• I want to thank all the members that have upgraded your accounts. I truly appreciate your support of the site monetarily. Supporting the site keeps this site up and running as a lot of work daily goes on behind the scenes. Click to Support Signs101 ...

Spectrophotometer and profile building

eahicks

Magna Cum Laude - School of Hard Knocks
Anyone on here build their own media profiles? What device are you using / do you recommend? Where I used to work had an Eye-One system. I liked it and was easy to use in Flexi to build profiles, and also calibrate montiors. I need the same type of setup and would like feedback on other brands, etc.

Thanks!
 

petepaz

New Member
a question i could use some info on as well. right now we use catzper. it works on the LAB %'s of the color. it's pretty good we have had good results but you still have to have a target color to start with. it doesn't scan a color and give you the formulation.
once yu give it a target color it makes a grid with %'s of the color you started with and it crates a grid you can use to print on the material the end product will be printed on. also the grid is a pdf file so you can import it in to your graphics program if you need to.
 

eahicks

Magna Cum Laude - School of Hard Knocks
x-rite iPublish Pro2 is what I'd recommend you buy now.

Actually looking at that one....but I think Boss wants cheap. :banghead:
AND my old boss will sell me the i1 Pro I used to use for $500....but current boss didn't even seem interested... ??
 

SightLine

║▌║█║▌│║▌║▌█
Depending on how much use it had $500 is not really a bargain. The halogen lamp in these have a limited life after which they must be sent to xRite to be replaced which costs about $200. If you are using Flexi you only need the device itself, it's base, and the tray for scanning the printed charts would be a huge plus but you coudl just scan them on a desk if you are careful to stay on each row just right. I've seen used ones by themselves like that on eBay for as low as a couple hundred.
 

rfulford

New Member
The EyeOne is still the way to go. The new EyeOne 2 is even better. Its more accurate and gives you the option of of taking UV or unfiltered measurements. Spring for the IO table if you can. You will not regret it. As far as software goes, it depends on how you want to operate. If your rip has profiling and you do not plan to profile anything other than printers attached to your rip then all you need is the spectro and whatever licensing to need to create profiles on your rip. Software wise the XRite Publish bundle is standard for what most of us do. It does a good job but I still prefer my copy of ProfileMaker Pro. The new xrite software is too wizardly for my taste and is a bit stripped down over ProfileMaker but that does not stop it from making good profiles. I use basICColor display 5 for my monitors and really prefer it over x-rites display profiling. I hear their other profiling software is quite good as well. You can also go with a profiling service if you like but truly, creating profiles is easy compared to setting ink restrictions, getting good linearizations, and total ink limits.
 

eahicks

Magna Cum Laude - School of Hard Knocks
Depending on how much use it had $500 is not really a bargain. The halogen lamp in these have a limited life after which they must be sent to xRite to be replaced which costs about $200. If you are using Flexi you only need the device itself, it's base, and the tray for scanning the printed charts would be a huge plus but you coudl just scan them on a desk if you are careful to stay on each row just right. I've seen used ones by themselves like that on eBay for as low as a couple hundred.

This is the entire setup....with chart tray, monitor sling, etc...and it was used maybe a total of 8 times. Still in perfect shape. Ended up buying it.
 

jhanson

New Member
Software wise the XRite Publish bundle is standard for what most of us do. It does a good job but I still prefer my copy of ProfileMaker Pro. The new xrite software is too wizardly for my taste and is a bit stripped down over ProfileMaker but that does not stop it from making good profiles.

I still think ProfileMaker has a much nicer interface than i1Profiler, but I guess it's too advanced for the QA testers at X-Rite :( However, PM5 does have some glitches in its ICC generation that cause it to really kill the color gamut for multicolor profiles. i1Profiler does a much better job on multicolor CMYK+n profiles.

Did they ever add EyeOne2 support into ProfileMaker?
 

rfulford

New Member
I still think ProfileMaker has a much nicer interface than i1Profiler, but I guess it's too advanced for the QA testers at X-Rite :( However, PM5 does have some glitches in its ICC generation that cause it to really kill the color gamut for multicolor profiles. i1Profiler does a much better job on multicolor CMYK+n profiles.

That is good to know. It is so hard to find known issues with even outdated software. What is the source of this information?

I was encountering issues like this with my Epson GS6000s when I was using ColorBurst Rip and ProfileMaker but there were also known issues with ColorBurst for the GS6000. Ultimately, I moved to ColorGate and their profiling module. I am switching the whole shop to ColorGate by October and will be done with Onyx for good I hope.

For the OP: ColorGate and Caldera have fantastic color management but may not really work with your workflow and are not cheap. Sometimes however, a little sticker shock will help you to get what you really need.
 

jhanson

New Member
For the OP: ColorGate and Caldera have fantastic color management but may not really work with your workflow and are not cheap. Sometimes however, a little sticker shock will help you to get what you really need.

For what it's worth, as of V9 Caldera is licensing the i1Prism2 engine (which is inside the current i1Profiler) for use in EasyColor. V8 used i1Prism 1, which was used in ProfileMaker 5.
 
Top