| 
| 
| 
| 
| Company » Testimonials » | Printer Calibration Testimonials |
|
Printer Calibration Testimonials
I am now a believer. I just got back from a trip to Tokyo where I shot a several hundred photos in and around Shinjuku and Shibuya and using Adobe Lightroom edited them in color or B&W, based on my perception on how I thought each image worked. (initial edits, done on a color corrected laptop, are posted at http://www.pbase.com/troutco/tokyojuly2007). You'll see the B&W photos are each tinted, to my taste, based on how I felt the image worked (some have a warm tone, some a colder tone, some a neutral tone). Some of the photos are color with specific colors intentionally desaturated. So far, printing out proofs at home tonight, using an Epson R2400, on Costco $18.95 semi-glossy, using my PrintFIX PRO 2.0 extended color/B&W profile for the paper, (without any tweaking of the profile) they look very good. My cursory reviews of them in less than ideal lighting is very impressive. I don't see any color casts, The toned colors look close enough to those on my desktop's color profiled CRT and LCD to win a horseshoe contest. I've always found printing to be a very iterative, time consuming and often not very rewarding process (probably one reason I do so little of it) and have never been pleased with the screen matching of the images and their printed form. Looking at these test prints, toned B&W and color, and proofing using the extended PFP2 profile, these are the closest matches I've ever seen between my output and my edits on screen. There is a great deal of creative freedom being able to shoot, edit and render, and then print, all from Lightroom, without having to make a complicated science project out of process of generating B&W images. This was also my first serious use of Lightroom instead of the combination of Capture One Pro and Photoshop. The workflow was much more rapid, and flexible than I've had in the past and I could easily iterate edits in color, B&W, or both. Now that I'm back home, I can readily take any images that need more advanced sharpening, exposure or tonal adjustment or masking into Photoshop.
As a professional photographer operating a film production company prior to the "digital age", I made use of all available tools to achieve consistency in photographic color printing- Color Analyzers and later, Video Analyzer for color negatives. This permitted quantification of color management and streamlined the workflow. As professional photographers, and amateurs alike, have shifted to digital imaging, a new crisis has arisen. Achieving color consistency with ink-jet printers has caused many to return to the era of "test strips", more often many full sheets of paper (and ink) to produce one acceptable print. ColorVision, with the Spyder and PrintFix has solved the crisis for many of us. The ability to accurately calibrate the computer monitor is akin to the automatic paper and film processors that provided the consistency of one step of the process, while the ability of PrintFix to develop accurate color profiles for the printer completes the other step of the process, and once again, we have an efficient and cost-controlled workflow. ColorVision has a real winner in these products.
After cropping the image and trimming the top of the plastic sleeve to get a better scan (cut down the skewing) I got a beautiful test print of the image included with PrintFIX. Thanks for the help.
ColorVision has once again raised the bar on achieving the ultimate goal of consistent color from start to finish with the introduction of the new PrintFIX profiling device. Designed to make the job of creating accurate ICC profiles for printers it simplifies the process and makes profiling available to the masses without the need for large capital investments in time and energy. In conjunction with the Spyder, this system will enable a complete color management system from beginning to end. Our observations: The PrintFIX is fairly easy to use straight out of the box, though it is necessary to read the instructions well. All of the profiles created were very accurate and little adjustment was necessary. All in all we like the device and think it is the perfect solution for most of us who need good quick consistent color. It worked great with every printer/paper/ink combination that we tried. We've been using the Spyder in house to profile our monitors for quite some time and the pair of accessories has made our color management life a success!
Thanks for all your help. The FAQ's were a great help! Oh and by the way, I am an instructor for Digital Printing classes and I normally use Spectrophotometers for building profiles but I was looking for a more economical alternative when I read about PrintFIX and thought I'd give it a try. Once I managed to get over my own system problems and get the PrintFIX to work, I have to say I'm impressed! I'll recommend it to all my participants (about 45 people per month) as they are looking for ways to improve their home ink-jet printing experiences. Thanks for all your help!
PrintFix goes a long way toward bringing color management to the masses. It is the easiest printer profiling system I have seen. Now anyone will be able to create their own custom profiles to solve the problem of prints not matching their monitors!
PrintFix provides a user-friendly solution for photographers frustrated by prints that don't match their monitor, particularly when using third-party papers. When used in conjunction with the Monitor Spyder and PhotoCal, it provides an excellent method of getting prints to match what you see on the monitor. If you're wasting paper trying to get accurate prints, give PrintFix a try.
As a fine art photographer, it's extremely critical that the adjustments I make on screen, appear properly in the print. I've been through several technical books on color matching; studied how to create profiles and gone thru hundreds of dollars worth of paper and ink trying to find or create a profile that that met my criteria. I was literally floored when, on the first pass thru, your software delivered a profile that was over 90% accurate. With some modest tweaking, I was able to create a profile that was as good as the ones I'd spent so much time and money creating "by hand." While there is no "perfect" one-pass system (as far as I know) for less than about $10,000, I'd have saved hour upon hour if I'd started with PrintFIX. Along with Optical, and the Spyder, you've got a winning combination. I'm one happy camper.
I have just calibrated my monitor and built a profile for the cotton rag paper that I use on my Epson 7600 with the Pantone Colorvision Spyder Photosuite Pro. I am very happy with the results. These great results are well worth the $400+/- investment to me. The Pantone system is easy to use and has given me the ability to match my monitor to 7600 printer output very closely.
I just wanted to take the time to thank you for the monitor Spyder and software. I own a digital photography studio and we use Fuji S1 and S2 pro cameras with Macintosh computers and 3 different Epson printers (Epson 10000, Photo 2000 and Stylus 1270). Our color workflow is perfect, everything matches from one monitor to the other and prints match from one printer to the other and customers are very impressed. One of our competitors stopped by to get some drum scans done, and could not believe that our prints match our monitors so accurately! He asked how we do that. We told him that it took lots of color calibration, technicians and profile configuration, blah, blah, blah-blah, which made it sound very complicated when, in fact, all we did is use your products. He nodded as if he understood and left with a puzzled look on his face, full of envy and intrigue. I'd say that since we purchased your products, we have increased our workflow by 100%, saving long hours of color correction, printing tests and guessing how the color would come out. We used to waste rolls and rolls of expensive Epson photo paper as well as ink, which is not cheap. Thank you for making our lives easier and making work fun again!
I am a Fine Art photographer in the Rochester, NY area. I will be teaching workshops at the Genesee Center for the Arts in Rochester, NY on Digital Workflow and color management tools. These workshops will also be held for the Rochester Digital Imaging Interest Group. In past sessions I have covered using scanner based profiling packages such as Monaco EZcolor, Praxisoft WiziWYG and Profiler RGB. I am happy to say that Profiler RGB has been the hands down favorite tool of attendees. The Rochester Digital Imaging Interest Group is growing and many of our members are professional photographers and artists who are making the transition to digital imaging in their businesses. I have been asked to expand the workshops to address using more powerful hardware based tools like Profiler Pro. I would like to know if ColorVision would provide an evaluation copy of Profiler Pro for use at these workshops? Thank you for your time and consideration.
I purchased the Profiler RGB and Doctor Pro for Windows yesterday. The profiler is extremely easy to use, as was promised. No targets to worry about, just print out the target image file that is supplied, using your paper, ink and printer, and then scan it in the resulting printer. Profiler RGB does the rest. My first profile was very close, but I wanted to change it a bit. Doctor Pro lets you apply your original profile to any image inside Photoshop (it does a kind of profile to profile conversion to show you a soft proof). Then, using Photoshop color altering tools, you can touch-up the image and save the corrections into your profile - it's very cool, very simple and it works. I think it will actually be fun to profile a bunch of ink/paper combinations.
I'm fairly confident that the results from Profiler Pro with hardware measurement will not need any significant adjustment in these areas. In fact so far as the highlights are concerned you'll be gobsmacked at how well these are handled. Shadows are the best I've seen from ANY profiling package I've tried, no burnt toast to be seen anywhere :-). I haven't required a tonal adjustment either at creation or later with ANY profile. Other areas of note (my observations others may see different). Blues are handles exceptionally well as are reds (no plastic or fluorescence appearance as far as I can see). Skin tones are handled VERY well as is greyscale. I'm not sure who asked about me doing a review, but it's doubtful since so many good things have already been written. However, I think there may be some mileage in doing something which combines Profiler Pro and the ColorMouse in use :-) But all that must wait until the product is released. BTW: I can't recall if I posted anything before, but there is a review and expo of Color Visions Spyder, Photocal and Optical on my site.
I received your ColorVision Doctor Pro and Profiler RGB a couple of days ago and I started making RGB profiles and it is a dream! I have gone mad and created profiles for printing on TDK heavy weight glossy paper (a bit like the Konica) which is a damn difficult paper to print on, on account of its contrast. No problem, it prints great now.
On Doctor Pro On Profiler/CMYK
Just have to add a comment about ColorVisions's "Doctor Pro" software. This utility provides for easy and accurate MODIFICATION of existing profiles. I've used it to quickly tweak Epson printer profiles (good ones made with Profiler RGB) to perfection.
But for those that need the ultimate profile editor, there is the Color Vision Doctor PRO software. Editing of profiles is conducted inside of Adobe Photoshop using all the global tools available to this host application. Both RGB and CMYK profiles can be tuned. Doctor PRO is the ideal tool for profile editing because it utilizes the finest and most powerful editing tools known to man; Adobe Photoshop. The filters are actually automate commands inside of Photoshop. When tuning, users edit while Doctor PRO watches and reconstructs the edits on an existing loaded profile. I tested both Profiler RGB and Doctor PRO and found both products worked as advertised.
If you print using the printer vendor's inks and papers, the canned profiles that come with the printer generally work well. If you're using third-party inks and papers, though, a custom profile will improve your output immensely. Relatively inexpensive scanner-based profiling packages such as ColorVision's Profiler RGB work very well with inkjet printers, and will likely pay for themselves quickly in savings on ink and paper.
I have recently started using the Lyson SG ink with an Epson 1160 using mainly the Lyson Fine Art paper. The abilty to adjust the tone using adjustment layers is not only useful but essential given the tendency of the the image to change tone according to the ambient lighting conditions. The profiles supplied by Lyson give the ability to 'soft proof' this effect. However I was disappointed with the lack of deep blacks on any of the papers I have tried with the SG inks using the supplied profiles. This was confirmed by printing out greyscale - the Professional Satin profile showing a big dip between 90-100%. Creating a profile with Profiler RGB resolved the problem - the initial profile showed a green cast which was eliminated with the appropriate slider. The result was a neutral print with excellent tonal range including a deep rich black. I have tried this method with Lyson Prof Satin, Fine art and Epson HWM. I have needed exactly the same magenta adjustment (+6M)for each paper so far. The image on screen (Colorcal calibrated) matches the output to my satisfaction. I am not sure if Profiler RGB was designed to work with small gamut inksets but my experiments so far are giving me very consistent results.
Definitely a "thumbs UP" on a quality profiling program, that appears to give high end results, at a minimal investment, just using a flat bed scanner. (I used a Agfa Duoscan T2500, not your basic cheapo) And it couldn't be any simpler to use! The more I have experimented, the more impressed I am with ColorVision's profiling software... A truly no-brainer on the Mac side. Last night I ran a profile on Oce' photogloss paper in my Epson 9000. I ran a print and compared it to the one I did with my Epson 900 on Ilford Photogloss 9 ml. I was stunned at how close the images looked. And it was a difficult image of an acrylic painting, with neutrals, pastels and bright reds, greens and multi-hued blues. There was a very slight difference, but VERY close! This morning I ran a B&W grayscale along with a step wedge. ColorVision did a beautiful job. (no adjustments) It carried a nice crispness (internal contrast) and richness in 6-color, with barely noticable color variance in a couple of the grayscale steps.
Sounds like EZ Color - Well it's not! ColorVision's Profiler RGB sounds initially like Monaco's EZ Color. But there is little similarity between the products other than that they both use a scanner to produce ICC / ICM profiles.
The algorithm that is used by ColorVision to produce profiles works extremely well. The remarkable thing that we witnessed is that the RGBCMY color families within the profiles were very saturated, yet images printed through ColorVision profiles appear natural, and neutral. The color is denser and brighter than any other sub-$1,500 profile making software."
I generated two profiles- one for inkjet and one for Photo paper.... and the results are truly astounding. By far best I've ever seen and the software is so easy to use!!!
In short, I think it's a great program and certainly worth the money. I'm using ColorVision's Profiler and Doctor software. Consistent saturation is what I'm getting as well with ColorVision.. This program prints out a nice color target, no having to tape an IT8 chart onto paper and worry about fingerprints all over the target and tape everywhere. Just scan in the printed target and in a couple of clicks you are done." ...You can recreate the profile with Profiler and use the slider switches to correct for color tints, lightness, contrast or saturation. Or if you have Doctor you can save a step and just correct your previously made profile using the same methods.... ColorVision is a great way to make printer profiles. It's easy and there are lots of choices in terms of how little or how much you want to spend on it...
Shortly before Christmas, 1999, I started using non-Epson inks and papers in my Epson 1200 printer, because I wanted to make prints that would last more than a year or two. I quickly realized that getting prints to match what I saw on my monitor was not going to be easy, compared to what I had been getting before with Epson materials. In January 2000 I bought and downloaded a printer profiling software package called Profiler RGB. It was extremely simple to use and it made a great improvement in the quality of my prints. For the first time I could print on a variety of paper types and have the prints look almost identical. I have recently been certified as a Juried Member of the Crafts Council of New Brunswick, Canada, after submitting prints made on watercolour paper using ColorVision's Profiler software.
I put the copy of ColorVision's Profiler RGB which you donated to Columbus College of Art and Design to work tonight in preparation for the Digital Designers Group meeting in May titled "Printers, Papers and Profiles". Wow. it was so easy and worked so well. Same image, 12 papers from matte to glossy to art papers, and they all came out the same except for the differences in reflectivity of the stocks. I am amazed at the superb neutrals with no work at all. I tweaked a few profiles just for the fun of it. I love this thing!!
It is tough to please everyone when sharing results from scientific testing of any kind. For years, I was a black and white film sesitometrist - studying and testing photographic materials. My experience there tells me that sometimes results are what we want to see, not what they actually are. I believe in a measured approach to testing materials- play part scientific and part empirical. That is to say, after following the scientific methods, play with the stuff in real world environments Using this approach, we dove into color management, first testing Colorblind, and then Kodak color flow, then ColorVision Profiler RGB. Since our goal was producing pleasing photographic images - we did the science, and then we just played for a while. Our results? We like like Profiler RGB. The interface was easy and intuitive, the resulting profiles were 'tweak able' - the process a snap. Since we have been testing, we have been able to almost instantly generate profiles with Profiler RGB, and print on exotic papers with several inks. It works with us, and we like it.
"I've been printing conventional color B&W prints my entire career in photography spanning 25 years. But I've been in love with the 'look' of ink on paper prints since seeing Dye Transfer prints some 20 years ago, and more recently Iris "Giclee" fine art photographic prints. Thank you Profiler RGB... "Now I can produce prints on my desktop that are very similar to both of these processes in terms of aesthetics and archival longevity, and with the help of color management I can control the process to a remarkable degree. "Profiler RGB builds very accurate printer profiles, and it's fast and easy to use. With a hardware calibrated monitor and Profiler RGB, my first print is the 'final' 80 to 90% of the time! "I particularly like the soft proof preview feature in Profiler RGB because it lets you see the effect a particular ink and paper combination will introduce before you make the first print, and what comes off the printer looks just like the preview on your screen! I consider this neat trick a minor miracle. "Thank you Profiler RGB!"
Profiler RGB offers the best shadow detail and overall color fidelity of any of the off the shelf software packages. I've used it successfully with both the Epson 1200 and 1270. It is also the easiest to use of any of the scanner based printer profilers, as it doesn't require a special scanner target.
|
 |
|
 |
©2008 Datacolor. Datacolor, and other Datacolor product trademarks are the property of Datacolor. About Datacolor | Conditions of Sale and Site Terms | Privacy Policy | Contact Us |
