ArgyllCMS printer profile GUI is on it's way

[crenedecotret]

I also like the idea of the two step process with a pre-conditioning profile. I just have to admit that I have no idea how this process works with Argyll. My knowledge about the whole topic is sadly pretty limited.
When Knut (aka soul-traveller, knowing or know) released his Argyll Printer Profiler script it was the first time I managed to create profiles with my i1Studio and I learned from there. With that starting point I read more of the Argyll documentation and had a few chats with the AI about it. However it is a lot to learn.
I was a aware that this pre-conditioning process exists but not what is required for it. I thought you would simply throw in an icc that you created before and it would then magically work. Therefore I implemented a logic that when the user selects an icc profile for this it gets copied to the working folder and „pre_“ ist added at the beginning of the filename if it is not already there. Just so this icc profile dies not get deleted in the process.
But reading your post and the the documentation I figured that some additional configuration is necessary. Of course it would be pretty easy at this point to automatically set those settings when the user selects a pre-conditioning profile (even in the easy guided mode), but the problem is: I don‘t know which settings would be correct or good.

It seems like you know a lot about how things are supposed to work. So maybe we could „team up“ for further improvements. You also seem to have experience with Linux which I don‘t have - at all.
I figured that for the app to be of interest for people I needed to add support for Windows instead of making it macOS only. But the last time I had a Windows machine it came with Windows 7. I set up a Win11 for ARM virtual machine on my MacBook just for developing the app. But even getting the Argyll driver for the i1Studio to work was a pain because I needed to disable some system security thing before it would allow me to install it. So Intried to implement a fix for this in the app as well but to be honest I have not yet tested if it works.
So for Windows I have at least a rough idea about how things should be working but I would probably not be able to make this thing compatible with Linux.

Hello! Typically you do throw an existing profile at targen and it will magically give you patches.

I just decided to do something different to try and get more useful patches, then combine the information for the first and second profile, something argyllcms dosent do

 

[crenedecotret]

I am working on a similar project but have not gotten much feedback here yet. My app ChromIQ is a GUI for the printing part of Argyll. In the beginning it was MacOS only but in the latest beta releases it works with Windows as well (but might still have some issues). I don‘t have this nice comparison view that you offer but I managed to create some profiles with it.

https://github.com/itsab1989/ChromIQ

This video is from an earlier version of the app. I made it for the person (Thanks again Knut!) who inspired me to do this and it shows the measurement and refinement process (more experienced users will probably not need this):

It looks waaayyyyyy better than mine! You clearly invested a lot of time in this. I just used the most common options for rgb printers

 

[itsab1989]

I saw a video about coding with Claude Code and how easy it would be. This was the project that came to my mind immediately. Turned out that it wasn‘t so easy after all if you have NO coding experience at all. But after I trashed my first attempt the second app looked way better and I spent the last few weeks improving it. Had to buy a second Claude account because the limits are way too low to get any work done. I was lucky that they added Claude Design. I fed it with the GitHub link and asked it to create a manual - just for fun. But I liked the design so much that I used it for the app itself. It was supposed to work more or less automated but in the end I had to to do every aspect of the design manually (manually in this case means giving Claude step by step instructions what it should do).

So I think I have a good base but I am still lacking the expertise about Argyll itself and there is no way I can test everything on my own.
Eveything is open source. So if you think there is something missing feel free to play with it and implement those features.

After reading your post about the pre-conditioning process I checked the Argyll documentation for targen. It says that you have to choose some additional options for it to work, choosing the profile alone would not be enough. But I have no idea what I should set.

I hope I managed to find a good balance between „easy to use for a beginner“ and „everything an advanced user desires“.
If it works as it is supposed to you can save the settings You make on every tabs as defaults for this and in the manual modules with more options you can save multiple user presets with a name for each.

Had some sleepless nights until I got this far and I would really like to make it a good solution for printer profiling with Argyll. I added calibration options as an afterthought but I have even less experience with this. The way I implemented this is derived from my conversations with Claude and me trying to understand the Argyll documentation. That‘s why it is disabled by default.

I was laughing a little bit when I read about how you implemented it so the user can click on any strip that he wants to re-measure. That you simulated the keyboard inputs for this. It was funny because I am doing the exact same thing for my guided refinement process.
I told Claude my idea and it was like „We can‘t do this. Chartread does not support direct inputs regarding which strip it should measure. Show the user a window with instructions instead“. I replied: „But couldn‘t you simply emulate the inputs to move to the right strip?“. And then Claude told what a great idea it was


EDIT:

Here is an updated version of the AI generated manual:

https://itsab1989.github.io/ChromIQ/manual.html