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Author Topic: New QTR Profiling Tools  (Read 4800 times)

richardboutwell

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New QTR Profiling Tools
« on: October 31, 2016, 05:50:12 am »

Here is a link to information about new QTR profiling tools for dedicated black and white printers:
http://www.bwmastery.com/quadtoneprofiler/

I've done a lot of work automating some of the more repetitive tasks and came up with ways of using custom ink calibration images along with ColorPort or i1 Profiler for speeding up the whole process. I've automated everything from finding the ink limits for each shade, getting the exact cross over points, and generating the qidf profile. You basically just need to define the printer and the inks and then generate, print, and measure the targets.  A lot of these things are similar to the standard QTR profiling approach but incorporate my methods of evenly dividing the tonal scale with the number of inks you want to use to get the best overlap for the smoothest profile. It takes something that would have taken more than two hours to now being about 15-30 minutes and using a single sheet of paper.

One thing I am most excited about is finally solving the problem of the sharp edges in the QTR-generated curves where one ink begins and the next falls off. The Quad Curve Smoothing tool i made allows you to change the start and end points of each ink as well as change the shape each the curve while maintaining the same general ink density as the original curves. Basically, it is for people who want the quality of Piezography style curves with the flexibility of custom blended ink sets and having the control over the total number of inks used and how they are diluted. Personally, I will still buy the piezo inks, but it allows me to mix and match to my hearts content...

I've also updated my QuadLin tools for advanced curve linearization to change the shape of the final density curve that doesn't rely on the QTR Linearize-quad app and the problems it occasionally has. The new version uses measurements of 51-step targets that are interpolated to 128 control points for the correction curve, lookup, and new quad value calculations that does away with the need to hand correct the modulation errors that can happen when control points are too close together (I even put in an option for my own data smoothing function for really noisy data that you might get from a SpyderPrint device)

This was supposed to be part of the larger QTR book, but these tools took on a life of their own and I wanted to get them out there while I finish up editing, making screen shots and designing my QTR book. I saw that someone mentioned me in the PiezoPro thread, but not wanting to hijack that I thought it was best to just post about it here. Hope some people find this useful.


« Last Edit: October 31, 2016, 05:53:45 am by richard@richardboutwell.com »
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Stephen G

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Re: New QTR Profiling Tools
« Reply #1 on: November 01, 2016, 03:18:39 am »

Very interesting, and I'm seriously thinking about buying a licence. What's holding me back is this: I'm using a 9900 with standard inks and I only have a SpyderPrint with no budget for a better measuring device.

Is it going to be worth it for me?
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richardboutwell

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Re: New QTR Profiling Tools
« Reply #2 on: November 01, 2016, 09:15:06 am »

This version is for dedicated black and white ink sets, so it is not the one you want to get. I am working on making a version for standard Epson inks that will have the color toning settings preloaded for warm, neutral, cool, selenium, and sepia. I should be out in the next few weeks. This new version will support the 10 ink printers as well. The spyderprint will work just fine, you just won't be able to measure everything in strip mode.


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Stephen G

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Re: New QTR Profiling Tools
« Reply #3 on: November 01, 2016, 09:49:01 am »

Awesome, thank you. I'll watch this board for news of that release.
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donbga

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Re: New QTR Profiling Tools
« Reply #4 on: November 01, 2016, 05:40:10 pm »

Awesome, thank you. I'll watch this board for news of that release.
+1 & way to go Richard.
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richardboutwell

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Re: New QTR Profiling Tools
« Reply #5 on: November 21, 2016, 02:20:20 pm »

I just finished the update that adds support for the 10-channel x900 printers for all the profiling tools and included a few new goodies (and a few bug fixes). If you already bought them you should have already received an email with the update. For new people:

The automated profiling tools can now be used with printers that have as many as 10-channels to make profiles with up to 8 gray dilutions (overkill? maybe, but that is the internal QTR curve creation program limit)

The CurveSmoothing tools now have a new proportional ink balancing formula and an option to match the original ink load with all channels or only the UCK3 channels. This option is great for  smoothing curves with toner partitions and prevents weird color shifts from the ink load balancing. It also has a nifty black boost feature similar to the QTR K Boost setting in the ink descriptor file (you can read about that here: http://www.bwmastery.com/blog/2016/the-qtr-black-boost-setting)

The QuadLin advanced curve linearization tools have been updated for 10-channel .quad files, but are otherwise the same (for now).

A new version for making toning profiles will be coming before the end of the year.
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