Printer Calabrations ?

[Artur5]

Thanks to you both for such illuminating words..
I’m right on supposing that D class means daylight and F class fluorescent ?

 

[Andreas S]

Exact. A stands for Ambient light.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I expect that more older i1Pro spectros are getting offered in the next time, they are basically phased out by X-Rite, older hardware versions are considered as not (worth) to get repaired anymore, and the i1Profiler software does not support them anymore with the latest release V 3.2 as of Jan 15/2020. The i1Pro spectro comes in revisions A - D and 2 versions - supporting either the (obsolete) M0 measuring mode or the M2 mode as the UV cut model. This is not switchable.
If somebody still considers to buy an i1Pro, e.g. as a backup, at this time he should ask the seller for the X-Rite diagnostics report which gives all details about the actual status and use of the device - lamp time - number of scans etc

 

[Andreas S]

supporting either the (obsolete) M0 measuring mode or the M2 mode as the UV cut model

Sorry to correct you. Rev A,B and C supports M0 and Rev D (UV-Cut) supports M0 and M2. I've the official Xrite SDKs.
And M0 is not realy obsolet. In reality, the i1Pro2 only meaures in M0 and M1. All except M1 and M0 are fake reads. The i1Pro2 measures M0 and than an algorythm is applied to simulate M2 and all the other illuminants.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

O.k., that's fine, but when you look to offers on Ebay etc you are missing such essential information in lots of cases - no Ref info or UV cut or not and no usage info either.

 

[Artur5]

You’re spot on. This lack of information is what puts me off from buying second hand. For an article of this kind, I’d rather buy new and with warrantee. but the cost of a new unit is, in my case, a deal breaker.

On Ebay there’re on sale right now several i1Pro Rev D (usually branded ‘EFI ES-1000’ ). Prices range from 400-€600, but in many of them it isn’t clear if they include the profiling software, or if this device is compatible, for instance, with the i1Studio soft that I’m using with the Color Munki.


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[Andreas S]

but when you look to offers on Ebay etc you are missing such essential information in lots of cases - no Ref info or UV cut or not and no usage info either.

i1Pro Rev D are medium grey, they others are black/dark grey.
Don't blame the sellers, most of them got the device by sometime strange ways. Not because the devices are stolen but there are a lot of possibilities. And even the official retailers don't know everything about the device. First they are sales men and not engineers, at second xRite doesn't communicate everything. When we do our tests the software runs in developper verbose mode. So I can see all the data the device is sending to the software. That"s how I discoverd that they still uses M0 as pure data.
Konica devices send real M1; M0, D65, D50, F and so on data. They don't use fake reads, this is one of the reasons why they are more accurate. If you want the same possibility with Xrite you have to buy an eXact (but you will need special software and some DIY skills to use them to create profiles).


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[Andreas S]

IMPORTANT UPDATE

On Ebay there’re on sale right now several i1Pro Rev D (usually branded ‘EFI ES-1000’ ). Prices range from 400-€600, but in many of them it isn’t clear if they include the profiling software, or if this device is compatible, for instance, with the i1Studio soft that I’m using with the Color Munki.

Don't by them at this price. €100 is the maximum. EFI ES are OEM devices, all you can do with them by using iProfiler is screen calibration. If you want to do printer calibration too you have to use Argyll (or some other software 😇).
Most of the Xrite branded Rev D you can find are basic with iProfiler. Most people didn'y pay €1500 to update to iProfiler.

Oh, I verified something quite now. You can use them with Color Port. Ok, the soft is outdated but not realy bad stuff either. WRONG You only can use Color Port for target creation and scanning. Then you have to export the reading but you can't do calculation. By this Color Port becomes useless as you will need another soft ware to do this.


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[Ink stained Fingers]

Don't blame the sellers, most of them got the device by sometime strange ways. Not because the devices are stolen but there are a lot of possibilities.

XRite was quite successful to spread their hardware - the i1Pro - and let other companies bundle it with their software like EFI; I got my first i1Pro bundled with a Printprofiler software by Coulor Confidence, and this package was priced just above the Spyder Print at that time, a kind of promotional to lure the user to the more expensive packages. The early versions of Spyder print were just creating scrappy profiles, and they didn't get so much better since then what I have seen about a year ago. The Printprofiler sofware was very basic and only allowed a few 3 or 4 - different patch sheet sizes and with no other options, but the profiles were working - at least.

 

[Andreas S]

XRite was quite successful to spread their hardware - the i1Pro

Yes, they where. But didn't make money with the deal. This was the Gretag way. Sell a cheap device and let us hope that quantity one day bring benefits. Gretag went straight into an economical disaster and where bought by Xrite. But the Gretag directory took over strategic positions in the Xrite directory and imposed their philosophy. This made Xrite sick too and they where bought by an investement fund. The fund realized that they rather loose money than earn. So thy sold the company to other investors. They decided to cut in the cost of developpement and production to make money with this class of devices.