Creating profiles for a new Epson 3880 printer

I have a new Epson 3880 printer and would like to start creating profiles for the papers I am using with my X-rite i1 Profiler. The X-rite i1 computer interface and online help pages are not particularly easy to use and seem to leave a lot of obvious questions unanswered.

1. I created a set of 1600 patches on four 8.5 x 11 image files (400 patches each), in the i1 Profiler printer module, to be printed on each type of paper. These are untagged RGB and my images normally have a ProPhoto RGB profile. Should the i1 test charts be converted to ProPhoto RGB before I print them?

2. Will it make a difference if the test charts are printed from i1 Profiler or Photoshop CS6 or Qimage (if I decide to use it)?

I am using a pair of wide gamut NEC P221W-SV monitors calibrated and with intensity adjusted to  ~100 cd/m[sup]2[/sup]

I would like to get this right the first time so I don't end up wasting a bunch of paper and ink.

Thanks for any guidance you can give me,

Steve

The patch target files are untagged because printing them needs to be done "raw" -- with no colour transformations. The printer profiling software knows what colour information it is sending out the print pipeline and needs to compare the results that you eventually scan back in with the i1 Pro spectro, without any software anywhere in the middle making any changes to the colour information.

In fact you will not be able to print the patch targets at all from Photoshop CS6, because Adobe has removed the print option that used to be available for use with situations like this -- printing with no colour management. Thanks largely to various Apple colour management debacles in successive releases of Mac OS X, Adobe stripped the unmanaged printing workflow out of their apps and created a stand-alone printing utility that has to be used in this case.

With Qimage you potentially can print unmanaged, which you need to do with these patch targets. But this relies on setting Qimage and the Epson driver both appropriately. For that reasons I'd recommend printing the targets from i1 Profiler because it will mean one less set of things to potentially not set correctly. All you need to do is make sure the Epson driver has colour management disabled, set the correct media type corresponding to your paper, and choose the appropriate print quality and print hardware settings such as media thickness & platen gap.

Royce Howland wrote:The patch target files are untagged because printing them needs to be done "raw" -- with no colour transformations. The printer profiling software knows what colour information it is sending out the print pipeline and needs to compare the results that you eventually scan back in with the i1 Pro spectro, without any software anywhere in the middle making any changes to the colour information.

In fact you will not be able to print the patch targets at all from Photoshop CS6, because Adobe has removed the print option that used to be available for use with situations like this -- printing with no colour management. Thanks largely to various Apple colour management debacles in successive releases of Mac OS X, Adobe stripped the unmanaged printing workflow out of their apps and created a stand-alone printing utility that has to be used in this case.

With Qimage you potentially can print unmanaged, which you need to do with these patch targets. But this relies on setting Qimage and the Epson driver both appropriately. For that reasons I'd recommend printing the targets from i1 Profiler because it will mean one less set of things to potentially not set correctly. All you need to do is make sure the Epson driver has colour management disabled, set the correct media type corresponding to your paper, and choose the appropriate print quality and print hardware settings such as media thickness & platen gap.

Thanks Royce, that all makes perfect sense.

svalley wrote: I would like to get this right the first time so I don't end up wasting a bunch of paper and ink.

Thanks for any guidance you can give me,

I agree...print from the Profiler package if possible...less things to go wrong.

Some people spend some time (and paper and ink!) determining the optimum media settings prior to profiling.

What options does the package give you for specifying viewing conditions or input gamuts when generating the Perceptual Intent?  Unless it is quite limited you may want to experiment before making the final profile.

Consider pulling through a single page profile to make sure you have everything working prior to committing to multi-page targets.  I typically use a single 4x6in sheet for testing in my setup.  It's useable as a pre-conditioning profile if your profiling package can support such things.