Printer profiling

I took the plunge last week and decided to buy a spectrocolorimeter to develop some custom profiles for the Lyson CIS on my Epson 2100.

I read numerous product reviews and to be honest I really couldn't afford to spend >£1000 on a device and so I thought about going for a remote profiling service.
I've read mixed opinions on such services and was told to use a reputable ICC provider.

Such providers are charging bewteen £50 and £100 and so I dumped the idea in favour of buying the relatively new PrintFix Pro.

Well I've been succesfully developing camera profiles for while and thought what the heck, i'll give it go.

I was quite amazed how well it worked, ok some people may be sceptical but the device is pretty damn accurate.

I have quite a few calibrated IT8 targets and before taking the plunge, I thought I validate it. For an LED device, Colorvsion have done a pretty fine job. Its a little slow and tedious to use but i've since successfully built profiles for 6 papers which exceed the canned profiles for greyscale smoothness, neutrality, color balance and saturation.

ColorVision provided me with their latest beta build which added superior grey development and shed loads of tweakability, which together vastly improves the ICC outputs of their previous version.

I'm in no way connected to these guys, but just wanted to pass on my findings for those on a budget wanting to dabble with surprisingly good results.

BTW, I even measured a couple of Whibal's for reference and yep their well in spec!

The software also has spot colour measurement to a text file so I can also keep track of fading targets and amend reference files accordingly. Altogether its not bad for the price of a 3 or 4 remote profiles. (for my use anyhow)

So, John

You deserve a great congratulations. I would not have thought it would have gone so well. The salesmanship of GM and other places made ColorVision seem a poor choice, I must admit.

What do you use for your monito? Also how old is your IT8 Target?

Asher

I must confess to using an eye one display 2 for the eizo monitor, the spyder hit the round file a while ago. My IT8s vary between 3 months and 2 years old.

Slight off topic to this thread but I profile my lcd monitors at 120cdm, native wp and native gamma. The colourmatch between paper and screen is spot on.
I also use daylight tubes in my home office and the ambient light reading is as recommended.

Back to the Printfix Pro, yes I was equally surprised at the results. So many people gave them bad press on the version 1 "toy" scanner and to give them credit v2 coupled with the new beta software is quantum leap forward for them. (IMO)

John,

What is the longesvity of the Lyson inks and did you also make profiles better than the supplied Epson profiles!

Asher

Asher,

Difficult to objectively judge whether they are better than the epson profiles on epson inks as it been a while since I've used them. Looking at the gamut in a viewer the custom profiles are marginally narrower than epsons, but i've since made comparative prints and they do show better neutraility and greyscales.

The Lyson state their pigment inks are equal to epson inks for lightfastness and displaylife.

I intially built profiles at 2800dpi, but unless one used a loupe to view them there was very little benefit. I've since switched to 1440dpi based profiles and print speed and quality far outweighs the marginal sharpness gain.

One of the main reason I went for Lyson was cost and bulk ink capacity. I could only print out ~15 A3s and then I get a red light on at least one epson cartridge. I'm doing a craft fair next weekend and have printed out ~50 A4s and ~20 A3s effortlessly.
I also use Ilford Gallery smooth pearl and there was no profile for the Lyson inkset, hence the indulgence.

Hi John,

I also use Ilford Gallery smooth pearl and there was no profile for the Lyson inkset, so hence the indulgence.

Click to expand...

The big advatage of diy, if you need to, is you can mix and match papers and inks and printers, and its quick to get the profiles, and beyond the original cost, its almost free.

Best wishes,

Ray