Profile Prism and my Canons

[Tysonic]

After looking at my options for profiling my i960 and i9900, I decided to do it myself with Profile Prism from www.ddisoftware.com. For $79, you get the software, two targets, and great customer service. This software will allow you to profile your scanner, printer, monitor, and camera. Before you purchase, make sure your scanner is up to snuff. I used an HP 4570c for my custom profiles and Red Rivers Polar Gloss paper (www.redrivercatalog.com).

This first picture is using Red River's profiles direct from their website:

Notice the huge magenta cast on the i960 side. This drove me nuts with Black and White prints. The i9900 profile from Red River is much better with the oranges and greens and only a slight magenta cast. They are free however.

Profile Prism improved on these pictures substantially:

You can even see the increased gamut of the i9900 in this shot. The oranges are better as are the greens. But now I can use either printer and get almost identical shots. I will be using my i960 as a dedicated 4x6 printer.

The best thing about this Profile Prism is the ability to profile whenever you want. Get new paper? Profile it. Get new third party ink? Profile it. All for the $79 price tag. I have profiled the Polar Gloss and Polar Satin with OEM ink on both printers (4 profiles). There's one place online that charges $40 per profile, that's $120!

In the newest version of Profile Prism you can even custom correct your printer profile to tweak it just right. And it's all on the screen, side by side, so you match the printer profile to your monitor.

Pictures were printed and scanned as follows:

Both pictures printed on 1 sheet of Red River Polar Gloss per printer with a 24hr drying time.

Used Qimage with correct Red River Profile on each printer. Settings were MAX/MAX/Vector/5, with no filters applied.
Printer Driver settings were: Photo Paper Pro, 1 quality, diffusion, no profile.
Scanned at 300dpi, no color enhancement, no sharpening.

Combined in Photoshop CS, no other enhancements used, scaled for web from original 12mb file.

The new custom profiles were used for the Profile Prism (PP) picture. Same settings were used in Qimage.

Golf course/fountain picture taken with Oly c3000 with UV lens in HQ mode.
Sunset picture taken with Sony DSC-V1, don't know particulars.

The washed out nature of the picture is not present in the originals and likely due to my scanner (hp 4570c).

Tyson

 

[Nifty]

Wow, Tyson!

Great post! Super images and wonderful information. Very helpful!

 

[Guest]

The good thing is that your another person that has confirmed that my Canon i960 prints with a bit of too much magenta. I have the same problem. I used to do color photography and correcting it is easy - in the printer driver I just manually adjust magenta bar to -7. Now Canon provides a very nifty program - Easy-Photo Print for your everyday printing does a really good job at some cropping and now the rev 3 does even some pretty good retouching. BUT, it always bypasses the user set color profile! Any way to be able to go to your own??? I am relly pleased with this printer and the results and if I could solve this problem Life would be perfect ( well until tomorrow at least).
thanks

 

[Tysonic]

That's the main reason I went for Qimage [www.ddisoftware.com], but you could try this:

Change the settings in the print driver by going to control panel, printers and opening the properties for it. Then change the settings appropriatly (M -7 in your case, along with anything else). This will be the default for printing from Easy Print and every other program you have until you change it back.

I don't think Easy print will overide these settings, but give it a shot.

Tyson Schettig

 

[ken]

Hello,
My name is Ken
I am new to the forum as well as to digital imaging. I am not familiar with profiling or how it is done. However, it seems important if it gets the camera, PC and picture all talking the same dialect in the same language. Can you discuss the process?
My equipment: Sony VAIO GRZ notebook, Canon 10D, Canon i9900
www.world-scapes.com
Thanks..........

 

[Tysonic]

First off start here:
http://www.ddisoftware.com/prism/about.htm

If it seems a bit too much, you can start with a custom profile done by:
http://www.cathysprofiles.com/

But the first thing you need to do is get your monitor calibrated. I use the Pantone ColorPlus model and it seems to be pretty good for home use (not Pro).

The basic process is get your paper/ink combo to match your screen. With so many papers available, Profile Prism is the best deal going if you have a compatabile scanner.

Tyson

 

[ken]

Hi Tysonic,
Thanks for the info
Ken

 

[JV]

I am considering Profile Prism for profiling my iP8500 printer using BulkInkJetCarts with Kirkland paper.

In an e-mail from mchaney@ddisoftware scanner recommendations were:

Canon LiDE 80 as the most cost effective scanner with top notch quality.
The lowest price I found was $132 including shipping from PCconnections.

Low End Epson was also recommended as all the newest Epsons are very capable also.

He did not comment on my question on scanning with a cammera as to how close an alignment is required.
They did not recommend scanning with a camera on their web site.

The total for Profile Prism and scanner would be $79+ship+132=about $220

The other alternative would be PrintFIX at about $250. It was not recommended by www.luminous-landscape.com
but was recommended by www.northlight-images.co.uk for profiling printers for third party inks and papers.

At this point the best approach is not clear to me.

JV

 

[fotofreek]

Rich noted that his i960 printed with too much magenta. It is my feeling that there is a tendancy for these printers to produced slightly oversaturated prints in general. I did side by side photo prints (manual, not automatic) on Canon photo paper pro, Epson premium glossy paper, Epson glossy photo paper, and Kirkland photo glossy paper. I used the three settings for glossy photo papers, Pro, Plus, and Glossy photo paper and it was my feeling that the prints were oversaturated, especially in the magenta area when using the Photo paper Pro setting and became less oversaturated with each drop down in level of Canon photo paper setting. Without considering that the problem might just be the Magenta output I dropped the overall intensity by -2 increments and settled on
-4 to -6 as the most pleasing prints in my eyes. The results were excellent with Kirkland Glossy photo paper and either OEM or MIS inks with manual setting. I've refined my settings somewhat by "eyeballing" the picture before printing and either dropping the Magenta setting alone or lowering intensity. The good news is that with aftermarket inks and Kirkland paper I don't mind throwing away a few prints to zero in on the most pleasing setting for the final result. Most of the manipulation revolves around skin tone as this is the most critical area for people viewing the prints. Even when I get the "best" result on screen with Photoshop Elements before printing, I still have to sometimes adjust the output after the first print depending on the subject's coloring - more florid, more tan, more fair, etc in skin tones. With prints that do not have a human subject I leave manual setting on with no plus or minus adjustments. I also did my own darkroom work for 25 years and can really appreciate my "digital darkroom!"

 

[Grandad35]

The other alternative would be PrintFIX at about $250. It was not recommended by www.luminous-landscape.com but was recommended by www.northlight-images.co.uk for profiling printers for third party inks and papers.

JV,

I think that you were very kind when you said that PrintFIX was not recommended by Luminous Landscape - it wouldn't load on their Mac and it crashed their PC to the point where it wouldn't even boot! The other review wasn't exactly glowing, but at least it wasn't negative. Unfortunately, your printer was not listed as being supported - there is a statement in the review that it won't work on a non-supported printer.