richard ames

Thanks to the help here and a few other message boards I managed to figure a few things out.

First, there are NO PROFILES provided by Canon for the i950. That was the primary source of my confusion - all of the advice kept referring to the ICC profiles and I couldn't find any. What people have done is install the drivers for the i960, which does have the profiles, then uninstall it and reinstall the driver for the i950. The ICC profiles for the i960 remain in the directory with all of the other profiles. Now when I go in to "soft proof" or wherever I can select the ICC profile for the paper type that I'm trying to print to.

Second, the driver for the i950 has no mention of how to handle color management (because no profiles are provided). It allows you to "Enable ICM" but in order to turn it off you have to set the "Print Type" to "None" as opposed to "Auto" or "Photo" (I guess that makes sense to somebody). Doing that prevents the printer from using its own color management. So even if you uncheck "Enable ICM" it appears that it still does some type of color management. Go figure...

My prints now match MUCH better to the screen but the strange thing is that I get a better match to the view with "Soft Proof" off.

Thanks,

rgames

Thanks for all the help - I think I'm starting to get a handle on it.

However, I am still unable to find Canon's printer profiles for the Canon i950. I have found one set of profiles at http://www.wandb.com/icc.htm that are for the s900/s9000 but they don't appear to be Canon's profiles and they're not actually for my specific printer. I have looked on my driver disc and all I can find is a single .ICM file (CNBJPRN2.ICM) - this file doesn't appear to have any relationship to any particular paper type so I'm not certain how useful it is.

So, for those of you who use the paper-specific Canon ICC profiles - where did you get them? A knowledgebase search on Canon's website states that they exist "and are provided as is" but I can't find them anywhere. Could you possibly e-mail them to me (the ones supplied by Canon, of course, not third-parties).

Thanks again,

rgames

Edward - thanks for the help. I think part of my problem is that it seems like Canon doesn't support ICC profiles. For example, I've read through several "soft proofing" discussions but they all get to a point where they say "select the ICC profile for your printer/paper combination." I can't find any such profiles for my Canon i950 - when I do the soft-proofing and select a color profile there are bunch of selections but none are related to my printer. And I can't find any info from Canon on how the ICC profiles work. I've read that Epson provides ICC profiles but I can't seem to find them from Canon.

So I'm still not clear what "Enable ICM" does. If selecting Photo Paper Pro doesn't actually apply an ICC profile, where does the printer driver apply the ICC profile? I can't find anywhere in the printer options to select an ICC profile.

So my guess is that I need to disable color management in the printer - do you know how to do that for a Canon i950 (or Pixma Pro9000). That still leaves me with the problem of finding an ICC profile to use in Photoshop, though...

Thanks again,

rgames

Having used a number of different labs to print my images over the last couple

of years I am confident that my calibrated display and color-managed workflow

are working fairly well. It's not very often that I get a bad print back from

the labs (I send level 10 JPEGs w/ sRGB embedded). I embed Adobe 1998 in all

my images in camera and then use that as the working space. I calibrate

several times a year using an EyeOne unit.

However, I cannot get my inkjet (Canon i950) to match what I see on screen.

The fact that my prints from the pro labs match fairly well says that I have

the display side set up correctly - I just can't get the print side figured

out. So here are a few questions:

1. When I select "Enable ICM" in the print options what, exactly, does that

do? I've seen discussion about conflicting color management options in CS2

and the printer but I'm not certain what that means.

2. Why does the saturation of my images seem to change with print size? I

have many prints that I need to adjust when going from, say, 4x6 to 8x10 on my

home printer. I never need to make such corrections when I send the prints

out to a lab.

3. What does it mean to use an ICC profile for a printer? For example, if I

select "Photo Paper Pro" in the print options, does that apply a specific ICC

profile for that paper? Or is the ICC profile selection separate?

4. Here's a pretty basic one: how do I do soft proofing in CS2? If I

select "print with preview" I get an image with some print options - is that

the soft proof? And what happens when I select "Let Photoshop Handle Colors" -

is that the equivalent of turning off color management in the printer?

Lots of questions from lots of frustration over the last three years or so w/

the i950. I just purchased a Pixma Pro9000 in the hopes that it will cure

some of my problems...

Thanks in advance for any help,

rgames

My guess is that the trigger happens too quickly for your multimeter to detect - you need an oscilloscope. Most volt/multimeters can only read "steady" voltages; a voltage that comes and goes in a flash (pun intended) is too fast to be detected by the multimeter.

Find a local electronics geek and ask him if he can measure it on a scope...

rgames

I've seen the "you can't see it until 100% magnification so don't worry about it" statements in a number of forums. I think folks have forgotten that pixel-level noise affects the image at ANY magnification, you just can't tell where it's coming from until you zoom in.

When noise (from film grain or CCD pixels, doesn't matter) is random, the affect at lower magnifications is "lost in then noise" and everything sort of evens out. When there's a pattern to the noise (e.g. banding), there's the possibility of "aliasing" where you see related patterns at much lower magnifications. This is how I discovered banding in my first D200: I had a well-exposed portrait that showed the banding pattern at 33% and 66% view in Photoshop (aliasing). When I zoomed in to see what was going on, I saw banding in the midtones and shadows.

The bottom line is that noise affects the image at any magnification. If there's structure to the noise, there's the possibility of a whole host of aliasing problems that you won't get with a random noise distribution. So yes, at 100%, 50%, 33%, whatever, you will see an effect of the noise. Whether that effect is pleasing or not is up to you, but you WILL see the effect.

(Side note - I've had two different D200's, both with banding in well-exposed shots w/ no blown highlights, etc. The first was returned to the retailer and the second was sent in to Nikon and, so far, appears to be banding-free).

rgames

Thanks Bill - I guess I'll just have to try them all out and see what I get. Pretty expensive way to go about it but necessary, I suppose...

rgames

Thanks. I didn't know WHCC offers the Fuji paper - I've been trying to get in touch with them for more than a week with no success.

Part of my confusion comes from the fact that I've read that there are different types of Fuji Crystal Archive, some good (as used by WCI) and some not so good (as used by Wal-Mart). Do you know which type is used by WHCC and EZPrints? I've already spent a small fortune sending test prints to different labs and I'm trying to narrow it down further with some "smart" shopping.

Thanks,

rgames

In the labs I've looked into, there seems to be a big difference in

price between the Fuji Crystal Archive papers (Mighty Imaging and

West Coast Imaging) and the Kodak Endura papers (Mpix, White House

Custom Color). Is this price difference related to the papers, the

printers, or is it simply the different pricing schemes of the

different labs?

I'll refrain from the inane "which is better" question :)

Thanks,

rgames