That's surprising and good to hear. It's definitely the most convenient. Any speculation on why this may be the case? It seems very counterintuitive.
Back to the drying time (I like to call it cure time) thing and why the 20-min cure time ultimately produced the best profile with this particular ink -- other inks may produce different results.
The results didn't make sense to me either, and my reasoning didn't satisfy me. In an effort to get a better handle on all of this, I purchased ColorThink 2.3 to look at the profiles. I am just getting my hands around ColorThink, so there is a lot to learn about it, but from what I know, I can display the gamut of profiles. For me, that is enough to look at this situation.
1. Before getting to these printer profiles themselves, I looked at the Dell 2408 monitor profile and the Red River OEM ink profiles for their Arctic Polar Satin and Polar Matte papers for the Canon Pro9000. I was surprised to learn that all of these profiles were larger than the Adobe RGB color space in some areas and almost as large in all the areas. I knew all these items were good, but didn't suspect them to be that good.
2. Next I compared each of the new printer profiles I made with Adobe RGB and the Red River OEM ink profiles. Then the light started to shine.
The gamut of the profile made from the three day cure was almost identical to the Red River OEM ink profile -- a good sign for this ink.
The gamut of the 20-minute and one day cure profile was not quite as large as the three day cure.
3. The visual evidence is that after curing for a week, the test print from the 20-minute cure was the best. Visually, it looks like its gamut is at least as large as OEM ink.
4. I don't know how to measure the gamut of a test print, but since the print from the 20-min profile looks the best after a week cure, I conclude that the gamut of prints from this ink increases over some time frame.
5. This is the hard part. If 4 (above) is correct, here is what I think it all means,
5.1 Both the profile target and final prints will cure at the same rate.
5.2 If a profile is made from a target that has cured for a few days, it will try to make a print whose initial state will be determined by the final cure state of the test target. Then the print will do its own curing, and its final state will be different from the final state of the profile.
5.3 If a profile is made from a test target as soon as possible (it doesn't smear), the print it tries to make will then initially have the gamut of the initial target. It will then cure in the normal way and produce the expected results of increased gamut.
6.0 While all of this was done with a specific third party ink, I think the results indicate that getting the profile to be in accord with how the print comes off the printer is the best practice.
Good Luck!
Wil