A big part of profiling in my opinion is keeping your machines clean and serviced as well. Many will jump to the "I need to profile" when the issue is hardware.
I haven't tried the xrite profile generator, I was told it didn't play too well with Caldera.
I have to profile fabric, and most have grain. In Onyx I would rotate the swatches to get the best average from both directions. It was nice because the software had you scan the whole set once, and go back and do the verification (this is where I could change up fabric grain) Caldera has you do your verification scan right after.
I'd love a barberi but $8,000 is a tough sale when we have nice workable/neutral/consistent profiles in use.
I think the larger aperture would do wonders on the dimensional nature of the grain. I'd also like the transmissive option for backlit fabric.
Youve always seemed pretty knowledgable in ICC profiles. Did you learn from any resources, or just experimenting?
I've read most of the onyx ICC pages, but I didn't find much to do with curves / ink limiting besides the default stuff. I'd love.to learn to profile better, but I don't have much time during the work day to experiment... So most of my understanding comes from reading. Any websites / tutorials you know of that's helpful?
I too would like to get in to the curve tweaking a bit.
@Ikarusu
I learned a slew from this site about profiling, however I was already pretty proficient in ink limiting and standard density calibrations.
I agree with Pauly about just spending the time in testing. Since we all run different gear, software and ink there is never absolute instruction.
In all honesty I think the prepress workflow is every bit as important as icc profiling, or creating a print condition.
We get ghastly files that the best profile in the world couldn't solve.
What is tough for us about changing ANYTHING up is the nature of fabric and how long it lasts. We're constantly called on to "do what we did last time" or replace only one panel out of five.
This is why my blood boils when people think they can buy an i1 and boom, everything is resolved! We could never achieve those requests without strict process control either in prepress or equipment...all the way down to humidity and environment.
One of the scariest things I've had to do was a machine and rip transition during a production cycle! The grand format machines were too big to keep the old and new running!
Having good profiles was pretty key, even though I couldn't sew product from old to new. Having neutral grays makes you much more comfortable during something like this.
Nobody here had created a successful profile with our gear before I started working here. All density and eye. They told me .icc profiling couldn't be done! Right off the bat our color went from the likes of color newspaper ads to glossy magazine covers...it was that stark. Not to mention all of time we save now in spot color matching!
It almost broke my heart to unplug that gnarly old beast...I had named her Edna.
Our new machine and ink has a weaker color gamut, but the runability and consistency makes up for it in most cases.
I'll have to give the new onyx a demo...we can always roll back to caldera if an old job comes back to haunt us.
Thanks for the post Pauly!
