How do I know if I have a paid copy of QTR? Trying to build grayscale profile.

[dgberg]

I am almost 100% sure I purchased QTR about 5 years ago when I had Richard Boutwell here running through a half day of QTR. Well I forgot everything he taught me because I do not use it. (Sorry Richard)
I am trying to make a grayscale icc profile for my dye sub P8000. I have printed Scott Martin's 51 step grayscale target. Printed and pressed it on dye sub metal and saved the file and read it with my i1 Pro2. I then saved it as the profiler CGATS CIELab (*.txt)
This is where I am stuck. I cannot find a QTR program. I have QTR curves and the QTR-Create-ICC logo but don't know how to make it work. (Never used it before) How do I tell if I have a paid working copy? Hate to throw another $50 at this if I already have it.
Just want a good grayscale profile for my dye sub metals. Have to get rid of those green color casts. Is their any way to just make the profile with the iProfiler software. After reading the targets the only option is to save it. No option to generate a new profile off the read.
Help appreciated.

[David Sutton]

Hello Dan.
From memory you don't need the paid version to just create a profile. Here's a brief post I wrote here some time ago:

Convert your RGB file to QTR – Gray Lab colour space. That allows softproofing in Lightroom.
Print QTR's 21-step grey wedges and measure them (a Datacolour Spyder will do) and drop the results into the QTR-Create-ICC droplet to linearise and to create a print profile.
I use that profile to print out of Lightroom with the printer set to monochrome.
There is quite a bit of info on this on Keith Cooper's website.
A quick Google search brought up this:
https://cameratico.com/guides/black-and-white-icc-profiles-and-soft-proofing/

Hope that helps.

[dgberg]

I appreciate your help Dave but I am sort of at a loss where to start.
Per my above description I have printed the 51 step gray scale and saved it per the instructions on the site.
I did a search and found a (51 step -gray-i1pro-bySM_MO.txt) txt file on my desktop.
I found the QTR-Create-ICC and when I click on that and open the 51 step text file it just shows that file opened but cannot get it to do anything.

I just found Richard Boutwells good article workflow for QTR.
I am down at the bottom where it tells you to drag the 51 step txt file to the QTR-Linearize-Date script. I did that and it opens with the new out.txt file but cannot figure out where to go now.

Forget everything above. Found it by just digging deeper.
Pretty simple actually. Clicked on the new out.txt file and "save" and it made the profile. Gosh what a road trip..
Now to get printing and see if all this was worth it??

[dgberg]

Not so fast..
Put the profile in Library/Colorsync/Profiles and after rebooting, it does not show up.
I do see that after I drag it from desktop to the profiles folder the name changes. Not sure if that is the issue but it is not showing up in Lightroom or Photoshop after reboot.
Naming issue or is it possibly because the color space is labeled Gray? No grayscale profiles in Lightroom. Convert to RGB?

[dgberg]

Finally, got it.
Read that Lightroom would not accept grayscale profiles. Dragged my 51 step .txt file to the QTR-Create-ICC-RGB and that did it.
No where is this info in any of the tutorials. 6 hours but I figured it out. Printing now.

[Ferp]

Regarding paying for QTR, it's an honesty system.  There's no serial number or activation or whatever.  (Which is not the case for Roy Harrington's Mac-only companion program for QTR - Print Tool.  You have to buy a serial for it.)  So if you can't find evidence of whether you've paid for QTR in your own records, you would have to ask Roy.  I don't whether the price applies if you only use the various little add-on programs that come with QTR, such as QTR-Create-ICC.  I've never seen a statement by Roy on that. 

[dgberg]

I finally got it all figured out. Was pretty sure I paid the $50. The only issue I have right now is I cannot find out how to add my P8000 so I can actually print through QTR. I am presently using my new 51 step gray scale profile with the Epson driver. I started another thread with that question.

[Alan Goldhammer]

Finally, got it.
Read that Lightroom would not accept grayscale profiles. Dragged my 51 step .txt file to the QTR-Create-ICC-RGB and that did it.
No where is this info in any of the tutorials. 6 hours but I figured it out. Printing now.

I don't know where things stand today as I moved over to a Canon printer.  Back when I still had my Epson 3880, I regularly used QTR generated monochrome profiles with the Epson ABW print driver option using LR.  There was a big debate some years ago on LuLa when Apple OS made this no longer possible so it only worked under Windows.

[Ferp]

It is still possible to print to ABW using a QTR-generated ICC on OS X if you print from Roy Harrington's Print Tool, but not from other applications.  The problem with other applications like PS & LR is that to be able to access ABW in the printer driver you need to select Printer Manages Colors, which precludes specifying an ICC in the printing app, and as you say, there's no longer an option to specify an ICC for ABW in the driver.  Print Tool allows you to both specify an ICC and print to ABW.

However that wasn't Dan's problem.  ABW wasn't mentioned.  He was trying to print to QTR.  LR won't take QTR grayscale ICCs but it will take QTR RGB ICCs.  Problem solved, once you stumble across this feature of LR. 

[dgberg]

I found out by testing that even using my grayscale profile I still have a fair amount of color casting on my BW dye sub metal prints.They are very sensitive to time temperature and pressure. The transfer paper print looks very neutral.Press it and it has a strong green color cast. Very expensive to do this testing. I just went through a ten pack of 8x10 metals. The biggest problem is the pressing time changes as you go with larger prints. So you have to test and fine tune as you start pressing larger. I hate to add a disclaimer that B&W metals may have a color cast tint as part of the process. Plenty of time to work on this now. Any other dye subbers out there doing B&W?