Help with older i1 and printer profiles

[jrp55262]

How to keep this brief... I have been tearing my hair out with color gamut issues when profiling my Canon Pro-100 printer with an older i1 spectrophotometer.  This thing is so old it still says GretagMacbeth on it, before they were bought by X-Rite.  I'm still using the original Eye-One Match software.

The problem I'm seeing is that the resulting profiles, especially on matte papers, seem to have serious color gamut issues.  There are a lot of colors that Simply Will Not Reproduce.  Thing is, I *know* the printer can print them because occasionally I'd print using the "wrong" profile and see a whole bunch of colors that I couldn't get with my homemade profile.

Here's my setup:  I have a 64-bit Windows 7 system.  I print out the two-page printer test chart using the Adobe Color Printing Utility so as to have no color correction applied, then scan it into Eye-One Match and generate the profile.

I'm printing from Photoshop CS5 using the printer driver, no RIP.  I select for no color matching in the Canon print driver, then in Photoshop I select "Photoshop Manages Colors", the generated profile, Relative Colorimetric rendering intent, and Black Point Compensation.  When I print, there are some colors that just get muted down; when I view a proof preview in Photoshop those same colors go from vibrant to a muted mess, yet they do not show up as a problem when I view with gamut warning.

I'm printing on Red River Aurora Art Natural paper.  When I use the profiles provided by Red River I get much less of the color muting, but of course I'd like to be able to generate my own profiles so as to adapt to local conditions.

Any idea what's going on?  Is part of the problem that I'm using ancient software?  Is there newer software that will work on my i1?

[HarveyM43]

According to X-Rite this is the latest version of i1Profiler which supports the i1Pro1- https://www.xrite.com/service-support/downloads/i/i1profiler-i1publish_v3_0_0

If that doesn't work you could try ArgyllCMS which is an extensive, free color mangament system:
https://www.argyllcms.com
It's command line, but there is a recent Graphic User Interface available for it.

You could also examine your profile's gamut volume, etc using GamutVision, which was commercial, but now free:
http://www.gamutvision.com

[digitaldog]

You should always test output using good color reference images designed for that task. The color reference images RGB values are such they are set for output and are editing and display agnostic. Test the output this way and examine for the same color issues so we know it's not your image specific issues causing the problems:

http://www.gballard.net/photoshop/pdi_download/
http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html#TestPrint
http://www.digitaldog.net/files/2014PrinterTestFileFlat.tif.zip

The soft proof may not be a good indicator of what's really being output for a number of reasons:
Gamut of display vs. Image
Soft proof tables differ from output tables.
Gotta soft proof with paper white and ink  black on, you should ideally calibrate the display for the closest match with this on.
Try Perceptual and try altering the settings for that one table in the software.
Do try printing targets out of Adobe Color Print Utility instead of Photoshop just to be on the safe side.

[Ferp]

I've got the same i1 device and Match3 software and they still work in Windows 10.  I don't think your problems are because they're too old.  There is a diagnostic program you can download to check the i1, but my impression is that it's a pretty basic check, but still worth doing all the same.