As I venture further into my printing adventure I am starting to more and more desire better print quality and get more and more lured by syren song of better printer profiles.
I first looked at getting something like i1Pro 2 Photo. Pro is I would be able to create my own profiles. Cons are:
1. It's $1,200
2. It would take time to build them and I have no expertise in building them nor time to become an expert so they would probably not be as good as ones made by somebody like Andrew Rodney
3. I don't make profiles regularly so once I built several I need i1Pro would be sitting in the corner gathering dust and if I ever upgrade to printer model that has built in profiler i1Pro would become redundant
Then I considered paying somebody to make them for me. Pros of that are obvious (I would get better profile than I can ever create in less time). Cons are:
1. Cost wouldn't be as high as cost of i1Pro but it still would be good part of it
2. If I get different printer or want to try some new papers I would have to go through it all over again rising my cost, quickly exceeding cost of i1Pro, and introducing delays
Then I read somewhere that even a best profile can't completely improve print quality, that part of an issue is due to, IIRC, manufacturer's printer drivers are "not linearized" and thus only way to get best quality possible is to go around manufacturer's drivers and use RIP.
So I started looking at ImagePrint. Pros are:
1. For 17" printer (what I have) it's cheaper than i1Pro
2. I don't have to build profiles nor worry about cost of new profiles
3. Allegedly it results in best print quality one can get
Cons are:
1. It supports only Epsons. I don't see myself printing wider than what 3880 can in the near future but if I was to go wider, or if my 3880 died, my next printer would be most likely Canon and at that point in time my investment in ImagePrinmt would be lost and I would be back at square one.
So what are your thoughts / what you would do / recommend?