Custom profiles: Who's best?

[Tim Lookingbill]

Look at the white border around this forum thread against the blue background post field. Does it look white or kind of cream colored? It's actually 255 RGB white but to me it looks cream colored on my EyeOne Display calibrated CRT.

Welcome to the world of adaptation. Looking at your prints in daylight as compared to your display will have the same effect. Blue of daylight desaturates while a comparitive warm cream cast of a 6500K display along with 5000K artificial lighting slightly increases perceived saturation of greens, reds and fleshtones viewed on a display. If you add in density changes as you describe, in an RGB display world that can also increase perceived saturation.

Before you get into changing everything around, start by examining your prints in a consistantly lit controlled viewing environment. Get a 5000K light fixture like the Solux. Make sure you get clear specific instructions on how to set up color management between your Epson and Photoshop as well.

The reason for the oversimplified instructions is because most folks including myself get very accurate predictable results with even canned Epson profiles and/or the minilab profiles I use off of DryCreekPhoto.com. You shouldn't be having this much trouble and before you get into spending a lot of time and money, you need to be dealing with a controlled nonchanging viewing environment. Daylight is not a very reliable constant.

A while back Peter Figen, a professional photographer, nearly 2000 miles away sent me by mail a print of the PhotoDisc PDI image target off his professionally calibrated Sony Artisan/Epson 2200 system. I downloaded and Soft Proofed with RelCol intent the canned Epson profile and it precisely rendered it to what I saw under my 5000K Sunlite flotubes.

Even the slight barely noticeable increase in yellow in the fleshtones on the print that wasn't showing up on my display without Soft Proof was nailed exactly. I was blown away by the precision. I thought my display calibration was off until I Soft Proofed and noticed the yellow increase which is very hard to see due to adaptation.

As for testing the light and dark appearance between display and print, start by printing a grayramp under your normal print setup you'v been using and then assign a 1.8 gamma type profile to the grayramp see if it gives a better match. It may be the Epson is internally referrencing some default monitor profile. It's hard to tell since you haven't described how off your prints are.

[Ken Lee]

In addition to Tim's excellent advice, I would suggest that you read this brief Epson document .

There are so many options in Photoshop, that one step can easily be overlooked. The the results will be way off, when in fact, you already have a fine profile.

[Tom Westbrook]

Tom,
How about your Photoshop settings?

If you mean color settings, I set it to use the NA General purpose 2 predefined settings.

[Brian Ellis]

It would be useful to know whether you're printing color or black and white, I do both and they're very different animals.

Apart from that, if you're "wasting a tone of very expensive paper" to get what you want it sounds like it's your monitor that you need to profile (calibrate), not your ink and paper. You should be able to see on the screen exactly what your print will look like or so close to it that any difference is insignificant, subject to the inescapable fact that your screen is backlit and your paper isn't. "Canned" paper profiles can be just fine, the Epson canned profiles for my Epson 2200 are excellent for Velvet Fine Art and Enhanced Matte paper, as is the profile that you can download from the Moab web site for its Entrada Natural paper (a paper that I now use almost exclusively and that I highly recommend).

So if I were you I'd first look at a monitor profiling system such as Monaco's Spyder 2 or Monaco's even less expensive new one, the name of which escapes me but which costs about $75 (as opposed to Spyder 2 which costs about $150 from New Egg). You say you've profiled your monitor but you don't say how. If all you did was use Adobe Gamma that's not good enough IMHO. If your monitor is properly calibrated and you're still wasting tons of paper then I don't think custom paper profiles are going to fix that problem, the difference between the Epson canned profiles and a custom profile for those papers just isn't that dramatic. In that case the problem lies elsewhere, perhaps in how you have "Print With Preview" set up in relation to your settings in the Epson driver.

Helen Bach said: "Before I got an Eye One and Profilemaker, I used profiles from Dry Creek. On the whole these were good, but they were taking weeks to get."

I'd guess that Helen hasn't deal with Dry Creek in the last year or two. Dry Creek apparently was fine at one time but something happened, I'm not sure what, I've heard that Andy, the original owner, got sick and retired or sold the business but left the web site up (assuming it's still up, I haven't visited there in a year or so). In any event, when I sent them $50 for a profile they just cashed the check and and I never heard from them again. They don't respond to phone, letter, or email, I know, I've tried all three many times and have now given up on ever getting either a profile or my money back. Under no circumstances should anybody send any money to Dry Creek.

[Tom Westbrook]

OK, I'll go back and check everything to be sure I'm using the right procedures. Mostly my prints are too dark, so maybe it's the evaluation lighting. I'm printing both BW and color, but mostly am concerned with BW for now. Color prints appear a bit greenish to me. As mentioned in my original post I use an Eye One for monitor calibration.

[Ken Lee]

Monitors do "drift", although I imagine that LCD's are less subject to it. Nevertheless, the software will prompt you to re-calibrate on a regular basis. It's a good idea to do so, especially if you plan to print a lot of images, or anything important.

Make sure to do the monitor calibration in a way that no ambient light can reach the sensor. Night time in a black room is good for that. If you print a well-known target, your monitor should be no influence at all, since you are printing the target as-is, with no corrections. The target is already perfect, as long as you haven't fiddled with it.

[Helen Bach]

EV 6 @ ISO 100 (about 175 lux) seems a bit dim for evaluating prints. I would have thought that you would want at least EV 8 (about 700 lux) up to EV 10. I use about EV 9.

Best,
Helen

[Tom Westbrook]

Ken, I usually calibrate weekly, but I hadn't thought of the room light affecting things. The Eye One takes general ambient light into account: it has a step early in the calibration process using a white diffusing cap over the colorimeter. I don't know whether that would compensate for light leaks during color calibration, though. I'll try the dark room trick to see if that helps.

Helen, it hovers between EV 6-7. I have halogen track lighting in another room, so I'll see if I can set up a spot on the wall to use for an evaluation area. Those Solux halogen bulbs look interesting--I think mine are 3200K. My wet darkroom's print eval area is set up for EV7, which has worked well for me when displaying prints in various locations.

Thanks for the help.

[Doug Fisher]

Tom -

Since you mentioned you had a 2400 and also said, "Mostly my prints are too dark, ...", I thought I might pass along a tip from Clayton Jones' website. Try reducing your ink density by 5% in the Epson driver (and then experiment a % or two up and down). That really helped me with an issue similar to your situation.

Doug
---
www.BetterScanning.com

[Brian Ellis]

If you're printing black and white using Epson color inks you should give Roy Harrington's RIP, QTR, a try. I understand that the 2400 does a better job with color inks and b&w printing than was the case with earlier printers but I think you still will need a RIP and Roy's is very good plus it costs only $50 and then only if you decide to keep it after giving it a try. You can download the RIP from Roy's web site. You can also use QTR to do your own profiling if you have the right equipment.