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Cheap Spectrophotometer for making QTR profiles

Cheap Spectrophotometer for making QTR profiles

2014-10-25 by michel.moseman@...

Hi,


These days you can find several cheap, secondhand spectrophotometers on Ebay. Like Xrite 408, for example.

They are old, but I guess they must be good enough to use them for creating QTR printing profiles?

Or is it necessary to achieve a more expensive one like the Color Munki?


Thank you for your advice

Re: [QuadtoneRIP] Cheap Spectrophotometer for making QTR profiles

2014-10-25 by Paul Roark

I think criteria I'd look for is LAB text output that can easily be cut and pasted into Excel and graphed, and then cut and pasted into QTR without any work. I also would stay with a system that can read the patches of a Calibration Mode print and a simple 21-step test file. I had an older Xrite that did not do two of these three, and it was a pain to use. The ColorData spyder units I've had since then have been easier to use. See http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/Spectro.pdf

Paul
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On Sat, Oct 25, 2014 at 2:27 PM, michel.moseman@... [QuadtoneRIP] <QuadtoneRIP@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Hi,


These days you can find several cheap, secondhand spectrophotometers on Ebay. Like Xrite 408, for example.

They are old, but I guess they must be good enough to use them for creating QTR printing profiles?

Or is it necessary to achieve a more expensive one like the Color Munki?


Thank you for your advice


Re: Cheap Spectrophotometer for making QTR profiles

2014-10-31 by richard@...

I know people are using the ColorMunki to read the 21-step ramps, but I think it uses too much paper based on the size of the sample area. The software is consumer grade and focused on color printing. It just isn't very versatile or meet the needs of creating QTR profiles.

The thing I've recommend in the past is to pick up a $300 i1 spectro off ebay. Just make sure it come with the base and the clear roller tray to be able read the 21 and 51 step strips that come with QTR—measuring each patch manually is overly tedious and time consuming. These are so much nicer than older densitometers and manually typing in the readings.

I don't have experience with SpyderPrint spectro or software, but plan on getting one to create a profile creation workflow with it. I am sure it works just fine, but I don't know how it integrates with other software or what the format of the measurement data looks like.

I think older Mac operating systems to be invaluable for creating and comparing QTR profiles. I keep around a 10.6.8 computer/partitions just because of Rosetta and the ability to run some older software. Measure Tool, which was is bundled with Profile Maker 5, can be replaced with ColorPort on new OS, but Measure Tool is so much nicer and easier to work with when measuring strips (and targets made with excel or text editors). I have not used the newer i1 Publish Pro to know if it has the same capabilities as X-rites Profile Maker 5 or the old ColorLab software. ColorLab's mode conversions of XYZ/LAB data from i1 is extremely nice and doesn't require multi step conversion functions in excel (it can convert from spectral data as well).


Richard Boutwell

www.richardboutwell.com

www.bwmastery.com

Re: Cheap Spectrophotometer for making QTR profiles

2014-11-01 by yg_1@...

One of the reasons I kept my main Mac at 10.6.8 for so long was the useful stuff that broke with later OS versions.

Earlier this year I finally went to 10.9, but have a copy of Parallels that still runs 10.6.8 for old PPC software and a few other things. Parallels also runs the copy of Win XP that I used to keep as a VirtualPC system for running some very old hardware and software.

Microsoft killed VirtualPC for the Mac, with Intel processors, so the disk images have sat around in the archive for a while, but now they run again (mostly) even with serial port support. It does feel quite odd to see XP fully booted and running in only a few seconds ;-) Now these systems can run virtually for years to come, without needing to get an old machine out of the cupboard and hoping it still boots. (I do have Sheepshaver as well to run MacOS 9.1 - but that's only for a couple of games ;-)

With such emulators, it's actually possible to resurrect some quite ancient hardware/software for colour management - maybe not at the level of calibration/precision that you'd want in a prepress environment, but good enough for most people's needs.


Bye for now
Keith Cooper

Re: Cheap Spectrophotometer for making QTR profiles

2014-11-01 by 8jstewart@...

I've been using the Colormunki for years and it works fine.
-Test prints too large?? -- just tell the printer dialogue to print "2 pages/ sheet" and it will print a target that only uses 5" of paper on an 8 1/2 x 11 inch sheet.
- Colormunki has an app called ColorPicker; that is the app to use for QTR profiling. I scan the test printouts (a colormunki-style step wedge), and then export the readings to a csv file, import that into Excel, and order the excel values by L* . A quick Excel graph based on L* values shows linearity (or not), and provides the numbers to plug into the QTR .txt file.

Re: Cheap Spectrophotometer for making QTR profiles

2014-11-01 by richard@...

I didn't clarify my comment as well as I should have with the color munki software. It might print the 21-step chart on a half sheet of paper just fine, but there is no way to print and measure the ink separation files without using a whole lot of paper, especially if you start using more than 3 black/gray inks. Using one 1/2x8-inch line (of 21x1cm steps) is much nicer than using three lines of 1x8 inch strips.

When it comes time to upgrade my main work machine I will probably go down the disk emulation route, but with a couple old computers working perfectly well (knock knock) I haven't had the need—I think the time is coming, but I'm just not there yet. . .

Richard Boutwell

Re: Cheap Spectrophotometer for making QTR profiles

2014-11-01 by sanking@...

"One of the reasons I kept my main Mac at 10.6.8 for so long was the useful stuff that broke with later OS versions."


It is possible to partition the hard drive and run two or more different systems on Macs. I currently have a Macbook Pro with separate partitions for OS 10.6.8 and OS 10.9.5. You can choose the startup disk from System Preferences.

Sandy


Re: Cheap Spectrophotometer for making QTR profiles

2014-11-02 by Lutsky, Berel

Long time color munki user for both monitor calibration and custom color profiling - for the money and the device support - it works really well - if the choice was between a $300 used I one (and the hardware/software hoops involved) and a $500 color munki there would be no contest - and There is a workflow for using the colormunki for BW profiling on the north light website -


Berel Lutsky
Associate Professor of Art
UW Manitowoc
920-683-4735

Re: Cheap Spectrophotometer for making QTR profiles

2014-11-02 by yg_1@...

Whilst a dual boot solution may suit some, I find that being able to keep apps open on one system, whilst firing up something on another saves a lot of hassle and time. 

Dual boot also only really works until I get new hardware...
 
One other solution I use is to keep a 'headless' old Mac mini running 10.6.8 (with a cheap 60GB SSD installed and a dummy video connector) to run some old software and use it via screen sharing.

If it's of interest, I've some notes on the various issues I faced when moving to 10.9 at:

 http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/stuff2/?p=2634

Move to quarantaine

This moves the raw source file on disk only. The archive index is not changed automatically, so you still need to run a manual refresh afterward.