Profiles

[QuaziPhoto]

Anyone have a good tutorial or link to teach me about color profiles? I have a new printer but the colors seem off when I print my photos. I dont know if they are off on my uncalibrated monitor or the printer though.

[Ronald S. Jr.]

What printer did you get?

Also, something as simple and cheap as a Pantone Huey will go a long way toward getting accurate prints. Make sure you use a nice paper like Ilford, for example, for which you can download printer profiles for that specific paper.

[Hikariphoto]

The Huey is generally regarded as the "kit lens" version of monitor profiling gear. Most of the photographers I've known who got one say it's not reliable enough from calibration to calibration and has no capability to measure luminance. The majority of them have gotten either the Color Eyes or the Eye One Display 2. I used an old Spider, and it works well but it's not made any more that I know of.

[LuisV]

Coming in a bit late..... in terms of color control you have two profiles you have to contend with as you've seen here. One is the monitor, which is hyper critical. For that you have a few options now and any hardware system is better than nothing.

As mentioned the entry level is the Huey. The better ones right now are the Eye-One made by X-Rite (they acquired Gretag Macbeth) and the Spyder made by Colorvision which used to be marketed by Pantone. Colorvision and the Spyder are very much alive and tehy just released version 3 of thier calibrator. The Eye-One is excellent but much higher priced. The Spyder is much more reasonable and very accurate as well. In any event this is a must.

On the printer side, you have two options. One is the profiles the vendors provide. This is either the manufacturer of the printer or the paper. In both cases, while usually very good, they are generic profiles. You want to get the right profile for the printer (not the manufacturer but the specific model), ink and paper combination you are using. From there, you will have a good base to work with. I have been using Epson for a number of years now and can tell you that Epson USA provides top notch profiles they make locally. In other words, they grab a printer and create a high caliber profile for each paper and ink combination they have. You can find them with the SPxxx file names. These are better than the profiles included on the disc from factory.

The other option on the printer side is to have custom profiles made for the printer. You can either go to a service to have it done or buy the hardware to do it yourself. Here again you have two options. Colovision makes one that produces excellent profiles and is reasonable. X-Rite has options and software for producing profiles as well, but here again, much more pricey.

[TX_Gulf_Coast]

I agree with Luis, excluding the final statement. While there are options out there to make your own profiles, companies that can do these in controlled circumstances will always produce better results. (Been there and tried that.) The only good use I found for the profiling hardware/software is if you print on a variety of odd media/papers that profiles are not commercially available. Profiles I spent the time to make, usually ended up being only marginally better (if even)compared to the ones I now use that are commercially produced and they took a LONG time and alot trial and error to do! Way too much headache.

I use RIP's to run the Epson's in my studio, after my initial 7600 purchase over 8 years ago. While the initial cost is sometimes shocking, the consistent and reliable print results, maximization of ink and paper is well worth the cost. RIP's will also save you time if you do a large amount of printing and packging. (On the average, we run about 20+ rolls of paper through the 7800's a month.)

The companies that write RIP Software have some of the best profiles available for 90% of the paper offered. They are able to produce better, more economical profiles than even the "canned" manufacture's profiles.

If you really want to learn about color management and it's place in the photographer/printer's world, read this book:

REAL WORLD COLOR MANAGEMENT

Paramount to color management is knowing the WHOLE process, from camera output, to monitor calibration to print. Once you know and understand, it makes alot more common sense in the actual application.

[LuisV]

I only create profiles for some of my RGB output. Basically, Photoshop. I've had good results there and I am using the lower end of the products out there, the Colorvision Printfix Pro. The main reason I went down that road is because I was trying some papers who's profiles were not too hot and I did not want to spend too much for a limited number of profiles. Now I use it to profile the Epson Mattes as I feel they are better. As you mentioned, very slight, but there. The profiles from Epson for the coated papers (Glossy and Luster) are awesome and I use them all the time.

I too use the RIP with the Epson 7800. The output from there is fantastic. I am using the Colorburst RIP. The main reason is that it prints directly to the printer (does not use the Epson/OS print dialog) in it's native CMYK. The profiles I use are made by Colorburst right now. My lower end Colorvision does not allow me to profile the CMYK via the RIP. I may make the expediture soon though and sell off the Colorvision. FYI, according to a friend of mine in Epson, they use X-Rite hardware to make the RGB profiles. Colorburst uses X-Rite hardware as well, according to product support.

I haven't had a great deal of difficulty in creating great profiles. However, I do agree that the benefit is barely noticeable on some papers. While I don't even come close to running through 20 rolls of paper a month, I do like to create top tier output for my fine art prints.

Now getting back to the original question though.... I got a bit off topic with my answer and that led CJ off too. Sorry about that. Not all generic profiles are created equally. I say this because Epson's are excellent when you are talking about the R2400, R1800, all the professional end printers, etc. However, they are not very good on the lower side of the spectrum. I cannot attest to Canon's or HP's profiles. Having said that, all this talk about RIPs and Epson profiles being excellent for a 7800 may not apply to Quazi's need. CJ's recommendation on "Real World Color Management" is excellent. I would also suggest "Real World Image Sharpening" by the late Bruce Fraser. The latter talks about sharpening for output which is worth looking into once you conquer the color control issue.

Awesome thread......