[Tool] ChromIQ – a macOS and Windows GUI for ArgyllCMS printer profiling (v4.3.0)

[itsab1989]

The latest version 4.3.28 is removed by Windows antivirus and is regarded as a serious threat.....

Didn‘t we have that issue once already? But my AI usage limits are at 99% so I doubt I will be able to do something about it before then.

Edit:
On my virtual machine I get a warning from Windows Defender but it allows me to show information about it and then run the application anyway.

 

[MeandmyET18100]

@pharmacist Thank you man, I love you ;-) The chart I created with your help just gave me the best profile I ever had! Almost perfectly neutral! Just amazing what my old colormunki can do with the right patch chart! Man, thank you so much for your help! I'm so happy right now, looking forward to doing some nice looking prints.
If only the readings with the ruler weren't as fiddly... - sigh - I had to reread a lot of strips, I still have to get used to be slow and precise. But it's worth it, because I get a great profile with just 3 sheets of paper.
Just did my standard test print: relative colorimetric with BPC off wins hands down, great neutral colors and very very deep blacks. With BPC enabled the blacks are not nearly as deep, not even close! Colors/contrast are more dull as well. And perceptive has good (not great) blacks, but the color shifts are clearly visible and not acceptable for me.
@itsab1989 Thank you for providing this software, I couldn't have done this without it! Thank you so much for your help!
I cannot begin to describe what big a problem you solved for me.
Thanks again
M.

 

[itsab1989]

I know that feeling of having to re-read a lot of strips with the Colormunki myself. At least least ChromIQ shows you the ones that are off. The underlying command line tool does not and thus such chart layouts that you can do here would be a gamble. But as you said I think it is worth it.
And thanks a lot for the compliment. It means a lot!
Have fun printing!

 

[pharmacist]

@pharmacist Thank you man, I love you ;-) The chart I created with your help just gave me the best profile I ever had! Almost perfectly neutral! Just amazing what my old colormunki can do with the right patch chart! Man, thank you so much for your help! I'm so happy right now, looking forward to doing some nice looking prints.
If only the readings with the ruler weren't as fiddly... - sigh - I had to reread a lot of strips, I still have to get used to be slow and precise. But it's worth it, because I get a great profile with just 3 sheets of paper.
Just did my standard test print: relative colorimetric with BPC off wins hands down, great neutral colors and very very deep blacks. With BPC enabled the blacks are not nearly as deep, not even close! Colors/contrast are more dull as well. And perceptive has good (not great) blacks, but the color shifts are clearly visible and not acceptable for me.
@itsab1989 Thank you for providing this software, I couldn't have done this without it! Thank you so much for your help!
I cannot begin to describe what big a problem you solved for me.
Thanks again
M.

What you can do to improve the details in the shadows is to choose the -qh option in colprof in ghe "build profile" tab and choose for manual mode (quality high) (calculation willl take longer, but can be worth the extra calculation time) to smoothen out this area:

Increase dark region emphasis to 1.5 so increase the shadow details.

 

[MeandmyET18100]

Well, I got some news after profiling another paper with the 936 patch test chart.
It's Epson Photo Quality Inkjet paper, a thin cheap matte paper.
When I compare my test prints with the Epson Matte paper heavyweight, it seems the Matte paper still has a minimal green/yellow tint and the Photo Quality paper has a minimal magenta tint. You'll only notice this if you put the prints side by side.
It's not much, but still... If I'd want to make the profiles even better, what kind of patch set would you recommend? Run a 2nd pass? What do you think?

 

[itsab1989]

If you do the refinement process with your already created profile the way you intend to do (I assume you mean using your profile as a preconditioning profile) this will not make thinks better I guess.
This is based on the way Argyll does it and basically for the first part of this process you create any test chart that you want and then measure it. The resulting profile would then be used as a preconditioning profile. With this targen (the underlying Argyll component that chooses the colors for your chart) then has a rough idea what your printer may be capable of and what areas need more sample points than others. Also in the first round it prints grey patches where the RGB values are the same. But your printer might not print them perfectly grey (that’s part of the reason you are doing the profiling). So after the preconditioning targen can choose to create neutral patches which should come out as greys without a colorcast already ideally.
However when you create a profile out of this second chart then only the measurements from the second chart are included and the rest is thrown away.
In the settings I added an option that I guess is called ChromIq style refinement which is supposed to keep the old measurements as well for this so you have more datapoints. But it is been a while since I have added this option and as far as I know nobody has tried it yet.

If something I stated here is not true I guess Nelson will correct me

Also quite a few testers found Nelsons test chart to be as good or better then the 2-step-process. However most of them are using an i1Pro device for the measurement which might also play a role in this.

Just out of curiosity though: Would you say that overall the profiles you get with this are ok? Is the application doing its job ok?

It is pretty hard to get feedback on this actually so I am really interested in your thoughts. At this point I won’t be able to change the whole concept of the app anymore because I already put way more effort in it than I can justify. But maybe there is something that might help improve things for you and others.

 

[pharmacist]

What is the result side be side using the proprietary profile ? Did you observe under bright daylight or at home with led light ?

 

[MeandmyET18100]

@itsab1989 I can't find the option for "ChromIq style refinement"? But if the 2-step-process throws away all data from the first run, then I won't do it, of course. If you show me a way to include the data of the first run, I'm happy to do a 2nd run. Or maybe it's just better to do one run with even more patches than 936???
So far the profiles I got from the 936 patches with ChromIQ are way way better than everything I got from ccStudio. I'm really happy with the results. But I still see a minimal color cast and I'd like to get rid of it, if possible.
@pharmacist I always look at my prints in different lights, to make sure it's not the light that's causing a tint. I use full spectrum bulbs as well as LEDs and I also go outside to have bright daylight. What do you mean by "proprietary profile"? The ones that Epson provides for their papers? Those are not very good for the matte papers on the ET-18100.
Sometimes I ask my wife to look at prints. With the profiles provided by Epson she said: "Uh, that looks off." With the profiles by ccStudio she thought that some prints were quite good and some were still off. Yesterday, with the new profiles by ChromIQ she said the prints were nice. So they pass this "real world test" ;-) But, of course, if I can still see a minimal color cast, I can't "unsee" it... (Well, I can, but I have to wait a few weeks and then I don't put the prints side-by-side to compare.)

 

[itsab1989]

I guess it is good if it passes the "wife-test"

i just remembered that in one of the last versions I re-arranged some of the the settings because some of them were in a place were they did not make sense. So actually you find the setting in the measurement tab in preferences. However I still don't recommend this. This is playing around with stuff and nobody really tested this so far.

 

[MeandmyET18100]

Ok, so will I get a better profile with more patches than 936? Maybe 1248 patches on 4 sheets? And what kind of patches should I add? More neutrals or near neutrals? Which ones?
Thanks!