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Author Topic: ColrThink Pro Update  (Read 5424 times)

digitaldog

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Re: ColrThink Pro Update
« Reply #20 on: June 29, 2018, 12:31:57 pm »

For sheer size and complexity little in the imaging world compares with Photoshop - big learning curve; but it's a huge application with an extraordinary range of capabilities and taking all that into account I think the user interface is quite decent. i1Profiler is a more relevant comparator, and competes very well for poor design - in fact wins the opacity contest by country-miles because it has no manual; at least CTP has an on-line manual that's quite useful.
That be true if the idea were to understand every tool, function and use of Photoshop (or ColorThink Pro). That's hardly the case for me (and I've been using PS since 2-3 months after it's original release). What's far worse in i1P IMHO, are sliders that do little if anything yet have a slider scale going from 0-100 (indicting at the very least, a difference of 10 should do something if not 1).
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Mark D Segal

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Re: ColrThink Pro Update
« Reply #21 on: June 29, 2018, 01:42:22 pm »

Well, if we want to get into i1Profiler issues, that can be a long discussion indeed! :-). But not sure I want to engage in that just now. The best one can say is that it can make high quality profiles, which is the most important, but the process leaves a lot to be desired.
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arobinson7547

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Re: ColrThink Pro Update
« Reply #22 on: June 29, 2018, 08:34:13 pm »

Just go ahead and say it. i1Profiler is a Nightmare. At a time when many were trying to come up with standard formats for exchanging color data, (there is an XML format called TED I have seen work very well (and as a matter of fact, Chromix is the first one I have personally witnessed, that has implemented it successfully (Colorthink can export ted; I have and imported it elsewhere VERY successfully) and there is the Spot Color exchange format CXF that's making good progress... Anyway X-rite comes up with all of these cryptic formats for all of it's data. And I believe many different formats of the same types of files. As to those sliders, I would not be surprised if they were just designed in, by the GUI designers but never utilized by the code writers.... just empty buttons.   

The interface is Stupid, but it works, so I won't complain about that.
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digitaldog

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Re: ColrThink Pro Update
« Reply #23 on: June 29, 2018, 08:41:10 pm »

I wouldn't call it a nightmare, but it has areas that are frighting and it makes you jump through hoops which are just really stupid. Copra has a much nicer GUI and makes very good profiles but not all the bells and whistles of i1P.
That they spent so much time and money on the XRD crap, that itself is a nightmare.
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Doug Gray

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Re: ColrThink Pro Update
« Reply #24 on: July 01, 2018, 11:49:10 am »

As to those sliders, I would not be surprised if they were just designed in, by the GUI designers but never utilized by the code writers.... just empty buttons.   

They are functional, but not documented. I've experimented with them and measured their effects. They all do something generally related to the name on the slider. The sliders require fairly large changes before they do anything. For instance changing the "smooth" slider between 50% and 60% produces the exact same profiles but dropping down to 20% will make alterations. However, the defaults work quite well.

The one item I've found most useful is selecting different illuminants to profile against. This works very well for prints that are going to be displayed under fluorescent light or LEDs.
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digitaldog

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Re: ColrThink Pro Update
« Reply #25 on: July 01, 2018, 11:52:13 am »

They are functional, but not documented.
Or in some cases, both.  ;D
Yes, the sliders require large changes do do anything despite the utter silliness of making values of tiny granularity whereby the values between do absolutely nothing different.
I suspect the marking people behind some of the software design felt that a slider with 1-100 steps to set would sell more products than 1-10 where (perhaps?) there are indeed 10 different settings producing 10 visible results. This is just bad software design.
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datro

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Re: ColrThink Pro Update
« Reply #26 on: November 11, 2018, 06:08:25 pm »

All,

FYI:  ColorThink Pro has been updated again, now to 3.0.5.

Now for my question to the experts here (and Pat Herold if he's listening):  How do you tweak a CGATS file output from i1Profiler so that ColorThink Pro will read it?  I create very simple CGATS.17 files using the "Custom CGATS" option in i1Profiler because I only want LAB values, nothing else.  But for the life of me, I can't figure out why ColorThink Pro will not take it...it simply says "Unknown file type".  It looks like a standard CGATS file to me with all the expected headers and identifiers.

I've read that ColorThink Pro "likes to have CGATS files in the ProfileMaker format" whatever that means.  Can anyone provide more specific information on this?  I don't want to have to save multiple CGATS copies just so I can look at the colorlist in ColorThink Pro.

Thanks
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digitaldog

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Re: ColrThink Pro Update
« Reply #27 on: November 11, 2018, 06:11:47 pm »

All,

FYI:  ColorThink Pro has been updated again, now to 3.0.5.

Now for my question to the experts here (and Pat Herold if he's listening):  How do you tweak a CGATS file output from i1Profiler so that ColorThink Pro will read it?  I
Save it as ProfileMaker format, CTP reads it just fine.
Should they (will they?) update to read other 'native' formats like .mfx....

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