[Stephane Bosman Participant Posts: 32]

Printing Colour Management

on: January 1, 2022 at 2:19 pm

Sorry if this is a bit long.

I am in the habit of making my own profiles, for display and for print.

For printing profile I measure targets with my GretagMacbeth i1 Rev. A, which I bought new about 18 years ago.

I just found out I had some leftovers of Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta and wanted to try it in my Canon Pro-1000.

So I just made a profile for it with my i1 and ArgyllCMS. I have an M1 Mac Mini andX-Rite will not support my admittedly old i1 with i1Profiler.

Out of curiosity, before doing any prints, I compared my profile with the one provided by Hahnemühle. They are  different, as expected, but I did not expect the  gamut difference to be so much.

My profile in white wireframe, Hahnemühle’s profile in colour:

So, I have a few questions:

1. Is this to be expected?
2. Which profile should I use?
3. If this is not normal, would it mean my spectrophotometer is now too old? Do they have a stated life expectancy?
4. If the time has come to replace it, the current verision is i1pro 3 Publish, quite expensive, although in line with prices evolutions since 2004. Would I lose much by going with the Calibrite Colorchecker i1 Studio?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Andrew Rodney Participant Posts: 416]

Re: Self-made vs. canned profiles

Reply #1 on: January 1, 2022 at 2:25 pm

Sorry but I can’t see any of your screen grabs. That said, if they are of gamut maps and volumes, that’s not really indicative of profile quality per se. Make prints using good, color reference images. Profiles know nothing about images or color in context, you do when you view prints. Also, not all gamut viewing products work the same or ideally, see:
http://www.colorwiki.com/wiki/Color_Management_Myths_26-28#Myth_26

You could have a larger gamut profile with poor gray balance. Or a Perceptual table that makes very saturated blues shift magenta or even black. You would only see this if you actually output to print, images that test a profile in this way. Do that first, then maybe plot the printers gamut.

Now if you view a gamut map that has a massive dip or spike somewhere, that could indicate a problem with measurement or elsewhere, but you’d see that in a split second on a print too.

Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management" (pluralsight.com)”

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