[Tool] ChromIQ – a macOS and Windows GUI for ArgyllCMS printer profiling (v3.0.0 beta 10)

[pharmacist]

Yes it works:

Now I have to see softproofing in PS using the initial profile (upper print) and the optimized profile (lower print):

Maybe a bit distorted, because the real world result here is way more neutral in the greys for the optimized profile (using the preconditioning method). The standard profile has a greenish glow (Epson ET-18100 NO grey ink only CcMmYK inks).

 

[pharmacist]

I am impressed. What I am actually doing now is a deluxe version of the Colormunki/i1Studio 50 + 50 patch method, but now I am using 336 patches for the initial profile/target and from the first reading it generates and estimates the neutral axis for which it generates new measure points to extrapolate and determine the final true neutral axis and corrects for the greys to be printed finally as good as possible to be truely neutral.

 

[Alan G]

I am impressed. What I am actually doing now is a deluxe version of the Colormunki/i1Studio 50 + 50 patch method, but now I am using 336 patches for the initial profile/target and from the first reading it generates and estimates the neutral axis for which it generates new measure points to extrapolate and determine the final true neutral axis and corrects for the greys to be printed finally as good as possible to be truely neutral.

What do you use for the final targen command? I just printed a 506 patch set for my i1 Pro and will measure it tomorrow. I plan to do a three page patc set for the final profile (1518 patches) assuming I have no problems reading the one page at the 0.95 scale.

 

[pharmacist]

The preconditioning function in the manual option does not work. I tried 64 neutral steps in manual, but it does not appear in the targen window:

In the guided mode:

There is -n33 (neutral steps, I believe Sebastian uses this amount as standard). Unfortunately it not available in the manual mode, despite it I choosed -n64:

@itsab1989 :

I have discovered that the scanning of rows it does give an error when I reread the same row again: it presumes it is the next row, despite it has totally different patch layout. In command mode I often get the image: you have probably read row Y rather than X, do you want to proceed ? Is this known to you ? Not in the case with ChromeIQ: it just proceed when the right amount of patches is read, even if the row patch layout is totally different from the expected color values.

 

[itsab1989]

@pharmacist
Neutral axis steps bug (hopefully) fixed in 3.7.32.
For the other bug: in the measure tab warnings are suppressed by default. Enable them

 

[pharmacist]

Thanks for the update. I did not see the warning tab

 

[Alan G]

I can confirm @pharmacist finding. It also did not work in the manual mode for me either. If I drop down to the basic mode, it does work and scales up the number of near neutrals based on the total number of patches.

EDIT: sorry I replied to a bug that was just fixed. I'll download the new version.

 

[itsab1989]

Nevermind. Believe me I am sorry that things like this continue to happen. I honestly thought that the targen and printtarg logic would be the easiest part of the whole app because it basically only passes the argument through to Argyll. But once you add some conditions into it it gets more and more complex and things can start to break. I am happy for every bug that I find myself before you do so I can fix it. Hopefully this works now and nothing else is broken...

@crenedecotret
I was thinking about your preconditioning approach and how you do it. But I don't know if I got it right. What I think you do is the following:
You make a regular profiling run from start to beginning - create a target with say 500 patches, print, measure, build the profile. You then save the measurement data from the ti3 file.
On your refinement run with the preconditioning profile you do the same steps again and when the measurement is finished you merge the measurement data from the first ti3 file and the second one into one ti3 file and build the profile from that afterwards. Would this be correct?
If yes that would be something I think I could implement as well but would require more testing again. because everythiing you add could potentially break other things. I would need to find conditions for this to work so it does not interfere with any other parts of the app.
My first idea would be to make this an optional choice in the settings window like the ChromIQ clipborder. Something like "ChromIQ pre-conditioning process (idea of you)". So we could leave this optional until it is fully fleshed out.
I would then bind it somehow to enabling the pre-conditioning profile options in the create chart tabs module.
Instead of only adding the "pre_" prefix to the icc profile it would also save the content of the ti3 file into a txt
file maybe with a "good" name so I can tell the app to not delete like the other files it when the user clicks create profile again. And when the measurement is done I would then make this text file the condition that would trigger the merging process. So this data would then be added to the ti3 before it is handed over to the build profile tab / colprof. Would this be correct? Does this make sense?

Edit:
I just read the description of your process in your other thread and I am lacking the knowledge to fully understand what and how you do it


Edit 2:
3.7.33 now supports loading i1Profiler measurement data into the build profile tab by using txt2ti2 when a txt file is selected. Based on the information of @pharmacist here:
https://www.printerknowledge.com/th...-spectro-with-i1profiler-and-argyllcms.17061/

 

[pharmacist]

So I tried the neutral axis argument (-n64) again and this time I see clearly the colored (purplish) grey patches after the grey patches row (-g64), based on the reading of the initial preconditioning target.

I tried to load a special ti1 file that is based on the TC9.18 combined with the extended grey target of SpyderPrint that has multiple stained grey ramps around the neutral axis to accurate volume fit the neutral axis: Because of those multiple stained near neutral patches it can accurately determine the exact neutral axis of your printer/ink/paper combination without the need of a preconditioning profile.

The most interesting patch layout is on page 2 where you can clearly see the collection of multiple near neutral ramps along the neutral axis to accurate describe the exact position of the neutral axis, thus giving superior neutral grays without a preconditioning profile:

 

[pharmacist]

Strange choice of grey steps based on the patch count reference: When choosing a higher patch count reference, the amount of grey steps drops instead of increasing:

For 560 patch count reference: 33 grey steps

Increasing the patch count reference to double 1140 the grey steps decreases to 16:

When decreasing patch count reference the amount of greys strangely increases. (280 patches => 66 grey steps):

@itsab1989 : Maybe we should be use another formula to inject the amount of grey steps, maybe something like the amount of grey steps = minimum 16 for a minimum150 patches and adding 4 extra per 100 patches extra up to a maximum of 128 for the guided modus operandi, so you will get 32 for a patch count of 560. For the Black/White points a minimum of 2/2 for 150 patches increasing with 1 per 200 extra patches with a maximum of 6/6 (I don't see any benefits with more black/white points).