ChromIQ-- Delta E errors with i1 Pro 3

[hackensacker]

Hello to all here. I was able to pick up an i1 Pro 3 for a hard-to-resist price and was excited to try it out with itsab1989's nifty ArgyllCMS GUI. But for the life of me I can't get a profile without huge Delta E errors. Rows are verified in the scan (with several retries, because it's tricky to get the i1 to land cleanly on the paper white). I've turned off bidirectional scanning, turned it back on, and increased the patch consistency tolerance, all with the same results-- most if not all of the rows are way off, in the double digits. I had a similar issue with my Colormunki, which turned out to be because I didn't realize that ChromIQ defaulted to one-way strip reading with that device, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. Targets used were the i1ProTC9.18+Spyderprint Grays and i1Pro TC9.18+Extended Grays presets, both in letter size.

I ran i1Diagnostics on the i1 and everything passed.

ChromIQ log attached for anyone who might be willing to throw a life jacket to a drowning man.

 

[W. Fisher]

Just saw this thread as I have an i1 Pro 3 also. Today I had to sort out the TC9.18 as my default save folder was not the x-rite one, so I got that sorted and printed two pages of the TC9.18.

Soon as I saw the output I knew something was way off using Epson Ultra Premium Luster from an ET-8550. I tried the TC9.18 as I read where it had more B&W patches so it should produce a better B&W image, but sadly it didn't. As you say, the Delta E was in the double digits.

I had made a normal profile prior from the default or stock setup with the i1 Profiler making 3 pages of patches. At times, I also do the second iteration run that makes three more pages to further "fine tune" the profile, but sometimes it doesn't work out well either verses just the first-made run only. My play today with the TC9.18 was much as yours with the Delta E way too high. Why they differ so much is a mystery.

Color profiling is pot luck, imho. Change the spectrophotometer (I also have the older i1 Pro 2, and a ColorMunki Photo.) and they all produce something very different at times. I even get different profiles from Windows 10 and Windows 11 as well. I also have a couple of the flatbed scanner ones that operate as a cheaper colorimeter verses the better (or so I hope!) spectrophotometers: Print Prism and the SilverFast Studio 9 AI thing. I also got the printer makers and the paper sellers profiles, and even bought a set or profiles off a web maker to compare. ALL OF THEM produce something very different from the others if you examine the tints of a gray patch scale using same paper and printer. Some fail in blues becoming purples, or reds remaining red and not orange as they should be (e.g. ColorChecker Digital SG card in the M4 and M5 patch colors.), etc. Most all fail to some degree in the highlights to neutralize the paper's OBA base with a cyan, or sickly yellow/green (puke) tint, and then may often go off in the darker shadow side as well with some green, magenta, or blue tint in the blacks. Turn on or off BPC and you may see a strange color (Green for me.) show up near the last few dark steps to the pitch black one too. Only one that seems to correct for that mess is SilverFast since it does some ring-around thing with the highlights, mids, and shadows to neutralize the colors there, but it is tricky to do as a slight change of one of the three may affect the others if they were correct to begin with, imhe. The x-rite i1 Profiler can adjust for the OBA in the papers with the OBC mode in it that makes four neutral patches to compensate for the paper's base or the viewing light, but it's also tedious, imhe.

Quite maddening really, but I've learned to pick out the best one out of the lot and toss out the others for the given situation. Change paper or ink, and maybe the viewing light, and it all starts up again with an unknown outcome while hunting for the profile winning combination.

Good luck in your profile search!

W.F.

 

[pharmacist]

Interesting that it is both a i1Pro3. I have done the target which I have designed several times with both my i1Pro1 (the older GretagMacbeth Eye One Pro version 1) and the i1Pro2 and both generates good profiles that softproof well and prints without any problems with neutral greys on my ET-18100 (no grey ink, so difficult to reproduce good neutral greys without a good profile). Did you guys try to use the command style ArgyllCMS chartread and targen command to reproduce the profiles again so we can exclude some glitches by ChromIQ interface and maybe try AdobeRGB1998.icc as target profile instead of the built-ine ClayRGB1998.icc as reference target.

 

[hackensacker]

When I posted this I had tried at least five times to create a decent profile without success, so I felt pretty certain something was off somewhere. Afterwards I decided to give it another go and got a profile with the highest Delta E around 1 and the average a third of that (I did have to rescan a few strips). I've made a few other profiles since then, and they've all turned out well, so I assume the problem was me. There is a learning curve with the i1 Pro and I think I just developed a feel for where to start and stop the strip read. (As an aside, I find the ergonomics of X-rite products, from the Colormunki to the i1 Pro, pretty abysmal.)

I agree that it's hard to find solid ground with color profiling, as different devices give different results, and even the same device gives different results at different times.

B&W on the ET-8550 is always going to be tricky because of the black dye ink's spectral response. Even if you use the VFA setting for the pigment black, you still get cyan/magenta shifts in the middle grays depending on the light source (a 2700K LED bulb in my case). Print Prism actually does a nice job with this, and is easy to recommend as the entry point for anyone who wants to start making their own profiles. For a lot more money and time, the i1 Pro (using ChromIQ, which is great) is better-- not hugely, but noticeably. I made a profile with Pharmacist's TC9.18 + extended grays, and a preconditioned one with 1160 patches, using a Print Prism profile as the source. The prints from each look nearly identical to me, with improvements in those middle grays, and cleaner near-whites.

 

[W. Fisher]

Interesting that it is both a i1Pro3. I have done the target which I have designed several times with both my i1Pro1 (the older GretagMacbeth Eye One Pro version 1) and the i1Pro2 and both generates good profiles that softproof well and prints without any problems with neutral greys on my ET-18100 (no grey ink, so difficult to reproduce good neutral greys without a good profile). Did you guys try to use the command style ArgyllCMS chartread and targen command to reproduce the profiles again so we can exclude some glitches by ChromIQ interface and maybe try AdobeRGB1998.icc as target profile instead of the built-ine ClayRGB1998.icc as reference target.

The OP used Argyll with ChromIQ in hid attached text file which may have been what tripped him up. I cannot use Argyll as I have a USB port that feeds a multi-hub that runs around 5-6 other USB devices plugged into it and Argyll fouls that up to the point even the wireless USB mouse will skip with its USB transmitter plugged into it, or it loses the card reader. So I avoid the Argyll USB matter by not using it, but still even staying within x-rite and Windows 11 (ugh!) I get bad profiles at times with either the flatbeds or spectros plugged in. Often thought of using it on some cheaper laptop and not dealing with the USB switching matter and Argyll. Aside, I have ArgyllPro on my Android phone, but it differs in its readings with the same spectrophotometer plugged into it, versus the reading it gets using the x-rite software on the Windows computer and x-rite software. Go figger!

Granted, I may be super picky in that I look for any errant a* and b* hue in some L* known gray to be <0.9 if possible, and I have hit a perfect zero at times (Very rare, but perseverance pays off - sometimes.). Only one that allows me to get there is SilverFast over reading three set gray tones with the spectrophotometer, but it takes me a lot of time to sort out their highlights, mids, and shadow hues using their editor. I use that Red River printer test image that has the L=25, L=50, and L=75 gray patches to try and null them out as best I can. Others over-look trying to null out the highlights and shadows, so the colors may differ in the highs and lows using them, imhe.

W.F.

 

[Alan G]

I've been one of the beta testers ever since the app came out. I don't use any of the pre-made target sets and prefer to make a precondition profile and use that for the final profile using Argyll tools. I've used this method for over ten years and the app certainly streamlines things. If you are trying it out for the first time, don't waste a lot of paper. Just use a one page target and read that. If everything is fine you should get a decent profile with very low error rates. I have never seen a maximum error over 1.3 or so and the average errors are always low. the high errors are usually on dark black patches on matte paper which is to be expected.

If you see high error rates, it is usually a sign that you have not set up your printer color management correctly. You also need to check the settings for every page as the windows print utility that the app uses resets unlike the Dry Creek Photo Utility that I use when manually printing targets. I have an i1 Pro rev D and can use dense patch scanning that lets me put more patches on the page.