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Colour profiling on Ebay

Scott Duffy

New member
Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2007 8:03 am Post subject: Printer Profiles on Ebay only £10

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Hi,
I have been using Ebay to get my printer/ink/media profiled, and what a difference they make, the cheapest and best I have found are in the ebay shop "The Graphics Depot" so far I have had a epson 1290 profiled (sublimation ink) and my 9600 Ultrachrome (CMYK for my Epson RIP) and my 7600 (MIS pigment, CMYK) for canvas and gloss.


http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Custom-ICC-IC...hZ016QQcategoryZ20118QQtcZphotoQQcmdZViewItem

Scott
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Welcome Scott!

Glad you could wade in and immediately provide some useful tip! How long have you ben using these profiling serivces. Where are they located and how many squares do you print out?

BTW, where are you located and do you have a gallery?

Look forward to hearing more. They must be good for you to trust work on the 9600 and 7600 with these profiles. What would make you choose them in the first place?

Asher
 

Scott Duffy

New member
Some more info

I'll try to be as brief as poss, for years we have had to restrict the substrates and media that we print on to, we wanted to give our customers a better/larger choice (and sell more into the bargain), something more than just gloss or matt, canvas or paper, but the cost was prohibitive, one place wanted to charge me over £600 ($1000+) to come out and profile my printer/rip, told me it couldn't be done any other way.

We needed to upgrade our monitor profiling hardware/software, so we got a Spyder suite pro 2 with printfix software, with the printfix we were hoping to profile the printers and rip ourselves, instead what happened was weeks wasted tweaking this, that and the next thing. Just as soon as you think you have it sorted someone else will come along and say "is it not a bit green" to which point you reply in a very loud and angry voice "no it funking isn't", but everyone see's colours differently, so do clients/customers.

Conclusion: software only solution = useless

Found this place on eBay tell her what I need profiling, she emails charts and instructions, I print them out, send back to her, she emails my profile..done

Now I can use lower costing MIS inks(imported from USA, dunno why no one sells them in Europe) (which I think are better than Epson's). I can use any type of canvas and paper I want, wood, acrylic, metal, fabric if it can fit through one of the printers, we can print on it, confident the green will be green etc.

So now when someone say's "it looks a bit green" I can politely tell them to "funk off and go and see an optician, you colour blind old bastred.

Scott
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Well Scott,

funk-you very much for the info! :) I think that Epson persuaded the Eu courts that the other Inks companies were stealing their prorietary knowledge to sell the ink cartridges with ink in them!

At the same time, the Eu courts are investigating Epson for price-gouging!!!

What's the turnaround speed of the service and how many colors do you print out?

Also the cost?

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
BTW, do you worry about the archival performance of the 3rd party inks? Are we just religiously addicted to Epson K3 inks as if they are special and holy?

Asher
 

Scott Duffy

New member
With the MIS inks I think the archival quality is better, pricing for oem inks has to take in to account the R&D costs(which they keep telling us about) but also the advertising, the cost of hardware R&D...the list goes on, do you really think a company like Epson if they discover a flaw in thier inks, for example yellow ink curdles after 3 years..Do you really think there will be a massive product recall, refunds..All that will happen is in 3 years time they will blame global warming and launch an ink that can withstand global warming.

At least with people like MIS et al..If something goes wrong you will find out about it and it will be fixed (either that or the company will go out of business).

The length of time a print can last is not that critical as you can alway's print another one.

Scott
 

Scott Duffy

New member
Not sure what service you mean...Fine art printing?

Epson 9800
Price depends on canvas size, frame size etc..
Turnaround 3-4 day's 2 day's for Giclée to dry

If you mean profiling, I pay £10 per profile, print charts, leave to dry overnight, post, profile arrives......

About 3 day's from paying for profile till I get it by email

Scott
 

Ray West

New member
If speed is of the esence, and you're on ibm type pc (not mac) then get profile prism, it will pay for itself after 4 or 5 ten quids, and Mike Chaney's description of what all this stuff is about is first rate. Get Qimage at the same time. http://www.ddisoftware.com/prism and http://ddisoftware.com/qimage

DiY profile, about ten minutes, start to end. Or, you can do it via post to him, at a low cost.

Best wishes,

Ray
 

Steve Saunders

New member
I didn't have too much luck with the Profile Prism and I ended up buying the Colorvision Spider thing, which does a far better job for me.
 

Scott Duffy

New member
I have tried software only solutions and have wasted so much time on them, so much so that I wouldn't try another if you paid me.

I got the clolorvision spyder, but mine only profiles monitors, but came with a software only solution for printers, which was useless.

No, I'll stick with the ebay solution, quick, cheap, and I get to keep my eyesight and sanity!!

Scott
 

Ray West

New member
Profile prism is not a 'software only system'. You print a colour chart, scan it in with a calibration chart, it generates an icc profile for you printer. It does the same as the mail order methods, but without the mail delays/cost. If you want to be really picky, you can edit the profile. You can also profile your camera. Still, each to his own.

Best wishes,

Ray
 

Ray West

New member
Hi Scott,

I think it's explained in detail on the link I gave earlier, but it will take longer to read that than to actual generate your profiles ;-) Basically, you are supplied with some very comprehensive software, an excellent description of what profiling is about and a couple of accurate colour test charts. You scan in your printed target at the same time as you scan in one of the test charts. The size of your printed chart is about A5, as is the test chart. Any reasonable A4 scanner is adequate, the cheap Epsons are fine, afaik. You get a good feel about what is often portrayed as a sort of 'black art' (well 'coloured art', I guess, but I don't know if that is racist;-) and if you wish, you can manually edit the individual results. If you are into experimenting with different papers/inks/printers, I do not think there is any better way to get to where you want to be.

Best wishes,

Ray
 
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