Baryta and PhotoRag Baryta) that use a Canon media profile, and I like the prints on Platine better on just about every image (it's subtle, but it's there). I don't know if this is "Platine is more to my tastes" or "the media configuration makes a difference"?
When I DID use ImagePrint was years ago, printing from Photoshop to older 17" Epsons (it was once fairly reasonably priced for 17" printers and below), and it certainly made a difference then! It was night and day, whether against paper manufacturer profiles or what I was able to create with a (fairly early) ColorMunki or a borrowed iOne Pro (original). I went to Canon when I bought my first 24" printer, a Canon iPF 6100, and there was no IP for that printer. I've owned one Epson (a 7900) since then, and I didn't buy IP for it because it was so expensive that I decided to try straight from Lightroom first - I got excellent results, and that's been my workflow since.
I have continued to read IP reviews and look at samples when I get the chance, and I haven't seen anything to suggest that it has the kind of advantages it had back when I used it regularly - IP hasn't gotten worse, but other ways of printing have gotten a lot better. I took a good look at samples about 5 years ago, when I bought the Epson 7900, since I could have had ImagePrint for that (for a king's ransom). I didn't see a huge difference then, even in samples ColorByte (makers of ImagePrint) provided. The prints were certainly subtly different, but I sometimes preferred Lightroom, other times ImagePrint - it wasn't like it had been several years earlier, when ImagePrint won on every image, and it was often not subtle.
I have never used QImage on my own systems - I'm a 34 year Mac user (my first Mac was an original 128K) who's rarely had anything else, and I'm happy enough with Lightroom's print module these days that I haven't yet found time to experiment with the very recent Mac version of what's always been a PC-only program. I have used QImage occasionally on other people's systems, and, like ImagePrint, my impression has been "you can get a lot closer in Lightroom than used to be the case".
One of the real tricks that both IP and QImage do that used to be tough to get the Adobe stuff to do natively is output resizing. Both of them resize (and handle output sharpening) on the fly with fairly sophisticated algorithms... Photoshop has always had various resizing algorithms, of course, but they involved saving versions of the image at every size you wanted to print. Lightroom has always had a resize and output sharpen on the fly feature, but it used to be unsophisticated - not much better than letting the printer driver do it (printer drivers just do a nearest neighbor resize - old Lightroom may have been one step better - was it bilinear?).
A few versions back, Adobe bought the PixelGenius resizing and output sharpening technology and added it to Lightroom. They don't offer much control, but the algorithms are excellent. At least in my opinion, it was the addition of PixelGenius technology that made "just do it all in Lightroom" a viable fine-art workflow. Jeff Schewe, one of the brains behind PixelGenius, used to frequent this forum. Once Canon added the custom media types, and paper manufacturers started picking up on that, the number of tricks third-party software had that the basic tools didn't declined again.
That's not to say that a third-party program couldn't do the same things (resizing, output sharpening and custom ink management) better - but they are no longer doing things Lightroom and Canon's driver just don't do the way they used to...
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Concerning Canon PRO line printers. Using a standard media type (Hahnemuhle) instead a custom media type (Canson) to build an icc profile doesn't mean that the first profile is going to be inferior or that a custom media type is better than a standard one. On the contrary there are indications that standard media types like Pro Platinum and Pro Luster for example have characteristics (chroma optimizer application in "Auto" mode) that cannot be replicated with a custom one because one cannot create a custom media type using as a base media Pro Platinum or Pro Luster. Also from my limited investigation I came to the preliminary conclusion that media types contain ink mixing "recipes". So coming back closer to the subject of the thread I believe that Canson profiles seem better than Hahnemuhle profiles because Canson seem to have build them better. In any case these profiles must be used in conjunction with the media types used to create them.
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I haven't used ImagePrint in a while - I've been printing on Canon recently, currently a Pro-2000, and highly satisfied with what I get out of Lightroom, especially with Canson papers that have the custom media configurations................
.............. I've owned one Epson (a 7900) since then, and I didn't buy IP for it because it was so expensive that I decided to try straight from Lightroom first - I got excellent results, and that's been my workflow since.
...............IP hasn't gotten worse, but other ways of printing have gotten a lot better. I took a good look at samples about 5 years ago, when I bought the Epson 7900, since I could have had ImagePrint for that (for a king's ransom). I didn't see a huge difference then, even in samples ColorByte (makers of ImagePrint) provided. ..............
I have used QImage occasionally on other people's systems, and, like ImagePrint, my impression has been "you can get a lot closer in Lightroom than used to be the case".
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A few versions back, Adobe bought the PixelGenius resizing and output sharpening technology and added it to Lightroom. They don't offer much control, but the algorithms are excellent. ........................
Those are interesting and useful observations Dan, thanks.
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Prompted from the discussions here, I did contact imageprint.
They did confirm the following;
"We talk to the printer through the driver without actually using it. It’s kind of complicated and a method we originally thought could cut down development time and get the drivers out faster as we didn’t have to do all the communication side of things (Mac and Windows). As it turned out we weren’t very happy with the technical aspects of it as not every printer shares the same command set so it was a lot more headache than we originally thought it would be. We have all new Canon drivers almost ready to go that will have our brand new Narrow Gamut B/W technology. We are in beta with the B/W right now on the Epson P Series and should be rolling that out in the first week of January and then the Canon Pro Series."
I am a very recent convert to Imageprint for my pro-2000. It was a toss as to the same money for a spectro and then all the associated learning curves vs Imageprint and tapping into their much greater experience in making profiles. I would speculate that the creation of a profile has a good deal of art and not just science and that I would burn a lot of time and energy trying to master it.
When compared to canned profiles from Canon, Canson, Moab, the image print gave subtle but important improvements to shadow separation, micro contrast in saturated colors, along with some increasing in saturation that did not effect detail and tone separation.
But it was also nice to see that my previous work on canned profiles was not garbage and at first glance matched closely.
So with my limited experience to some here, Imageprint gave subtle but important improvements, consistently with various paper types within the limitations of PK/MK, and a user interface that is more sophisticated and targeted at the job of printing.
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I suggest to build a custom profile for your favorite paper and compare. I do not have experience yet with my new PRO-4000 but I have printed a lot with the PRO-1000 and the custom profiles I ordered are better than the Canson profiles and way better than the Hahnemuhle profiles.
If you go this route don't forget to print the profiling targets with the Canon PSP plugin (with no color correction) as Mark Segal suggested in his PRO-2000 review.
I am thinking of getting custom profile(s) built for comparison. Could I ask you which profile service did you use for the custom profiles?
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I find this topic to be touching a little bit of what problems I had with my Pro 4000 and Canson papers.
For me, printing with provided by Canson am1x files was catastrophe, leading to strong dithering and visible dots over color patches.
After receiving Hahnemuhle papers, and printing following their instruction - Canon HW Fine Art as media - prints were amazing.
Went back to Canson and printed on Canson using HW Fine Art media - results are a lot better than with provided am1x
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Went back to Canson and printed on Canson using HW Fine Art media - results are a lot better than with provided am1x
Just out of curiosity. What is the base media paper type that Canson uses in it's am1x settings? You can check that with the Canon Media Configuration tool.
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MT when you installed he Canson media type did you do both steps: install the media type in the printer and then pull it from the printer into the driver? That second step confused me when I was new to the printer.
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MT when you installed he Canson media type did you do both steps: install the media type in the printer and then pull it from the printer into the driver? That second step confused me when I was new to the printer.
I did, first of all current version of software asks on its own do you want to do it after you made changes, and I did follow up on my own anyway, to do it manually, only to receive prompt that data are same and no update is needed.
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Just out of curiosity. What is the base media paper type that Canson uses in it's am1x settings? You can check that with the Canon Media Configuration tool.
something something Fine Art Textured, I'm not at home atm can't check, but I remember the difference was it had Textured on the end.
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One thing I find very useful is the Qimage layout system which once you've got, say, six or so prints laid out, for each one you can assign a different color profile.
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One thing I find very useful is the Qimage layout system which once you've got, say, six or so prints laid out, for each one you can assign a different color profile.
How do you use this feature? I ask because the printer driver is set up the same for all the files and also the paper is the same for all the files. So why two or more different icc profiles? Maybe one optimized for BW and the other for color?
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You can have multiple profiles with slight variations for the same paper that may work better for different colors. Either because you use different color profile creation settings or because you use profiling targets that focus mostly on the colors in the individual image.
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I am thinking of getting custom profile(s) built for comparison. Could I ask you which profile service did you use for the custom profiles?
I have had Andrew Rodney (The Digital Dog) make all my custom ICC Profiles. They are excellent, and noticeably better than Epson’s, Ilford’s and Canson’s stock profiles. Highly recommended.
http://digitaldog.net/services.html
Rand
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You can have multiple profiles with slight variations for the same paper that may work better for different colors. Either because you use different color profile creation settings or because you use profiling targets that focus mostly on the colors in the individual image.
I got it thanks. I just printed a test image twice with two different rendering intents at once. Useful.
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I first bought ImagePrint 9, years ago, by seeing the claim on Luminous Landscape web site, that Imageprint ICC profiles are better than the vendor provided ones using the printer driver. I was quite happy with it for all these years using it on my Epson large format printers (first Epson 7900 and then Epson SC p-7000).
Last week I had to replace my 16 month old Epson SC p-7000 printer for stubborn printhead clog (that's another pathetic story :-() with a Canon PRO-2000 printer. So far I have been very happy with the printer. I think the Canon Printer is way ahead in terms of precision, sophistication, ethical design and customer support!
Anyways, sorry about the digression. Next step was printing Bill Atkinson printer targets with Imageprint ICC profile on my paper of choice for printing, Canson Infinity Platine Fiber Rag paper. I also compared it with the ICC profile provided by Canson with the media settings file. I am little disappointed to report that Canson ICC profile for that paper-printer combination is better than the Imageprint ICC profile. After running many tests of printing using both ICC profiles, here are the summarry of my observations, so others can benefit from my experience:
1. The Imagprint profile-printed target is little inferior to Canson profile-printed target in terms of:
- saturation in red
- skin tones
2. Imageprint profile on Epson is still slightly better than Imageprint profile on Canon in terms of:
- satuaration in red
3. However, Imageprint profile on Canon is slightly better in gray tone seperation than Canson profile
I contacted Colorbyte technical support team and they were very prompt in their reply. I found out that Imageprint profiles were generated after calibrating the Canon printer with Canon Photo Glossy 170 gsm paper. So, all canon PRO-2000/4000 users, who want to use Imageprint profile, must re-calibrate their printer using that photo paper.
After recalibrating my printer with the above paper, the print targets look slightly improved. But, the above observations still hold true.
I challenged Colorbyte to generate an ICC profile that is better than the Canson ICC profile. If they accept the challenge and provide me a better profile, I would be happy to update this thread. Until then, I would continue using Canson proviedd ICC profile.
An Update on this issue. I had been working with ColorByte on this issue and sent them test targets printed with ImagePrint and Canson Profiles for their comparison. ColorByte technical support has been very responsive with this issue. I had couple of issues with ImagePrint:
1. Saturation in Red was higher in the Canson Profile print
2. Skin tone in Canson looked better than Imageprint.
Here is how ColorByte responded to it:
"Your print does look extremely close to what we get here. That was a bit surprising because in [our] judgement our print was the better one compared to the Canon driver print you sent.
The Canon driver's print is slightly more saturated for some landscapes and objects than the ImagePrint print--but slightly over-saturated for skin tones -- and across the board it lacks tonal separation and shadow detail of ImagePrint's output.
One area we took a very close look at was the strawberries. A good section of the colors here are out of gamut in both profiles so neither reproduction can be 100% accurate. (And when bringing out-of-gamut color into gamut there’s always going to be some subjectivity). Our color management engine tends to favor preserving the tonal separation when bringing colors into gamut which can result in a bit less saturation compared to the Canon driver's method which is clearly favoring loss of tonal separation and bumping saturation. In our experience that latter method leads to blocked shadows throughout the image and a tendency to oversaturate.
In these areas of subjectivity you may prefer some things with the driver profile -- but they do come at an expense. In that regard, if I were to evaluate both prints not side-by-side but on their own merit, there are areas in the Canon print (like the loss of detail) which would be actually problematic--not just a subjective difference. There is no such areas in the print made with ImagePrint and that’s how we engineer our color management components.
I realize this is a generalized test, but when printing images of varying keys and out-of-gamut components as a group using one overall setting, there will always be sacrifices made to the potential reproductive quality of each component. For example, I personally would never print a high key image with the same shadow point that I use with a low key image. I would instead change the shadow point slider from our default value to a lower one to boost the saturation on the images where it was needed, while leaving others alone or even increasing the shadow point slightly to bring out more shadow detail. One of ImagePrint’s key values as a printing application is that it is made to allow you to adjust things like this on an image by image basis quickly and without having to edit the image.
In this case, simply bringing our shadow slider down to 1 while using Perceptual rendering (to avoid clipping of those out of gamut colors) brings that red strawberry much closer to the Canon level of saturation while still maintaining more shadow separation than the Canon print and keeping the skin tones correct. That will give you a print that gives you the saturation you want without the compromises the Canon driver is making regarding tonality so I’d recommend giving that a try and let us know what you think."
After this response from ColorByte, I re-printed the test target with the shadow slider brought down to 1. Now, the ImagePrint test target looks very close to Canson. So, apparently the shadow point has a corelation with color reproduction of out of gamut colors. This is good to know! For now, I will go back to using my ImagePrint application.
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I should add anothetr piece of observation on this topic for the benifit of other readers. So far I had been comparing Imageprint profile with the paper vendor provided profiles, like Canson and Hahnemuelle. I was interested in finding out how does Imageprint profile compare with a custom profile made for my printer. Some time back I ordered a custom profile form Phil Cruse in UK. After receiving it I printed the same Bill Atkinson target using the custom profile and compared it with the prints from the Canson and Imageprint profile. Here is the summary of my observations:
Canson vs. Custom ICC profile
- Custom profile has more accurate skin tone than Canson
- Custom profile has better color saturation than Canson
- Custom profile has tiny bit better shadow seperation than Canson
Imageprint vs. Custom ICC profile
- Custom profile has more accurate skin tone than Imageprint
- Custom profile has better color saturation than Imageprint
- ImagePrint profile has better shadow seperation than Custom Profile with shadow slider at 50
- ImagePrint profile has similar shadow seperation as Custom Profile with shadow slider at 1
Conclusion
Personally, I will be using the custom profile for most of my color prints. In some cases, where shadow separation is critical in the darkest tones, I will use ImagePrint. For my Black and White prints, I look forward to use Imageprint, when their Gray profiles become available for the Canon PRO series printers in the coming months.