- Joined
- May 29, 2007
- Messages
- 2,826
- Reaction score
- 1,633
- Points
- 313
- Location
- Ghent, Belgium
- Printer Model
- SC-900 ET-8550 WF-7840 TS705
A lot of second hand i1Pro spectrophotometers (both the older i1Pro1 and the newer i1Pro2) have no license for RGB and CMYK printer profiling (in best cases only the monitor profiling option).
Not everybody is found of the ArgyllCMS cryptic commands to create printer profiles, despite the generated targets are to me far superior to the ones created by i1Profiler (especially the strange patch generator that tends to completely throw away all grey patches when you increase the patch count with just 1 extra patch from let's say 24 to 0 grey patches in favor of more colored patches). But the great advantage of the i1Profiler is the visually more intuitive graphical user interface and the driver gives you flashing lights (green, blue and red) to show you the scanning process much more easily than the rather muted sound signal the ArgyllCMS driver does (no flashing knobs
).
For this install any version of i1Profiler (the most current version is 3.8.5. NOTE this will be probably the last version that still will support the i1Pro2, because from january 2026 on the i1Pro2 is no longer supported by newer versions that will only support the i1Pro3. The i1Pro1 is only supported by version 3.1.1 or lower, so I suggest to use the last version that still supports the i1Pro1 that is the 3.1.1 version.
DISABLE the automatic upgrade search after installing your version of i1Profiler, because that will render your spectro useless (i1Pro2: stick to version 3.8.5 and i1Pro1 with version 3.1.1).
Now change to the advanced profiling option in the software and choose profiling:
For this example I choose my saved workflows instead of the patch generator (you can use this to start with), but I prefer the TC9.18 (GretagMacbeth standard target) with 918 patches and especially with extra near neutral and stained gray ramps that are not generated using the standard patch generator:
Now i1Profiler asks you to calibrate your spectro:
for sake of demonstration I have loaded my previous data (mxf) into the software so you can see the readings in i1Profiler:
What you want to do now after succesfull reading is to choose the save button (below the "page data" on the lower left) and export as "i1Profiler CGATS Spectral" txt file. This is very important !!! Preferable into a directory where you want to type in the coming ArgyllCMS commands to generate your profile, as an unlicensed spectro prohibits the creation of printer profile and you are stucked, but the ArgyllCMS software comes to the rescue:
now open a dos-box because now the typing in argyllcms begins: I have moved the exported M1 version of the spectral data (depending on your version of the i1Pro i1Profiler will export in only M0 (UV-cut): I1Pro1 or in dual scan M0/M1/M2: i1Pro2 versions of the reading:
For demonstration I will change the very long file name into a shorter name: testprofile.txt
Now type in: txt2ti3 -2 -v testprofile.txt testprofile
This command will convert your file into the ti3 target that argyllcms needs to create your profile:
Now it is time to create the printer profile. Use colprof and the corresponding arguments or....use my easier to use makeprofile.bat to create the profile:
now wait for the computer to generate the profile:
Your profile is now created: I use almost the same name of the original exported file name, but I change the i1Profiler into ArgyllCMS so I can now compare the profiles with the gamut viewer option in i1Profiler. NOTE: ArgyllCMS will only create version 2 profiles, but this is no problem in actual printing. First I will load the i1Profiler created profile:
Now I will import the profile generated by ArgyllCMS from the exported data that is read with i1Profiler software:
Since the data is based on the M1 version of the exported file we will choose M1-D50 version because it is an external profile now made by ArgyllCMS:
The profiles are near identical (note: because of the conversion from 0-255 values into the 0-100 values in ArgyllCMS there is a slight but unnoticeable difference):
Have fun with creating your profiles by scanning with i1profiler, export the data to an CGATS spectra data, convert it with txt3.ti3 in ArgyllCMS and generate the profile with ArgyllCMS.
Not everybody is found of the ArgyllCMS cryptic commands to create printer profiles, despite the generated targets are to me far superior to the ones created by i1Profiler (especially the strange patch generator that tends to completely throw away all grey patches when you increase the patch count with just 1 extra patch from let's say 24 to 0 grey patches in favor of more colored patches). But the great advantage of the i1Profiler is the visually more intuitive graphical user interface and the driver gives you flashing lights (green, blue and red) to show you the scanning process much more easily than the rather muted sound signal the ArgyllCMS driver does (no flashing knobs
).For this install any version of i1Profiler (the most current version is 3.8.5. NOTE this will be probably the last version that still will support the i1Pro2, because from january 2026 on the i1Pro2 is no longer supported by newer versions that will only support the i1Pro3. The i1Pro1 is only supported by version 3.1.1 or lower, so I suggest to use the last version that still supports the i1Pro1 that is the 3.1.1 version.
DISABLE the automatic upgrade search after installing your version of i1Profiler, because that will render your spectro useless (i1Pro2: stick to version 3.8.5 and i1Pro1 with version 3.1.1).
Now change to the advanced profiling option in the software and choose profiling:
For this example I choose my saved workflows instead of the patch generator (you can use this to start with), but I prefer the TC9.18 (GretagMacbeth standard target) with 918 patches and especially with extra near neutral and stained gray ramps that are not generated using the standard patch generator:
Now i1Profiler asks you to calibrate your spectro:
for sake of demonstration I have loaded my previous data (mxf) into the software so you can see the readings in i1Profiler:
What you want to do now after succesfull reading is to choose the save button (below the "page data" on the lower left) and export as "i1Profiler CGATS Spectral" txt file. This is very important !!! Preferable into a directory where you want to type in the coming ArgyllCMS commands to generate your profile, as an unlicensed spectro prohibits the creation of printer profile and you are stucked, but the ArgyllCMS software comes to the rescue:
now open a dos-box because now the typing in argyllcms begins: I have moved the exported M1 version of the spectral data (depending on your version of the i1Pro i1Profiler will export in only M0 (UV-cut): I1Pro1 or in dual scan M0/M1/M2: i1Pro2 versions of the reading:
For demonstration I will change the very long file name into a shorter name: testprofile.txt
Now type in: txt2ti3 -2 -v testprofile.txt testprofile
This command will convert your file into the ti3 target that argyllcms needs to create your profile:
Now it is time to create the printer profile. Use colprof and the corresponding arguments or....use my easier to use makeprofile.bat to create the profile:
now wait for the computer to generate the profile:
Your profile is now created: I use almost the same name of the original exported file name, but I change the i1Profiler into ArgyllCMS so I can now compare the profiles with the gamut viewer option in i1Profiler. NOTE: ArgyllCMS will only create version 2 profiles, but this is no problem in actual printing. First I will load the i1Profiler created profile:
Now I will import the profile generated by ArgyllCMS from the exported data that is read with i1Profiler software:
Since the data is based on the M1 version of the exported file we will choose M1-D50 version because it is an external profile now made by ArgyllCMS:
The profiles are near identical (note: because of the conversion from 0-255 values into the 0-100 values in ArgyllCMS there is a slight but unnoticeable difference):
Have fun with creating your profiles by scanning with i1profiler, export the data to an CGATS spectra data, convert it with txt3.ti3 in ArgyllCMS and generate the profile with ArgyllCMS.
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