Do you profle your own media?

[Bigdawg]

Just wondering how many of you profile your own media, use someone else to do it for you or use just the standard, manufacturer provided profiles.

I've found the a get a better print (of course) when I pull a profile myself, but to be honest the manufacturer profiles I've used have been decent and I wouldn't have questioned the prints until I did my own profile.

So what do you all think? And if you aren't profiling your own material, why not?

 

[Gino]

We use some defaults, doctored up a few default profiles and we've created a few of our own.

Several reasons have forced us into the third choice. Some we created for greater speed, some for better color or less banding and some just because the manufacturers' profile plain sucked big time. We also change them a little on the fly for various reasons.

We even use profiles for media that is profiles for something entirely different. ​

 

[Bigdawg]

We even use profiles for media that is profiles for something entirely different.

Yeah me too...

 

[GK]

After you get good at doing your own its hard to imagine it any other way. Especially once you calibrate everything in your production work-flow so it is all sync'd.

 

[Fuzzbuster]

Same.....

That`s why i hate changing medias when i have a good thing going.

 

[hammered]

Im just getting into this. Ive found that my old tech printer (PC60) isnt supported by ...anything. Id have thought that with many manufactures advertising certain lines of product was thermal printable there would be something. Ive just Googled Profile editing and off to wasting material learning it.

 

[Matt Cuellar]

A little different insight since I'm a distributor and not an end-user...
But yes, I custom write all of our ICC profiles for Wasatch, Onyx, Flexi. I've tried several manufacture profiles, adjusted settings, etc, and nothing beats something custom made in my opinion. Once you get the hang of it, it can be a very quick and efficient process.

 

[jdigital]

We have better outcomes when we profile ourselves. I've tried the manufacturer profiles but to me they're horrible. have great success doing it ourselves. We have Onyx postershop and wasatch rips

 

[mnapuran]

I would like to create my own profiles.... equipment costs are keeping me from doing it right now.

Would be nice to find a few local (few hundred miles?) members to go in and buy the setup and share it for making our own profiles. Easier to cost justify that way. Anyone semi-near Dallas wanna do this?

 

[ChiknNutz]

I cannot recommend highly enough creating your own profiles for YOUR shop because each will have unique conditions..even when using the same printer and materials. Once you do, you'll wonder why you didn't do so before and then you're not locked into any specific printer/ink/media combo either!

 

[schurms]

Can I ask as I have a rip that seems to be different than everyone else. If for instance you are in photoshop and have a file that you save with a profile in it why is it that you need all these profiles done in your printer ? I use my computer screen for color which is matched to a indigo printer that does stuff for us locally. The stuff I print on my mutoh matches the indigo and our inhouse laser jet. I have found that gloss materials need less ink than matte but I have always gotten color. I have found that the profiles provided with my RIP are worthless. I have my printer being profiled by my software which in my case is photoshop. This has been working for me, what is everyone else experiencing ? I have a Ciberprint RIP.

 

[benjercorp]

Bigdawg me I'll recomend that you do your own profiling why simply because the enviroment where the manufacturer made the profile is not the same as yours and also metamerism may occur once you know how to do it you'll see the big difference first start profiling your monitor and then the printers woo hoo !!!

 

[ProWraps™]

using flex 8.5 here. the arlon profile is the best that we have found. we have printed on arlon media, 3m media, and a various amount of perf. it seems to have the best mix. great profile. we use the graphics 2 variable dot version.

 

[Ken]

I tweak existing profiles sometimes. Usually ink density level.
Cheers!
Ken

 

[TorturdChaos]

Don't have the equipment to do our own profiles. Probably would learn how to do it if we did the have equipment. I have tweaked a couple profiles tho.

 

[ZacCarter]

Profiling media as we speak.

We have a gretag macbeth pro I-one in house.

It's amazing.