Epson P6000 and Color Proofing

[mbruce]

Hoping somebody out there can shed some light on state-of-the-art print engines and color calibration technology.

Over 10 years ago, I owned an Epson 24" printer. And if my memory serves me, I also had a RIP (Image Print) that allowed you to see the color rendering with a variety of media options. That printer has since bitten the dust, and I'm looking to buy an Epson P6000. I see Epson offers an optional spectro color proofer, but it is quite expensive.

Is there a recommendation out there on what to use that is not going to break the bank and is accurate?

[PhilipCummins]

Odd thought someone might have answered by now, my initial recommendation is to speak to who you're buying the printer off for recommendations but you can check out the below as well:

I'd opt for the i1 Publish Pro 3 (link) as an alternative if you wanted to do your own profiles. These days you would soft-proof digitally with something like Photoshop + the profile of the media you're aiming to print on to estimate what it would look like once printed. If you're buying a dedicated RIP it probably would use the same hardware (OEM based, no licenses except for the RIP software) or perhaps an earlier version of it.

Keith Cooper reviewed both versions here (there is a Pro 3 and Pro 3 Plus model): Pro 3 Pro 3 Plus - note these are for the now discontinued Photo models, only the Publish remains which adds the higher end printer CMYK + optional channels vs just RGB (which I suspect the Epson would use via the drivers). The CMYK would be useful if you were going to use a RIP, RGB only if directly using the drivers I expect.

There is the lower end Calibrite Studio which is the more prosumer (vs Professional) option as well which is RGB only but less flexible, but still good if you wanted to experiment with making your own media profiles. You could probably pick up a cheap i1 Studio/ColorMunki Photo 2nd hand as the software should also work with these.

[Lessbones]

there's a dupe topic in the Printing: Printers, Papers, and Inks forum, so I think the discussion just ended up taking place there

[PhilipCummins]

OK thanks - hopefully mbruce gets what they need I guess?

[aaronchan]

Hoping somebody out there can shed some light on state-of-the-art print engines and color calibration technology.

Over 10 years ago, I owned an Epson 24" printer. And if my memory serves me, I also had a RIP (Image Print) that allowed you to see the color rendering with a variety of media options. That printer has since bitten the dust, and I'm looking to buy an Epson P6000. I see Epson offers an optional spectro color proofer, but it is quite expensive.

Is there a recommendation out there on what to use that is not going to break the bank and is accurate?

Are you purchasing the P6000 for Photo Printing?
If yes, get a Calibrite ColorChecker Studio, which used to be the i1Studio / ColorMunki.
This is good enough for you to do any photo print.

aaron

[Clark_Omholt]

First post...So be gentle. 

We've been selling and deploying Epson photo printers for 20+ years, so at least I can speak from experience. 

1) The spectroproofer is intended to work in conjunction with a RIP, so it won't do you much good unless you have a supported RIP.  Last I checked, ImagePrint did NOT support the Spectroproofer. 

2) If you are planning to print with Epson paper, the Epson-provide profiles are quite good.  If you are looking for that extra bit of quality, or are looking to 3rd party paper, a custom profile might help.  Others have commented that the X-Rite solution does a good job.

3) That P6000's bigger brother, the P7000CE will provide extra color gamut with the O, G, V inks if that matters to you.

[digitaldog]

First post...So be gentle. 

Howdy Clark, good to see you!

[Wheathin21]

If you're not afraid of command line software and buy used, I'd go to eBay to get a decent spectrophotometer, and use Argyllcms. It's open source, and has better functionality than i1profiler. Most notably, you can precondition with a factory icc profile, so it has a ballpark guess where the gamut boundary, dmax, etc is. It also has many other great features, including allowing spot readings, display profiling(displaycal uses it as a backend), and scanner 3d lut profiling. Best of all, it's free!