Printer profile question

[rob_landry]

For any of you that have experience making printer profiles, I need some

advice. I'm looking to have a couple of profiles made and have found quite a

few individuals online offering this service. I'm primarily having trouble with

tonal transitions in the darker colors and getting accurate shadow and mid-tone

grays with the canned Epson profiles. I'm using an Epson 1280.

 

I noticed that some services are using the 918 patch targets and Cathy's which

is using the 1728 patch target. Is there any benefit in going with more

patches? Logically, I'd think so but when I downloaded the 2 patch types, it

seems like the 918 patch target would be better suited to tonal transitions and

the darker, saturated colors that I'm having a hard time with. The 1728 target

seems to have lots of bright saturated colors. Any idea on which profiling

service would be best for this type of problem?

[Ed_Ingold]

A print, which is a CMYK process viewed by reflected light, will NEVER match a display which is RGB by emitted light. It may be close, but don't expect a cigar.

 

It is useful to use the print profile in Photoshop's Soft Proofing function. You can try different rendering schema and make adjustments to bring out the characteristics you desire.

[robert_fisher4]

The 1280 is also "old" technology. As good as it was in its day, it's not nearly comparable to current printers. Gradation isn't as good with the 1280 and greys aren't as good because it uses only a single black ink.

 

If you want to have a profile made, Cathy's is recommended by many. I've not used them so can't speak from first hand experience.

[digitaldog]

First off, try the canned profiles from Epson, you may be AOK. Many are superb.

 

2nd. More patches is better, to a point. In a perfect world, we'd measure 16,7 million color

patches. Obviously impossible (and the profile would be larger than your image!). I've built

profiles with as many as 11000 patches but have to tell you, with a pretty well behaved

device, 1700-4000 is ideal, more is becomes a point of diminishing return.

 

Then there's the Spectrophotometer used. Does it filter UV? Many papers have this issue

which isn't ideal (See http://www.ppmag.com/reviews/200702_rodneycm.pdf).

[ellis_vener_photography]

Ask Cathy what technology - photospectrometer and software she uses and what settings she uses in the software.

I print these days wit ha Canon iPF6100 imagePROGRAF and when I have to make custom profiles, I use the i1 pro with Profile Maker 5 software. I will try different setigns in makingthe profile , print tests andthen choose which combination of settings when building the profile yielded the best resutls with that paper.

 

As Andrew Rodney points out more patches yields a smoother profile. I use Bill Atkinson's 1728 patch target for the i1 Pro.

[digitaldog]

I had dinner with Bill last week. Fun. Anyway, he's of the opinion (and I always agree with

him) that for most ink jet printers we have today, 1728 is ideal, more buys little if anything.

 

For the Epson profiles I built for EPF, I used his 5000 patch target because its fast on the iSis

(and sounds good). But 1728 is really all you need.

[rob_landry]

Thanks everyone for the help, really appreciated. I realize the 1280 is a little old now but I'm not buying any more inkjets, I'm more than pleased with Frontier and Lightjet prints I've had made from various labs. I just thought I could perhaps make this printer a little more useful than it's been over the past few years. I'll try a custom profile, most likely from Cathy's but if nothing can be gained, it goes to fleabay and I'll keep on using my lab for prints.