Datacolor User to User Support Group.

>On 28-Jul-06, at 9:32 PM, David Miller wrote:
>>
>>
>>  (I knew that remeasuring those 9 patches was going to make a difference,
>>  as soon as I saw the big "dent" in the bottom of the profile shape from your
>>  original measurement set).
>>
>>
>
>Dave
>
>hi, i am new to this group. i just found out about it on the Epson 
>Wide Format group and decided to check you out.

Hi Ghi! Sorry it took a week to answer your post...:-)

>i'm a new owner of the PrintFIX Pro Suite and have been working with 
>it so far with no real issues yet. i am pleased to say that it is 
>proving to be an amazing experience, how after many years i have 
>never had any color management until now. my soft proofing is beyond 
>what i could have imagined.

Glad to hear it!

>it's the getting use to my monitor profile that is taking some time. 
>the profile is generating rather 'mushy' and undefined tonal 
>gradations in any sort of flesh tones and there is a lack of general 
>contrast in most images. that being said, it is proving to be 
>generating accurate representations regarding my printer output.

What kind of display are you using? And how old is it?

>there is one thing i am wondering about and it involves a 'dent' in 
>my profile. yes, when i read your profile description i knew exactly 
>what you meant! i just did a 729 patch reading of a paper and when i 
>checked out the generated icc profile, in the Colorsync profile 
>utility in OsX,  it looked like it had collided with a concrete 
>wall. there is a major dent in the greens.

That -probably- means something went wrong with some of the measurements there.
As we saw with Ed Limmy's measurements last week, all it took was
a slip and a "wrong" set of a only a few measurements (and in this 
case, "wrong"
was in a subtle way, and it took some tricky analysis for me to catch it) to
"dent" his profile, too.

Not to knock the 729 patch targets, but my personal preference is to measure
the 225 patch target and to save myself the extra time and effort it takes
to print and measure 3 sheets.

Taking the "faster" approach would also save time, paper, and ink when someone
first starts using PFP and has problems, such as what Paul Nieuwenhuize is
experiencing with his profiled test prints coming out too dark.


>the 224 patch reading created a more smoothed out profile (though less gamut)

Hmmm.... really should be pretty much the same in terms of overall shape
and volume, but if you compared the boundaries, there would be some slight
differences. It's hard to see and compare gamut shapes in the ColorSync
Utility; something like Steve Upton's ColorThink application lets you
overlay the 3D gamut plots of profiles and compare them directly (visually).

>and the soft proof looks great compared with it's output. am i to 
>assume that at some point during my reading on the 729 patches i did 
>something wrong?

Probably... Try that trick I described last week (very long response here
on the group, to Ed) in which I used the new "Information" feature in
PFP 1.1.1 to create a copy of the 3 page measurement file and convert it
to the 1 page format; then I viewed -this- in PFP and was able to visually
pick out where one subsection of a row of his measurements had gone wrong.

>i printed out the scanning patches on separate (8.5 x 11) sheets on 
>my Epson 7600. i'm planning to make another attempt at the 'Expert 
>Mode' reading again but this time i'll print it all on one sheet.

Yes, if you can do it that way, it will be easy to tell, visually, if any
of them are wrong, because all of the colors "line up" nicely and smoothly
and anything that is wrong will stand out.

>one thing i have to say is that it's pretty enlightening to find out 
>how limited an inkset really is as far as it's ability to recreate 
>color.

Yes, it is. Those PFP targets, when printed with no color management through
the printer driver, are showing you -everything- that the printer/paper/ink/
printer driver/media setting combination can give you. Effectively: this
is the gamut of the printer, and you're looking at it (spread out into 729
printed patches, or 225 patches on the smaller target). You can't get a blacker
black, or more saturated primaries, than what you're seeing here.

>i use MIS inks in my machine, soon i will get some new inks and i'm 
>curious as to how well they have improved (MIS Pro is the new ink 
>they sell).

I'm curious about that, too.

>since i create directly in Painter and Photoshop it is necessary 
>that i paint within the gamut of the printers output. by working 
>within the profile i know i can only use the colors that will print 
>and by doing so i have less output problems and color surprises.

Right: that's how color management is supposed to work, in this case: use
the profile to soft-proof while you're creating, so that you can feel confident
that your prints will look as you intended the image to look, as you were
working on it.

>the wonderfully bright RGB palette is like another universe, bearing 
>little resemblance to the real world.
>

You can get closer to that "pure" RGB palette, depending on what you're
printing with. I think that the most brilliant, saturated print target I've
made was on the Epson R800, on Olympus Pictorico Pro High Gloss White film.
(Or it may have been a 1280 on that media, it was months ago). It was
-so- intense and saturated that it almost hurt the eyes to look at it. Totally
unlike what you get when printing on matte paper with pigmented inks.


Best regards,


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