Datacolor User to User Support Group.

>Printed 729 patches on 3 pages last night. Waited 24hrs for them to dry
>and took measurements.
>
>It was quite an effort. Luckily for me i got the idea from a reviewer
>on the net which had a picture of using an additional lamp to light up
>the area or else it would have been quite difficult to tell if the
>aperture is correctly on top of the patch. I had to sit on a smaller
>stool to bring the entire thing up to my face so that I can see whether
>the unit is correctly placed. gonna try to put some white or silver
>marking to the aperture to enable better visibility of where the thing
>is.

My suggestions:

If you haven't already done so: download the 1.1.1 software from the
ColorVision web site, and run that instead of earlier 1.0 and 1.1 versions.

Print the patches larger! Particularly on Windows, which has default
margins that are much larger than necessary (1" all around) and which results
in small patches. (We added a "nag" alert about this in the 1.1 software to
nudge people in that direction).

Put the sheet down on a table and look at the sheet and instrument from
an angle, not directly from overhead. When I measure patches, I would say
I'm looking at the tip of the sensor from 12" or so to the side. I don't
seem to have any problems seeing the spectro's nose on the patches when I
do it this way.

Make sure you put a sheet of blank paper (the same paper) underneath your
target sheet when you print.

Now that you've done a 729 patch profile, print out the 225 patch target,
measure it's much smaller number of patches, build a profile, and compare
prints. If you can't tell the difference (and you very well might not), then
save yourself the time and effort of doing 729 patch profiles and stick
with 225. The way that the 225 patch target designed is VERY good in the areas
that need extra color measurements and I think you'll be extremely pleased
with the results.



>I think it took me not less than 30 minutes or so for all the patches
>to be read - I didn't take note of the time.
>
>Problem - I really don't understand the part where i'm to set the
>reference white and black controls. What should i be doing to those
>functions for better softproofing? I have read the help files but
>couldn't understand it.

Don't worry about those for now; build the profiles without adjusting those,
to begin with; get the printed results first, and then decide whether you
want to make further adjustments with those controls, for softproofing.


Best regards,

-- 
David Miller
Senior Software Developer, Digital Color Solutions
ColorVision