Which Calebration Tools are Best?

[Mark D Segal]

Yes, as far as I know that has not changed - these inkjet printers are RGB devices even though they use CMYK inks. It is a bit confusing, but the convention is that they "receive" RGB data and convert it to CMYK, hence retain the nomenclature of RGB printer. I am quite sure that if the standard profiling package worked with Epson 2200/4000 etc. it will work with 2400/4800 etc, but to be dead-certain best to check with X-Rite or Epson.

[Noble Dean]

Jack at Integrated Color let me know that an upgrade 3.10 was available.  According to the ColorEyes Validation it did a better job than 3.0 did.  Frankly I was delighted with the results from 3.0 and can not see the difference.

The discussion forum at Integrated Color was indicating some problems with some monitors so the upgrades may not be all that relavant to my situation.

Noble

[Jonathan Wienke]

What's your budget? I've gotten good results from a Spyder, but better results from the Gretag-Macbeth EyeOne Pro, which I also use to profile printers. But it costs about $900-1000 more than the Spyder.

[TeddyLoves]

gretag is clearing out their eyeone. you can get one for $99. (original price was $249)
it's basically the same as eyeone display 2 except that eyeone display 2 can measure ambient light.

[Mark D Segal]

Noble,

I doubt there is a dealer in Canada, and if there were you would pay a bundle because there would be a distributor and a retailer and each eats margins. I know the PITA because I live in Toronto and order stuff from the US all the time. In this case you use the Integrated Color website (www.integrated-color.com). They will charge your credit card in USD including shipping. Then what will happen here is that there will probably be no duty, but UPS or whatever will take GST, PST and a brokerage fee for customs clearance. So you give them your credit card at the front door when they deliver and plastic temporarily relieves the pain. And yes you are right - aspects of this free trade business is a bunch of baloney. But what to do.

[bcf]

Mark,

the review at Dry Creek Photography mentions that ColorEyes works best for high end displays, and that the interface has an "unfinished" and confusing feel to it. On the whole, the Monaco software appears to be on a par with ColorEyes.

What do you think?

Bernard

[Noble Dean]

Much of this discussion, however, has been about monitor calibration, but not much about printer and scanner calibration.  ColorEyes seems to me (from their website) to be for cameras and monitors only, while the X-Rite Pulse ColorElite System handles scanners and printers, too.  Yes it's $2,300, but I'm selecting a system for an organization where there are Macs and PCs using different monitors (CRTs and Apple's LCDs), printers, and scanners.  Also, the Expression 10000XL we just got comes with Monaco EZcolor, although we've yet to use it, having used SilverFast thus far because that's what our scanning technician uses and knows on an earlier Epson model.

I'm wondering if the additional device types covered by the Pulse system, that would allow us to be sure that all equipment would be in sync, is a better choice as compared to the more limited types devises covered by ColorEyes, even if the latter is a better product.  Or, would it make more sense to by ColorEyes for cameras and monitors, and find what's best for scanners and printers--and hope that they all play nice with each other!?  Any thoughts?

Hi Stephen.  I share your concerns but my budget will not handle $2300.  I'm just an amateur who's stuff has gotten good enough that I've been asked to send a few pieces out for commercial production.  Thus my urgent need to have a more accurately calibrated monitor.  As I understand it once you are sending stuff to others it's not good enough to just be able to print something you like by knowing your systems idiosyncracies.  You need to be as close as possible to an industry standard so that it also looks nice off someone else’s printer.  After all if they have to reset all the colour balances it's not your stuff any more.  Addressing the monitor issues will allow me to send off quality material to the press and the cost is within reach.

Obviously I will need to address the printer issue.  I am hoping that if my monitor is close to industry standards my printer output will be close as well.  I'm running an Canon i960 but not using Canon paper except on the really important stuff.  My day to day paper is Kodak Ultima.  I'm sure I will have to make some adjustments. We will have to see how close I can get with trial and error..

If you see a Topic saying "Poor, desperate on the verge of being thrown out of home if he spends more money photographer seeks low cost solution to printer colour management" you will know it's me once again calling for help.

Noble

[Mark D Segal]

Your printer output will NOT necessarily be satisfactory for any purpose just because your monitor is calibrated.  Some high-end printers such as the Epson 4000 can perform very well with Epson's canned profiles (at least in my experience with Enhanced Matte paper), but unfortunately, it is most often the case that you do need to profile your printer as well. The good news is that you need not spend $2300 to do this. If the canned printer profile is not good enough, there are a number of high quality commercial profiling services that will make a separate profile for each of the printer-paper combinations you require in the price range of 50 to 100 dollars each. You download their targets, print them according to their instructions, send them off for profiling, and they email back to you the profiles that you load into your profiles folder for use in PS.

As for the commercial stuff, if you know who will be printing your pictures, you should get their printer profile by email and load it into your profiles folder so that you can soft proof your images using their profile and adjust them accordingly such that the colors, brightness and contrast are the way you want them but in the soft-proof with their profile. That is the surest way of knowing that the printed result will resemble what you want to send them.

[PhotoArchivist]

Going back to the question from PhotoArchivist, on further thought about this, not clear to me you need to spend as much as 2300 (US). You can buy the ColorEyes bundle for the monitor for 325, and for the printers either the X-Rite or Gretag McBeth spectrophotometer bundles for about 1200 or thereabouts. As far as I know, with such a monitor bundle and a printer bundle everything can be coherently profiled. Remember what these profiles are doing: for the monitor they are measuring the difference between the image data and what your monitor displays to then inform your monitor to adjust for these differences, and likewise for the printer they are measuring the difference between the image data and what the printer produces, to then inform the printer to adjust for these differences. As long as each piece is producing correct difference data, they need not come from the same manufacturer in order to end-up with a coherent result. I recommend reading as many serious technical reviews as you can find on the several high-quality choices that are available before buying.

Thanks, Mark for your reply.

The X-Rite bundle gets to $2,300 because the premier edition is needed for CYMK printers; the standard package only does RGB printers and costs $1,800 with the OPTIX monitor calibrator and $1,500 without it.  Either package includes the spectrophotometer.  Also, the Elite system doesn't have a five-seat limit.  Prices come from the xritephoto online store, and I didn't see any of the bundles that came to $1,200.  Am I missing something?

[Noble Dean]

Just a quick progress report;

Coloreyes installed and profiled my monitor without a problem and did a great job!

I can not comment on the quality of this product relative to others since this is the first time I have calibrated this monitor.  I downloaded a test picture off the internet some time ago ( I think was created by Kodak ) and the colors are true to life.

I routinely use Kodak Ultima paper and with the settings recommended by the papers manufactureer it is printing very well on a Canon i960.  I think I can hold off getting a custom paper profile for a while.

Thanks for all the help!!

Noble