Digital BW, The Print

Can anyone tell me what might be the most useful and flexible file
format for exporting quickread data? I'm not that familiar with the
CSV file, but Tab delim seems pretty common.
I may want to utilize the data in other apps I have yet to learn, also
may want to gragh ramps.
Or, perhaps there is a better tool than quickread?
Any advice is appreciated.
Thanks,
Tyler

Tyler Boley wrote:


> I'm not that familiar with the
> CSV file, but Tab delim seems pretty common.

In most of the IT universe, CSV is comma delimited, same as tab 
delimited except using a comma separator instead of a tab.

-- 
Jeff Medkeff
Eagle River, Alaska

Depending on the tool you are using to measure, there might be 
something better. Ernst made a post several weeks ago about Xrite's 
Colorport which allows making targets for several different 
measurement tools, and then measuring those printed targets. It's 
very much like MeasureTool, but it's FREE. A quick search of the 
archives, or the Xrite site would pull up the download link. And yes 
I do recall that it is PC and Mac friendly. It might be over kill for 
measuring a 21 step target, but it does allow for a few things like 
changing the observer color temp and angle. It will export to CSV and 
TAB and SPACE delimited text files with Lab, XYZ, spectral, and maybe 
one other I can't remember (density maybe?). It will also save a 
CGATS standard type measurement file (there's an example in one of my 
posts). It's worth the download if you device is supported.

Also, again depending on the measurement tool, you can get the same 
data from Xrite's ColorshopX, which does some spectral (per 
measurement)graphing, as well as 2D and 3D graphing of measured 
samples (Lab), and a bunch of other things including editing ICC 
profiles, and well more than I'll go into now. 14 day demo, $99 price 
directly from Xrite. It's been worth my $99 so far, but it might be 
more worthwhile to full color users, not that some of the tools 
aren't useful for B/W.

If you want I can give you a list of some of the common features I 
find useful, and maybe a few screen captures from Colorshop, I would 
say read the manual, and while it will give you a rough idea about 
the tools, it is not what I would call in-depth.

thanks, I should just bite the bullet and buy colorshop, been dinking
around with their demos in various versions for way too long.
Know of anything that will easily build plots like this-
http://photoshopnews.com/stories/images/BW-Chronicles/ultrasmooth-linearity.png
from data files? Or do i need to just build them by hand?
Tyler

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "dfaprinting"
<dfaprinting@y...> wrote:

> Depending on the tool you are using to measure, there might be 
> something better. Ernst made a post several weeks ago about Xrite's 
> Colorport which allows making targets for several different 
> measurement tools, and then measuring those printed targets. It's 
> very much like MeasureTool, but it's FREE. A quick search of the 
> archives, or the Xrite site would pull up the download link. And yes 
> I do recall that it is PC and Mac friendly. It might be over kill for 
> measuring a 21 step target, but it does allow for a few things like 
> changing the observer color temp and angle. It will export to CSV and 
> TAB and SPACE delimited text files with Lab, XYZ, spectral, and maybe 
> one other I can't remember (density maybe?). It will also save a 
> CGATS standard type measurement file (there's an example in one of my 
> posts). It's worth the download if you device is supported.
> 
> Also, again depending on the measurement tool, you can get the same 
> data from Xrite's ColorshopX, which does some spectral (per 
> measurement)graphing, as well as 2D and 3D graphing of measured 
> samples (Lab), and a bunch of other things including editing ICC 
> profiles, and well more than I'll go into now. 14 day demo, $99 price 
> directly from Xrite. It's been worth my $99 so far, but it might be 
> more worthwhile to full color users, not that some of the tools 
> aren't useful for B/W.
> 
> If you want I can give you a list of some of the common features I 
> find useful, and maybe a few screen captures from Colorshop, I would 
> say read the manual, and while it will give you a rough idea about 
> the tools, it is not what I would call in-depth.

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Tyler Boley" 
<tyler@t...> wrote:
> thanks, I should just bite the bullet and buy colorshop, been dinking
> around with their demos in various versions for way too long.
> Know of anything that will easily build plots like this-
> http://photoshopnews.com/stories/images/BW-Chronicles/ultrasmooth-
linearity.png
> from data files? Or do i need to just build them by hand?
> Tyler
> 


I know of nothing that will make a graph like that. That almost has to 
be something from a database. You could probably build that in Excel or 
similar, so you would still need to be able to export the data to some 
form of delimited file. I'll post a screen cap. of the closest thing 
that ColorshopX can do, but it doesn't have the values, and to get 
there you would need to make a profile out of the measurements. All the 
tools for making that profile are within Colorshop. The profile is 
nothing more than the kTRC tag, and from only ten points (one full 
black, another paper white), so it would only be somewhat accurate. It 
does work though.

Now if you were a real pro with Excel, I bet you could have Colorshop 
directly export to the "front" application (Excel) while measuring the 
patches, and have it build the graph as you measure. But that's WAY 
beyond my knowledge of Excel.

And it might be nice to see that same graph in a 3D plot, to see how 
far off the neutrality is... That density curve could be switching from 
black to blue to green and back to black for all we know ;-)

Hi Tyler,

I just use AppleWorks spreadsheet to draw graphs. 
I use the MeasureTool data output files -- there's no "density" but I use the Lab data.
It would be hard to imagine anything much easier:
1) drag the data text file into Works -- all the columns are separated nicely.
2) sort the data, 2 keys.
3) select the columns you want
4) hit chart, line diagram.
 about 10 seconds to a graph.

The legends etc.  take more time of course.

Roy



--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Tyler Boley" <tyler@t...> 
wrote:
> thanks, I should just bite the bullet and buy colorshop, been dinking
> around with their demos in various versions for way too long.
> Know of anything that will easily build plots like this-
> http://photoshopnews.com/stories/images/BW-Chronicles/ultrasmooth-
linearity.png

> from data files? Or do i need to just build them by hand?
> Tyler
> 
> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "dfaprinting"
> <dfaprinting@y...> wrote:
> > Depending on the tool you are using to measure, there might be 
> > something better. Ernst made a post several weeks ago about Xrite's 
> > Colorport which allows making targets for several different 
> > measurement tools, and then measuring those printed targets. It's 
> > very much like MeasureTool, but it's FREE. A quick search of the 
> > archives, or the Xrite site would pull up the download link. And yes 
> > I do recall that it is PC and Mac friendly. It might be over kill for 
> > measuring a 21 step target, but it does allow for a few things like 
> > changing the observer color temp and angle. It will export to CSV and 
> > TAB and SPACE delimited text files with Lab, XYZ, spectral, and maybe 
> > one other I can't remember (density maybe?). It will also save a 
> > CGATS standard type measurement file (there's an example in one of my 
> > posts). It's worth the download if you device is supported.
> > 
> > Also, again depending on the measurement tool, you can get the same 
> > data from Xrite's ColorshopX, which does some spectral (per 
> > measurement)graphing, as well as 2D and 3D graphing of measured 
> > samples (Lab), and a bunch of other things including editing ICC 
> > profiles, and well more than I'll go into now. 14 day demo, $99 price 
> > directly from Xrite. It's been worth my $99 so far, but it might be 
> > more worthwhile to full color users, not that some of the tools 
> > aren't useful for B/W.
> > 
> > If you want I can give you a list of some of the common features I 
> > find useful, and maybe a few screen captures from Colorshop, I would 
> > say read the manual, and while it will give you a rough idea about 
> > the tools, it is not what I would call in-depth.

Roy and dfa <G>, thinks for the info, exactly what I needed.
Tyler

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Tyler Boley" 
<tyler@t...> wrote:
> Roy and dfa <G>, thinks for the info, exactly what I needed.
> Tyler

In reality, you should be able to do the 2D and 3D plots with a 
spreadsheet too.

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "dfaprinting" 
<dfaprinting@y...> wrote:
> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Tyler Boley" 
> <tyler@t...> wrote:
> > Roy and dfa <G>, thinks for the info, exactly what I needed.
> > Tyler
> 
> In reality, you should be able to do the 2D and 3D plots with a 
> spreadsheet too.

(not to drag this out, but for people who might be interested)

However, ColorshopX makes it easy, Just open up the measurement tool 
in the 3D viewer, and measure.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Greg_E/3D.gif