choosing a calibration profile

cabbey

Ok, I've searched around on this one and not found anything, so I'm gunna ask the collective dgrin wisdom bank....

I've got a pretty decent printer here, it's a Pixma Pro 9000. It takes the same ink as several other Pixma printers, most notably the IP6700d and IP6600d. Red River papers has some damn good card stocks. Here's my dilema. They have profiles for some of their papers on the Pro 9000, and they have several more profiles for the IP6600d. The paper I want to use is one that they have for the IP6600d, but not for my Pro9000. So the question is, does it seem "sane" to use the profile for the IP6600d on my Pro9000, given that they use the same ink. I ask because, frankly, the quality I'm seeing out of it isn't impressive. It's too dark and too red. If I take the profiles for a paper they have both printers profiled for, there is very little different in the profile as colorsync utility reports it, only the date of the profile generation when viewing the profile file details, the difference in the lab plot is farily minor as well. Certainly not enough to explain the prints I'm getting. (especially not in comparison to a print from smugmug via ezprints, which has an absolutely TINY color space in the smugmug hosted ezprints icc file.)

Any ideas?

Alternately, the Canon printer installed a whole PILE of profiles that have meaningless names to me, like "Canon Pro9000 SP4.icc" or SG3, or PR2... short of trying them all.... anyone think they're any use? Or know what they're for? the manual and Canon's website don't make any mention of them.

arodney

Without making a custom profile for both printers and looking real closely at them (more than just 3D gamut maps), impossible to say. When Epson released the 4800/7800/9800 printers, Bill Atkinsion made some excellent canned profiles and if memory serves me, they were broken down by model indicating slight differences in each. They may have the same inks, even the same print heads but require a different profile because they behave differently.

As to other canned profiles, well your mileage may vary. Some 3rd part paper profiles are pretty darn bad!

claudermilk

Have you tried using the profiles? If it works, then you're set, otherwise time to get a cutom one made.

cabbey

claudermilk wrote:

Have you tried using the profiles? If it works, then you're set, otherwise time to get a cutom one made.

Yeah, I've tried them, they just aren't quite getting it, quality wise.

original post wrote:

I ask because, frankly, the quality I'm seeing out of it isn't impressive. It's too dark and too red.

cabbey

arodney wrote:

Without making a custom profile for both printers and looking real closely at them (more than just 3D gamut maps), impossible to say. When Epson released the 4800/7800/9800 printers, Bill Atkinsion made some excellent canned profiles and if memory serves me, they were broken down by model indicating slight differences in each. They may have the same inks, even the same print heads but require a different profile because they behave differently.

That's what I was afraid of. :cry thanks for the confirmation.

As to other canned profiles, well your mileage may vary. Some 3rd part paper profiles are pretty darn bad!

Yeah, the one I downloaded for Kodak paper is atrocious, but so far, every one I've hit from Red River that's actually for the specific paper and printer I have... very very good.

pathfinder

The profiles from Red River for UltrPro Satin and Matte for the Epson 4000 work very nicely also.

cabbey

The funny thing about the RR profiles is this:
[HTML]<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<root>
<PCtagversion version="0.9"/>
<profileID ID="939"/>
<profileFamilyID ID=""/>
<profileVersion version="1.0"/>
<PCdistribution>
<replacementintent>new</replacementintent>
<recommendeduse>print/proof</recommendeduse>
<comments>Profile generated by CHROMiX ColorValet custom profiling service.
Licensed only for private use, not public distribution.</comments>
<scope>private</scope>
</PCdistribution>
<PCpublisher>
<name></name>
<copyright>(c)2006 CHROMiX, Inc.</copyright>
<url>http://www.chromix.com/</url&gt;
<imageurl>http://www.chromix.com/images/sitewide/cxlogocrop.gif</imageurl&gt;
</PCpublisher>
</root>
[/HTML]

arodney

cabbey wrote:

The funny thing about the RR profiles is this:
[/HTML]

Interesting! I'll ping Steve Upton over at Chromix about this. It is possible they paid a fee for this although I'd suspect Steve, who knows the innards of profiles as well as anyone in the world would have adjusted this copyright tag. Paper manufacturers can pay a licensing fee to have off the shelf profiles licensed for Distribution but its somewhat expensive (hence the reason you don't see it as often as you like).