Preliminary results using Epson 9800 with Costco Glossy and M2 (uV cut) measurements.
I made an I1Profiler profile using defaults except for selecting V2 instead of V4 and max quality for the LUTS. This creates LUTs with 37 grid points. I also made 3 Argyll profiles. The default LUTs, "high" and "ultra." These have 17, 33, and 45 grid points respectively. Note that "ultra" is strongly discouraged. It's also very slow.
Argyll has numerous options for determining Perceptual and Saturation intent tables. The default, where no Perceptual mapping is selected, is to create identical tables to Colorimetric. I have not explored the Perceptual gamut options.
All profiles were correctly generated and didn't map paper black point to L=0. That is they did not incorporate BPC which, for instance, the canned profiles that came with my 9800 did.
All Argyll profiles produced better neutral tone tracking than the I1Profiler profile. However, the I1Profiler produced the lowest overall error for the 426 Lab patches which broadly cover the printer's gamut.
Ave dE00 for the 426 Lab patches
Argyll -qm: 0.6709
Argyll -qh: 0.5041
Argyll -qu: 0.5420
I1Profiler HighQual: 0.4815
Ave dE00 for the 37 neutral patches from L=5 to 95 in steps of 2.5
Argyll -qm: 0.6309
Argyll -qh: 0.4653
Argyll -qu: 0.4811
I1Profiler HighQual: 0.6708
Much of these errors, albeit small, are due to the 9800 printer itself. The i1iSiS is an exceptionally consistent instrument that contributes negligibly to the variance but the printer, and to a lesser degree the paper are larger intrinsic sources of error. Both programs have options, the Argyll one better described, to accommodate these errors but I have just used the defaults for this comparison.
It would appear the defaults result in better use of the additional neutral patches for the Argyll program while the I1Profiler's are better matched to the overall grid spacing.
I briefly looked at how OOG colors were mapped to the gamut surface for the two programs. They are radically different. Particularly at lower L* values. However, it isn't clear which would be preferable. There are likely big differences in how things like synthetic Grainger images would print. Significant OOG issues should always be handled by softproofing in any case.
One other oddity is that the L* tracking at low levels of L* (5 to 15) is significantly better (smoother) with the I1Profiler than Argyll. Even so, the Argyll L* tracking over the entire L* range more than made up, yielding significantly better neutral tracking.
Attached are the tif file that is i1iSiS ready and the CGATS file needed to initialize the chart reader. The CGATS file is not a target file, just a filler to initialize the patch locations. For those interested the RGB values are high resolution ProPhoto and are what produces the LAB values in the tiff image. Setup should be US letter Profile using i1iSiS defaults. The tif file should be printed just as any ordinary image using Photoshop manages color using Abs. Col., and selecting the profile/printer combo to test the accuracy of color reproduction.