Datacolor User to User Support Group.

>Yesterday, while working to resolve various oddities in my output i
>decided to run some profiles and doing so i printed out a few targets.
>in the midst of these target prints i got one that printed out very
>different from the rest i have ever printed. i went back to my original
>targets i printed when i first got the PFP package to make comparisons.
>
>what i found was that pretty much all the targets printed (225) were
>pretty much the same, with color swatches very dark and saturated. i
>looked at the swatches on a variety of papers i did in weeks past and
>all seemed the same in color. then yesterday i printed a target again
>and is was noticably different. it was far lighter and had an amazing
>resemblance to the idealized target displayed in the software
>interface.

That would mean that (probably by accident) you printed the target with
color managment turned ON (enabled) in the printer driver.

That would be a problem...:-) If you print the target that way; measure;
build a profile; and then print through the profile the "right" way
(with color management turned off). The profile will end up doing very
little if it's based on measurements taken from "calibrated" output through
the driver's standard color management settings, and the result would
be a print that would be very close to "uncalibrated".

>now this morning i have just printed off 2 more targets
>(same settings and paper) and i am back to the original darker and
>saturated output which make up the majority of my targets.

That's what your target prints should look like: dark and saturated.

If you're printing them on the same paper, and with (theoretically) the
same inks, then there should be almost no measurable difference between
any of them. You could try using the Measure tool in PFP 1.1.1 to measure
the a few of the same patches, from one target to the next; write the
Lab numbers down and see if, for instance, the "primary" color patches,
which will be the most saturated: 1E, 5A, 5E, 6F, 6J, 10F; measure consistently
across multiple targets. You shouldn't see a difference of more than 1 or
2 points in any of the Lab components, otherwise, the printer is shifting
between target prints.



Best regards,

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