Possible Crowdsourcing Printer Profile Optimal Patch Count Tests

[Doug Gray]

Results of Rob Wignell's 3880 with Kodak ultra glossy

Comments: the paper has very low fluorescence but exhibits a gamut similar to Costco Prem. glossy on my 9800. That is to be somewhat expected given the inks are similar. Interestingly, the 3880 shows a more even device RGB space and produces significantly better profiles than the 9800 for small patch counts. The only negative is the rather high L* min. This is likely a difference in paper. The white point, however, is a tad greater than the Costco and more neutral.  The device space to Lab alaong the neutral axis is smoother without large deviations. Much better than the 9800 and somewhat better than the Pro1000. Perhaps at the cost of higher L* mins. as the Pro1000 min. is 2.0.

Excellent performance in the neutrals and very good in the colors.

3880 Kodak Ultra Premium Glossy
Black Point Lab: 5.61  0.08 -0.48, White Point: 94.94  -0.86  -1.27
Profile performance for standard grid sizes of 5,6,7,8,9,12

Profile	Patches	AveCol	AveNeuts	<20	20-30	30-40	40-50	50-60	60-70	70-80	>80
Printer-3880_M5.icm	125	1.22	2.08	1.18	2.26	2.66	1.69	2.41	1.85	2.43	2.14
Printer-3880_M6.icm	216	0.86	1.28	1.01	2.21	1.83	1.01	1.03	0.76	1.12	1.24
Printer-3880_M7.icm	343	0.72	0.95	0.75	1.47	1.25	0.96	0.84	0.52	0.78	1.04
Printer-3880_M8.icm	512	0.61	0.77	0.67	1.13	1.12	0.74	0.63	0.53	0.49	0.86
Printer-3880_M9.icm	729	0.56	0.63	0.63	0.84	0.89	0.62	0.57	0.43	0.53	0.56
Printer-3880_M12.icm	1728	0.45	0.51	0.50	0.64	0.76	0.59	0.43	0.37	0.40	0.43

Profile performance for standard grid sizes of 5,6,7,8,9,12
including inset grid at center points of cubes

Profile	Patches	AveCol	AveNeuts	<10	10-20	20-30	30-40	40-50	50-60	60-70	70-80	>80
Printer-3880_M5P.icm	189	0.82	1.10	0.80	0.92	1.53	1.54	1.22	1.31	0.71	1.04	0.82
Printer-3880_M6P.icm	341	0.65	0.82	0.72	0.66	1.51	1.20	0.70	0.65	0.51	0.69	0.78
Printer-3880_M7P.icm	559	0.56	0.65	0.60	0.44	0.90	1.15	0.77	0.61	0.41	0.43	0.52
Printer-3880_M8P.icm	855	0.50	0.56	0.58	0.43	0.85	0.80	0.54	0.45	0.53	0.36	0.52
Printer-3880_M9P.icm	1241	0.46	0.54	0.61	0.45	0.67	0.74	0.63	0.45	0.48	0.39	0.43
Printer-3880_M12P.icm	3059	0.41	0.45	0.50	0.40	0.47	0.61	0.43	0.44	0.38	0.37	0.40

As Above but also including 134 near neutrals

Profile	Patches	AveCol	AveNeuts	<20	20-30	30-40	40-50	50-60	60-70	70-80	>80
Printer-3880_M5PN.icm	320	0.76	0.41	0.48	0.40	0.46	0.41	0.49	0.38	0.34	0.32
Printer-3880_M6PN.icm	472	0.64	0.41	0.46	0.45	0.48	0.41	0.43	0.39	0.33	0.34
Printer-3880_M7PN.icm	686	0.55	0.41	0.47	0.41	0.50	0.42	0.42	0.38	0.34	0.32
Printer-3880_M8PN.icm	986	0.50	0.40	0.46	0.43	0.48	0.39	0.41	0.40	0.34	0.32
Printer-3880_M9PN.icm	1371	0.46	0.40	0.46	0.40	0.46	0.40	0.43	0.37	0.34	0.32
Printer-3880_M12PN.icm	3188	0.41	0.39	0.45	0.38	0.45	0.37	0.42	0.36	0.34	0.33

... Including 260 near neutrals

Profile	Patches	AveCol	AveNeuts	<20	20-30	30-40	40-50	50-60	60-70	70-80	>80
Printer-3880_M5PN5.icm	446	0.78	0.43	0.52	0.39	0.42	0.43	0.55	0.45	0.40	0.32
Printer-3880_M6PN5.icm	598	0.63	0.42	0.49	0.42	0.42	0.43	0.49	0.43	0.35	0.32
Printer-3880_M7PN5.icm	806	0.55	0.40	0.47	0.40	0.42	0.39	0.46	0.43	0.34	0.31
Printer-3880_M8PN5.icm	1112	0.49	0.40	0.45	0.43	0.43	0.37	0.44	0.45	0.33	0.32
Printer-3880_M9PN5.icm	1497	0.46	0.40	0.48	0.42	0.42	0.38	0.45	0.44	0.33	0.31
Printer-3880_M12PN5.icm	3314	0.41	0.38	0.44	0.37	0.41	0.37	0.44	0.38	0.32	0.32

... Including 476 near neutrals

Profile	Patches	AveCol	AveNeuts	<20	20-30	30-40	40-50	50-60	60-70	70-80	>80
Printer-3880_M5PN3.icm	662	0.77	0.38	0.46	0.37	0.38	0.36	0.46	0.36	0.35	0.29
Printer-3880_M6PN3.icm	814	0.63	0.38	0.45	0.38	0.39	0.37	0.43	0.37	0.33	0.30
Printer-3880_M7PN3.icm	1022	0.56	0.37	0.45	0.38	0.39	0.35	0.41	0.37	0.33	0.29
Printer-3880_M8PN3.icm	1328	0.50	0.37	0.45	0.39	0.39	0.35	0.40	0.38	0.33	0.29
Printer-3880_M9PN3.icm	1713	0.46	0.38	0.44	0.39	0.39	0.35	0.42	0.38	0.33	0.29
Printer-3880_M12PN3.icm	3530	0.41	0.37	0.44	0.37	0.38	0.34	0.42	0.36	0.32	0.31

... Entire Patch Set excluding those used for stats.

Profile	Patches	AveCol	AveNeuts	<20	20-30	30-40	40-50	50-60	60-70	70-80	>80
Printer-3880_MALL.icm	6616	0.39	0.37	0.44	0.34	0.35	0.35	0.42	0.40	0.31	0.31

I will attach a link to the profiles for this shortly.

Here's a link to all these profiles. It also include the CGATS RGB text files that correspond to all the profiles so one can use the desired target size v accuracy. I recommend the M8PN tagged one for excellent neutrals and pretty good color accuracy for making profiles for the Epson 3880 with any glossy type paper. The MP9N and M12PN tagged CGATs file gives slightly better color accuracy but are more patches (see table).

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AoQDySMc0uNiic93xbLNQr4Cg4JZfA?e=lmBhfV

[RobWignell]

Doug, you have provided me with a lot of information to work through.  It is pleasing that the Kodak Ultra Gloss seems to perform reasonably well. I will print a set of medium targets (8 bit) on my Epson 7880, currently loaded with Cone Color K3 Pro ink.  It will be a good comparison for me and hopefully useful for you as well.

I recently purchased some Harman 260gsm A3+ RC paper but have deferred making a profile until I was happier with my targets.  Would you be interested in a set of targets on the Harman paper printed using the 3880 and 7880?

Thanks for all the profiles. 

[Doug Gray]

Doug, you have provided me with a lot of information to work through.  It is pleasing that the Kodak Ultra Gloss seems to perform reasonably well. I will print a set of medium targets (8 bit) on my Epson 7880, currently loaded with Cone Color K3 Pro ink.  It will be a good comparison for me and hopefully useful for you as well.

I recently purchased some Harman 260gsm A3+ RC paper but have deferred making a profile until I was happier with my targets.  Would you be interested in a set of targets on the Harman paper printed using the 3880 and 7880?

Thanks for all the profiles.

I am curious how the 7880 with Cone inks work so that would be good, but my goal here is to characterize printers to determine the impact of differing patch sizes to achieve a reasonable quality level. So far, it appears that the oldest printer, which is my 9800, benefits the most from larger patch counts and more modern printers do quite well with under 1000 patches.

My goal is to understand how printers differ in print quality. So I'm not interested in making profiles for different papers of the same type as the profile characteristics are very similar between papers of the same type on any given printer model. However, there are significant differences between matte and glossy on the same printer so that I'm interested in looking at that.

Another purpose is to find out how where and how much the "packed" targets improve things compared to the traditional grid and if that varies with printers. What I see so far is that the packed grids produce roughly the same performance as single grids of about 20% more total patches. Consequently, I've switched over to using them for my work.

And finally, I really wanted to see how well different printers handle neutrals. I have done special targets for evaluating cameras where the best, most linear, neutral performance matters. So the medium targets have a range of different, added neutral and near neutral values I can selectively add in to see what is needed to get good results. You can examine the CGATs files for each of the profile types for details. They are not randomized. The main grid is first, followed by the inset (packed grid) followed by the near neutral values. The profiles ending in N3 have the largest set of near neutrals with a bit over 400 patches.  One note: duplicates are removed as they occur so there are some apparent gaps in the inset grid and near neutrals if the patch values occurred earlier.

Enjoy the profiles but your best bet is just use the one with MALL on the end. It has all patches, except the independent ones used to determine dE stats.

[RobWignell]

I have printed the Medium Target Set on my 7880 with Cone ink and will post them tomorrow.

In the zip file I downloaded there is a file called: Printer-3880_MALL.txt, but the ".icm" file is missing.

For the Harman paper I will make my own profile using your recommended M9PN 1371 patch set.

On my Epson 7880 I only print with PK ink because to change to MK ink is too wasteful.  Epson recommends having a second printer instead of changing ink.  However, your experiment has encouraged me to look at printing with matte paper on the Epson 3880, which wastes less ink on a changeover.

I also have a pearlescent/metallic finish paper that may be sufficiently different for your interest.

Thanks again for your efforts.

[Doug Gray]

I have printed the Medium Target Set on my 7880 with Cone ink and will post them tomorrow.

In the zip file I downloaded there is a file called: Printer-3880_MALL.txt, but the ".icm" file is missing.

Rob, I had left it out inadvertently. Should be in the zip file now.

Since I have all the data I'm going to break the dE reporting into near neutrals and colors, expand each, and report mean, median, 10%, 5% and 1% means. I'm not expecting anything really big to pop out of that based on the histograms I've looked at but as I get more printer/paper info there may be something. I'll be making a separate thread just for printer/paper combinations with one post per printer/paper to make it easier for people to find for their printer.

Oh, the Argyll profiles all have a perceptual table too based on AdobeRGB1998. This is arbitrary as the Argyll default is just to duplicate the Rel. Col. Perceptual intent is not used for accuracy calculations.

[Doug Gray]

Rob,

Just got your prints yesterday.
These are the results of the 7880 using Cone K3 vivid ink. Will post a link to all the Argyll profiles later. Significantly lumpier than the 3880 needing more patches for a good profile. The 559 patch set for the 3880 is roughly as good as using the full 6k patches on the 7880 for color patches.

7880 Kodak Ultra Premium Glossy
Black Point Lab: 3.74  0.11 -0.30, White Point: 94.99  -0.90  -1.29
Profile performance for standard grid sizes of 5,6,7,8,9,12

Profile	Patches	AveCol	AveNeuts	<10	10-20	20-30	30-40	40-50	50-60	60-70	70-80	>80
Printer-7880_M5.icm	125	1.91	1.90	1.61	1.40	2.40	1.74	1.10	1.40	2.16	3.41	1.91
Printer-7880_M6.icm	216	1.24	1.28	1.34	1.25	1.10	1.26	1.49	1.72	1.17	1.30	0.87
Printer-7880_M7.icm	343	1.01	0.87	1.17	0.66	0.76	0.88	0.88	1.10	0.58	1.04	0.79
Printer-7880_M8.icm	512	0.85	0.95	1.08	0.76	0.85	1.04	1.09	0.99	0.72	1.05	0.93
Printer-7880_M9.icm	729	0.75	0.73	1.16	0.88	0.74	0.68	0.78	0.68	0.54	0.63	0.52
Printer-7880_M12.icm	1728	0.63	0.67	0.99	0.62	0.71	0.71	0.66	0.61	0.44	0.74	0.50

Profile performance for standard grid sizes of 5,6,7,8,9,12
including inset grid at center points of cubes

Profile	Patches	AveCol	AveNeuts	<10	10-20	20-30	30-40	40-50	50-60	60-70	70-80	>80
Printer-7880_M5P.icm	189	1.33	1.42	0.97	0.95	1.56	0.96	1.01	1.20	1.81	1.68	2.62
Printer-7880_M6P.icm	341	0.92	0.98	1.13	0.76	0.97	1.03	1.38	1.33	0.65	0.84	0.75
Printer-7880_M7P.icm	559	0.82	0.74	1.00	0.65	0.80	0.75	0.70	0.76	0.47	0.66	0.85
Printer-7880_M8P.icm	855	0.69	0.76	0.88	0.76	0.81	0.91	1.00	0.73	0.54	0.67	0.56
Printer-7880_M9P.icm	1241	0.64	0.64	0.86	0.58	0.68	0.75	0.82	0.55	0.51	0.61	0.37
Printer-7880_M12P.icm	3059	0.58	0.59	0.84	0.55	0.60	0.68	0.81	0.55	0.39	0.56	0.33

As Above but also including 134 near neutrals

Profile	Patches	AveCol	AveNeuts	<10	10-20	20-30	30-40	40-50	50-60	60-70	70-80	>80
Printer-7880_M5PN.icm	320	1.06	0.56	0.66	0.53	0.62	0.61	0.57	0.59	0.48	0.62	0.35
Printer-7880_M6PN.icm	472	0.83	0.56	0.71	0.51	0.58	0.63	0.67	0.66	0.49	0.48	0.33
Printer-7880_M7PN.icm	686	0.77	0.55	0.82	0.49	0.57	0.60	0.59	0.60	0.47	0.48	0.35
Printer-7880_M8PN.icm	986	0.68	0.55	0.76	0.48	0.58	0.64	0.66	0.57	0.46	0.48	0.30
Printer-7880_M9PN.icm	1371	0.63	0.53	0.72	0.49	0.56	0.63	0.63	0.54	0.43	0.50	0.29
Printer-7880_M12PN.icm	3188	0.57	0.54	0.79	0.48	0.55	0.62	0.66	0.54	0.42	0.47	0.29

... Including 260 near neutrals

Profile	Patches	AveCol	AveNeuts	<10	10-20	20-30	30-40	40-50	50-60	60-70	70-80	>80
Printer-7880_M5PN5.icm	446	1.01	0.55	0.66	0.58	0.67	0.61	0.58	0.56	0.41	0.59	0.34
Printer-7880_M6PN5.icm	598	0.81	0.54	0.72	0.54	0.63	0.61	0.60	0.58	0.42	0.43	0.33
Printer-7880_M7PN5.icm	806	0.76	0.54	0.82	0.48	0.58	0.60	0.56	0.54	0.44	0.47	0.33
Printer-7880_M8PN5.icm	1112	0.68	0.52	0.75	0.50	0.58	0.61	0.60	0.52	0.40	0.45	0.28
Printer-7880_M9PN5.icm	1497	0.63	0.51	0.74	0.49	0.56	0.59	0.57	0.51	0.41	0.45	0.27
Printer-7880_M12PN5.icm	3314	0.57	0.50	0.76	0.46	0.52	0.60	0.57	0.52	0.40	0.44	0.25

... Including 476 near neutrals

Profile	Patches	AveCol	AveNeuts	<10	10-20	20-30	30-40	40-50	50-60	60-70	70-80	>80
Printer-7880_M5PN3.icm	662	0.96	0.50	0.69	0.49	0.54	0.58	0.53	0.50	0.38	0.51	0.31
Printer-7880_M6PN3.icm	814	0.79	0.51	0.79	0.47	0.52	0.58	0.55	0.52	0.39	0.45	0.30
Printer-7880_M7PN3.icm	1022	0.74	0.52	0.98	0.45	0.52	0.57	0.52	0.50	0.39	0.46	0.28
Printer-7880_M8PN3.icm	1328	0.66	0.50	0.79	0.45	0.53	0.57	0.55	0.49	0.38	0.45	0.27
Printer-7880_M9PN3.icm	1713	0.62	0.50	0.80	0.46	0.52	0.56	0.54	0.49	0.38	0.46	0.27
Printer-7880_M12PN3.icm	3530	0.57	0.50	0.84	0.46	0.51	0.57	0.54	0.48	0.37	0.44	0.26

... Entire Patch Set excluding those used for stats.

Profile	Patches	AveCol	AveNeuts	<10	10-20	20-30	30-40	40-50	50-60	60-70	70-80	>80
Printer-7880_MALL.icm	6616	0.55	0.48	0.74	0.45	0.48	0.55	0.53	0.47	0.38	0.43	0.25

Here's a link to the Argyll profiles for the 7880
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AoQDySMc0uNijPt7N2pUZkvtwtfX7w?e=dUGz3U

[RobWignell]

Hi Doug
I have been travelling in outback West Australia chasing wildflowers for the past couple of weeks and haven’t had access to internet.
It seems that my 7880 isn’t as well behaved as the 3880.  I look forward to being able to download the best of the 7880 profiles.
Best wishes
Rob Wignell

[Doug Gray]

Hi Doug
I have been travelling in outback West Australia chasing wildflowers for the past couple of weeks and haven’t had access to internet.
It seems that my 7880 isn’t as well behaved as the 3880.  I look forward to being able to download the best of the 7880 profiles.
Best wishes
Rob Wignell

Hi Rob,

I added a link to the results post for your Epson 7880.

[RobWignell]

Doug, thanks for the link to the 7880 profiles and the stats for all of them. 

I have two questions of you: first, have other LULA members contributed to your crowdsourcing project? (I have only seen results from my printouts and yours); and secondly, can I get the CGATs files for the subsets that make up the Medium Patch Collection so that I can use them for making profiles for different papers. 

A third question is for other LULA members and relates to patch dimensions.  Using my DTP70 (for those unfamiliar it is a scanner that predates the i1iSys and its default measurements are M0), I have found that the larger the patch dimension the better the DE results and vice versa.  I suspect that the scanning head on the DTP70 has similar dimensions to the i1Pro scanner as they were designed at about the same time, so I am interested to hear from members who use a DTP70 or i1Pro or i1Pro V2 about their preferred patch dimensions.

PS.  Being a newbie it occurred to me that my question about patch dimensions should be a separate thread.  Glad for advice.