Multiple Iterations in Making Print Profiles with the New X-Rite Photo Pro 2

[deanwork]

Does anyone know if there is any advantage to making multiple iterations when profiling for inkjet with the new X-Rite and Eye One Pro 2 package?

And my second question is how many patches are the limit for seeing any noticeable difference on premium matt rag and fiber gloss papers.

I'm using the Advanced Mode with 1600 patches.

I've been making rgb profiles for the canson matt papers today and I am shocked at how good they are, even on my HPZ3100 printer. It has turned that printer into having the gamut of my Canon 8300 with far better gray neutrality that what I was used to on the Z. When printing the Atkinson Printer test chart the reds, yellows, and oranges are so good that you would never guess these are the Vivera inks. They are looking like HDR or Canon inks.

I'm using the Advanced Mode with 1600 patches.

[digitaldog]

I’ve seen some benefits in terms of gray balance doing an iteration using the target described here:

http://www.i1upgrades.com/2011/08/how-to-use-the-tc-2502-gray-optimization-chart/

[deanwork]

I guess not for color.

Thanks for that link. We did see multiple samples helping black and white considerably with Studio Print. I'll check that out for bw with the X-Rite software.

[digitaldog]

I guess not for color.

Not if you use a sufficiently decent sized target to start with. All the testing I did with optimization targets with the exception of Marc’s very large gray target, the differences were invisible! dE values of far less than 1. I was told that the idea behind the optimization is that it can be useful if you start with a small number of patches (a few hundred or less). I tested using 1728 initial patches, you’re using 1600. I don’t find the optimization does a darn thing with such an initial sampling. The 2500 gray patch target can help in some cases in terms of gray balance. On an Epson 3880, I could see the differences on the print but even then, it was subtle. Considering measuring three 8x11 patches in an iSis isn’t much work, I’ve been using this process for my profiles and customers. I’ve yet to hear it produced inferior results.

[deanwork]

Right. Thanks Andrew.

I'll try more patches for bw and see where that takes me. This set up is very fast to read anyway.

If you are still there, is there any reason to read the patches in two directions for the same line? I'm just using one direction and it looks the same to me. Seems to me if you have a nice flat clean target and you aren't getting any error messages that should be fine?

[digitaldog]

If you are still there, is there any reason to read the patches in two directions for the same line? I'm just using one direction and it looks the same to me. Seems to me if you have a nice flat clean target and you aren't getting any error messages that should be fine?

There is no reason to read a line twice unless you are using doing a duel measurement (with and without UV cut). Otherwise, the unit measures something like 100+ samples per second so you get a good averaging per patch. You can move left to right, then on the next row, right to left.

[deanwork]

Excellent, thanks a lot.