Ok, cranked out an optimization on a profile I did 7 months ago for Red River Ultra Pro Satin on an Epson 3880, a semi-gloss paper with mild OBAs. Not wanting to scan 7 pages with an i1Pro uvcut I auto generated a 405 one page optimization target, printed, scanned, and then created an optimized profile.
I noticed the 405 patch target was about 60% relatively unsaturated patches in regular patterns, seemingly intended to stay close to the neutral axis. The remaining patches were generally very saturated, a crazy quilt all over the map.
I had generated the original profile with 1000 i1Profiler auto generated patches, maxing out the number that would fit on a 13x19 sheet with one image. I printed test images for the old and new profiles and compared, nothing different I could see. I examined both profiles in ColorThink, very slight difference in the neutral curves but not enough to make a visible difference. My conclusion is for a well behaved printer (sample of one) the original profile is sufficient, no value added with optimization.
Richard Southworth