QTR-Quadtone RIP

I don't understand the difficulty with MeasureTool -- it works quite
well.  Not only
does it read individual patches but it's nice in that it works in scan mode with
error checking.

The Eye-One-ReadMe.pdf in QTR goes over all the details of use.  It does read
out in Lab rather than density -- most people just get used to L values but the
conversion is easy too with a spreadsheet/calculator.

Roy

On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 2:15 AM, John Labovitz <johnl@...> wrote:
> On 27 Feb 2009, at 8:11 PM, Dileepa Wijesundera wrote:
>
>> I am using measuring tool in the demo mode. I have struggled through
>> this but cannot find in the documentation how to do this. Any
>> suggestions?
>
> I tried it myself (also in the demo mode) and couldn't get anywhere
> either.  I did notice that if I turned on the "Spectral" checkbox in
> the Configuration dialog, then selecting Spot Measurement at least
> showed a possibility of "Densitometric" mode (in addition to
> "Colormetric") -- however, it was grayed out, and nothing I did would
> enable it.  I wonder if this is a limit of the demo?
>
>> Interesting to know about your software, is it due to come out soon.
>> Anything to make the proces easier would be helpful.
>
> My main goal is to automate the time-consuming process of analyzing
> the stepcharts to determine the relative ink levels.  I dislike
> depending on the (ancient) MeasureTool.  More importantly, I find the
> calibration process to be very manually-oriented and prone to errors.
> It seems a perfect thing to build into a program.  There's also a
> wonderful opportunity to visualize how QTR will print an image, and
> allow the printmaker to really tune their printing to their own tastes.
>
> As of now, this is what I have:
>
>        - A program that simply lets me measure patches on a printed chart,
> like a very simple version of MeasureTool.  My program communicates
> with the EyeOne, then writes the resulting Lab values out to a text
> file; I use it by measuring prints of the "inkseparation6.tif" chart
> that comes with QTR.  In this way, I get the range of Lab values of
> the inks I'm using.  I'd like to expand this to generate the charts
> themselves (for reliability purposes), as well as to read the charts
> in strip mode rather than single-patch mode.
>
>        - A program that reads those text files containing the inks' Lab
> values, and performs the same process as outlined in the "QuadToneRIP
> 2.5 Calibration" document.  The program generates a profile file with
> both the LIMIT_* and the GRAY_INK_*/GRAY_VAL_* values, according to
> the analyzed inkset.  (The cool thing about the algorithm I've come up
> with is that it doesn't care what inks are what, nor what order
> they're in.  That's great when you have a clogged K nozzle, like I do
> right now!)
>
>        - A program that shows a particular grayscale image, and given a
> particular (.quad) profile, shows not only the curves for the inks in
> the profile (like QTR-CurveView already does), but also renders
> several additional versions of the image, one per ink, showing exactly
> what ink coverage would be used for that image.  It's not perfect --
> it doesn't account for things like dot gain -- but I've found it
> useful to visualize how a particular image is going to print using a
> particular profile.
>
> Another idea I had was to take a final step-chart of a fully
> linearized profile, and produce a chart showing the color shift (that
> is, the a/b components of each step) as well as the overall density.
>
> I have to warn you that all these programs are quite rough, and not
> ready for general use.  However, I would like to do the work to get
> them into a form that other people could use.  I should mention that
> all of these are designed to work on a Mac (running Leopard/10.5).
> Parts of the core analysis could be made to run on Windows (it's all
> programmed in Ruby), but I don't use Windows, so I have no plans for
> anything but Mac versions.
>
> --John
>
>
> ------------------------------------
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