Comparing i1Profiler and ArgyllCMS

[Alan Goldhammer]

Hi Alan,
I for one appreciate your update.
I very much need to try the ArgyllCMS software w/ my ColorMunki.
Do you find the 500 patch profiles better than the CM software ones?
How much better are they?  By a large degree, or slightly so?

As I am just a hobbyist and not making monies from my work, I choice the Gamutvision route.
I like it very much!
It does require a steep learning curve, as the site offers limited documentation.
Though, the documentation offered is very good, it leaves a lot of areas untouched.
I searched for other information, and found a couple of older nice articles here on LULA.
And, I found some useful postings on Naturescapes.net
That was pretty much it.  
I was saddened to see that the Gamutvision site forums are almost void of posts!
I was going to ask detailed questions here, though, thought better of it, as I would probably bore the others who use the ColorThink software.
Anywho, FYI, there is a discussion of options and their meanings of Gamutvision on going there:
http://www.naturescapes.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=195316

Ed June

Ed,

I had to carefully read the Argyll documentation as it is quite sparse and just when you think you have done something right, it turns out to be wrong.  I finally decided to build serious profiles for both Ilford Gold Fiber Silk and Museo Silver Rag using Argyll and the ColorMunki (I have ordered a i1 Pro but it's on back order and won't be here for about 10 days or so).  With the CM I settled on a 980 patch set as that prints out on five pages; I didn't want to use more than that because this was just a pilot experiment and reading too many pages is tedious.  The 980 patch set gave quite good readings as judged by the standard errors (in the case of the Museo paper it was a little higher but that paper has a warmer cast than does the Ilford paper).  The gamut plots as viewed in a simple viewer looked good.  For me the real test was the test print that I use which is the Outback test print that is a composite of a number of the Atkinson images.  I found that these profiles did the best job yet on the sky in the arches image.  I'm not going to do much more until the i1 comes in since I do want to read specific patches to see how close the profile comes to matching (reading patches with a CM is not as easy). 

Both of my Argyll profiles were better than those supplied through the manufacturers' websites.  The IGFS profile supplied by the manufacturer is particularly poor.

[Light Seeker]

I very much need to try the ArgyllCMS software w/ my ColorMunki.
Do you find the 500 patch profiles better than the CM software ones?
How much better are they?  By a large degree, or slightly so?

Hi Ed.

I bought my ColorMunki expecting good, but not necessarily great, profiles. That's what I've found. I also bought it hoping that I could leverage ArgyllCMS to take things up a notch.

I've profiled a canvas, a coated canvas, a matte paper and a gloss paper with ArgyllCMS. The ArgyllCMS profiles have been better. My comparison was to ColorMunki profiles, other than the canvas profile which was provided by the manufacturer.

My first profile was done using ~1300 patches and the rest use more than 2000 patches. I can't speak to 500 patch profiles, although that may change shortly. I have a paper where I don't want to commit to 12 letter sized sheets, and I plan to profile it with either 392 or 784 patches.

ArgyllCMS does a nice job of matching to the paper white point, and I find that skins tones come out very nice. I find them noticeably better than the CM profiles. I also see a better print to screen match with the ArgyllCMS profiles, which means I have confidence in these profiles whereas I'm now reluctant to use the CM profiles. When I compare gamut volumes my ArgyllCMS profiles come out somewhat larger.

Terry.

[stefano]

Thanks to everyone in this thread for the good info. Today I had some time to try ArgyllCMS with my Color Munki, and the results have been excellent! Especially on matt paper (Photo Rag 308) the difference between a basic Color Munki profile and a custom 2264 patch (five full 11x17 sheet in high density mode) Argyll profile are quite dramatic! With Argyll the Munki is now all grown up!

I will be slowly reprofiling by papers with this new approach, and I feel that Argyll profiles are as good as any I have seen! For anyone willing to tacle the command line, this is an outstanding combination of hardware and software!

Stefano

[Tarkowsky]

Here is a workflow I found to be pretty robust with ArgyllCMS for RGB printers:
1. printer calibration as described http://argyllcms.com/doc/Scenarios.html#PC1 but I use -s256 for targen
2. do a simple preliminary profile programming targen to -d2 -G -s256 -g256 -f1860
3. take Munsell values from http://www.cis.rit.edu/research/mcsl2/online/munsell_data/1929.dat and convert them to RGB values using the profile above,

Refering to point 3 of your workflow do you think is it worth converting the Munsell Lab values to Bruce Lindbloom's CIELAB UP profile (a uniform perceptual profile)  to avoid the classical "blue turns purple" problem and only after that converting them to RGB values using the Argyll profile created in point 2?

For those interested in the "blue turns purple" problem read http://www.brucelindbloom.com/UPLab.html

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Refering to point 3 of your workflow do you think is it worth converting the Munsell Lab values to Bruce Lindbloom's CIELAB UP profile (a uniform perceptual profile)  to avoid the classical "blue turns purple" problem and only after that converting them to RGB values using the Argyll profile created in point 2?

IMHO, the blue to purple shft in Lab is related to luminance differences in that color space. The a/b channels are not fully chrometrically decoupled from luminance in that colorspace.

Cheers,
Bart

[Czornyj]

Refering to point 3 of your workflow do you think is it worth converting the Munsell Lab values to Bruce Lindbloom's CIELAB UP profile (a uniform perceptual profile)  to avoid the classical "blue turns purple" problem and only after that converting them to RGB values using the Argyll profile created in point 2?

ArgyllCMS uses CIECAM02 instead of CIELAB for profile calculation, I suppose.

[Tarkowsky]

ArgyllCMS uses CIECAM02 instead of CIELAB for profile calculation, I suppose.

Thank's for ponting it out.
In CIECAM02 space there is no "blue turns purple" problem.
Since Argyll is using CIECAM02 as default space I guess one can skip the conversion to CIELAB UP profile and apply the previously created Argyll profile to get RGB values.

[tony22]

Here is a workflow I found to be pretty robust with ArgyllCMS for RGB printers:
1. printer calibration as described http://argyllcms.com/doc/Scenarios.html#PC1 but I use -s256 for targen
2. do a simple preliminary profile programming targen to -d2 -G -s256 -g256 -f1860

........

7. take the target from 5. to ColorPort, add Munsell collection, add desaturated patches, print and measure with ColorPort
8. use txt2ti3 and proceed with Argyll

Hi Iliah. I was wondering about the step function (-s256) you used here. I read the Argyll description and saw this

The steps are evenly spaced in device space by default, and the total number of test patches will be the number of colorants times the value specified with the -s flag.

I don't understand how that translates into why you selected 1860 patches. It implies there is a relationship between -s and -f but I don't see it.