Datacolor User to User Support Group.

On Jul 25, 2012, at 7:32 PM, kk325ic wrote:

> Thanks David for taking your time to help out.
> 
> > (As a rough guideline: for matte paper, the first patch in the target, which
> > is "perfect" black, usually measures with an L value in the upper teens to
> > the low 20's at most on matte papers. An L value above, say, 22 or 23 would
> > be a warning sign that something else is wrong. 
> I get the measured L value of the first patch about 17. If I adjust the L of the reference black point to 3 in the advanced edit, the softproof result looks much better. 
> 
> It seems to me that the measure of the black patch is not very accurate enough. If this is true, SpyderPrint should be able to automatically adjust the black reference point to get the best result.
> 
> > 
> > If you'd like email me a copy of your measurement file and I'll take a quick
> > look to see if there are any problems. Use the File:Open Data command in
> > SpyderPRINT to open your measurement file folder; find the .xml file; then
> > .zip and email it to me at dmiller@...
> Yes, I sent you the measurement file. 
> 

I just responded. Your black patch measurement is fine, and there's no problem
with accuracy. What you're seeing is a lack of being able to turn off "black
ink simulation" in SpyderPRINT's softproof. It's not a bug; just a limitation
as to how our softproof works. It actually behaves exactly as Photoshop's
does, when "black ink simulation" is turned on in Photoshop.

SpyderPRINT's softproof isn't meant to be as advanced and full-featured
as Photoshop's. It's basically a quick way of getting a softproof configured
a particular way (showing the full effect of the black ink measurement) and
it's technically correct that way; as I said, Photoshop's will look the same
when you check the "black ink simulation" box there.

You have one incorrectly measured patch, which I've identified so that you
can fix it. That's not enough to throw off your prints through the profile
as a whole. The next issue is going to be: how you're actually using it when
you print, and we'll continue in our emails about that. If you're printing
through Photoshop, either you're not using the profile correctly, OR, you're
running into a problem with some Canon drivers in which they will absolutely
not work properly when printing with any externally specified profile (including
Canon's own profiles, so this is easy to prove if true) in Photoshop's print
dialog. We'll see....

David Miller
Senior Software Developer, Digital Color Solutions
Datacolor