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.