"Profile Prism" work ok? Uses scanner rather than spectrocolorimeter?

[l_d_allan]

I suggest getting profile prism. For the price of a few profiles you can do them yourself, and for the most parts it works excellently. Plus you can profile for different papers. Also it's important to calibrate your monitor, profile prism helps with that too.

I've seen several references to "Profile Prism", but I was scratching my head on how it works.

Win7 include a way to make test prints for Color Management, but I was also scratching my head on what you do after making a print. Or perhaps is came with my Canon Pro 9000-2 software bundle. It says "Canon Utilities Color Management Tool Pro V2.0.1" at the top.

Do these use a scanner, and then the software analyses the file from the scanner? I've rarely used a scanner and never owned one. I did use one at our local Sam's Club to get jpeg's from older b/w prints. They semed ok, but I had no basis of comparison on whether it did a good, poor, so-so, or excellent job.

Seems like the scanner would have to be pretty well calibrated for color fidelity to get usable results, but I am ignorant about this. Resolution matters for OCR, but it would seem less so for grids with rectangular or triangular color splotches.

I was taking pictures of art work at the portrait class my wife attends. The idea was to provide jpegs and prints of their work. That is a challenging assignment to my less-than-adequate Color Management so far, as you've got a real "ground truth" painting to compare to. ALso challenging lighting.

Anyway, a participant came up to me to ask what I was doing, and expressed ... "if the painting is small, I just clean the platen, and scan it."

A light bulb came on about how " Profile Prism" and the Canon Color Management Tool might work, but I am curious whether the scan quality would be good enough to make a valid profile. Better than nothing? Quite good? Suitable for a hobbyist but not a professional selling prints (for which a real print profile device with a spectrocolorimeter should be used?)

My speculation is that the Canon Utilities Color Management Tool Pro V2.0.1 might work pretty well. I have gotten on good terms with the department manager at our local Sam's Club, so I could work with her on a cleaned, calibrated Fuji/Kodak commercial scanner with the two pages printed by the Canon utility.

 

[RMM]

See my response to your other post. Does the Canon utility have a specified color target to scan against?

 

[l_d_allan]

It apparently ineracts with x-Rite hardware. I'm unclear how this works together. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with a scanner.

 

[RMM]

It apparently ineracts with x-Rite hardware. I'm unclear how this works together. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with a scanner.

? I don't think so.

 

[l_d_allan]

Here's the info from the Canon Color Management Tool Pro V2.0.1 Readme.txt ...

The following printers are compatible with this product:

ICC profile creation: Pro9500 Mark II series,
Pro9000 Mark II series,
Pro9500 series, Pro9000
Calibration function: Pro9500 Mark II series

< Measuring Instrument Compatible with This Product >

The following measuring instrument is compatible with this product:

X-Rite Eye-One Series with Eye-One Pro Spectrophotometer included

Note:
- Before you use this product, you must install the application
software that comes with the measuring instrument.
- The calibration base plate, chart measuring ruler, and
measurement backup board are also required as well as
the measuring instrument.

 

[aussierob]

Do these use a scanner, and then the software analyses the file from the scanner? I've rarely used a scanner and never owned one. I did use one at our local Sam's Club to get jpeg's from older b/w prints. They semed ok, but I had no basis of comparison on whether it did a good, poor, so-so, or excellent job.

Profile Prism does use a scanner, and the software includes an IT8 target that gets scanned at the same time as the printed target (on your paper/ink system). Your scanner needs to be able to provide a 48 bit RAW scan for Profile Prism to use to get the best results, and I would suggest Vuescan as the scanning software. I use an Epson V700 Photo as the scanner with Vuescan as the scanning software.

It would seem that the canon software you refer to interacts with the X-rite One Spectrophotomer to read the printed target (on your paper/ink system) and then produce the profile. What it all boils down to is a matter of economics. If you are comfortable with scanning and have acccess to Vuescan then profile prism can produce an acceptable profile.

However, given your level of experience I would suggest at least contacting Mike Chaney at DDISoftware before jumping in. If you are going to sell the prints professionally then you may be better served getting the profile(s) professionally done to save headaches.

 

[qwertydude]

If you're going to be just doing the scanning and printing as a hobby profile prism will work just fine. Mostly because your scanner or camera is going to be a limiting device when it comes to accuracy. Now if you're going to be printing high resolution scans from a professional scanner then it might make sense to get your printer calibrated. But this is also assuming your printer is going to be able to print the high gamut in the first place. Hobby refills with dye ink, it'll look good but if people display your print and it fades in a couple years they might not be too happy. But convert to a pigment ink and profile prism and a decent scanner should get you good enough, the reduced gamut of off the shelf pigment inks should be able to be handled by profile prism. I calibrated mine with profile prism and I use a cheap no name CISS on my Epson Artisan 50, if I take a high resolution photo and scan it on my Epson V30 and make a photo print side by side it's darn close and separate you'd be hard pressed to discern which is the original and which is the copy.

 

[msmart]

I just posted a question over at Mike's Profile Prism forum asking if I'll be able to create a good profile using Profile Prism for Taiyo-Yuden (now JVC) WaterShield DVD discs ==> HERE.

I thought I would post here to help generate "traffic" to it or possibly get a reply here as this forum has more visits.

 

[qwertydude]

I've found that the coating on those JVC discs to be only ok when it comes to color reproduction, not nearly as wide a coverage of the Lab Space as even a medium quality paper like Canon's premium plus glossy II so Profile Prism will work perfectly with things like a printable disc. It seems people are so afraid of Profile Prism for no reason. It's actually quite good and better than living with canned profiles because they only work for one specific printer, ink, paper combination. And if you're already refilling your color is off, heck the stock profile is usually off even with stock ink and stock paper.

http://xritephoto.com/ph_toolframe.aspx?action=coloriq

Try this test. If you can't get 100% on this test then I'm betting you won't be able to discern a spectro-made profile from profile prism. Most any person can hardly tell a 48 bit color scan from a 24 bit and yet profile prism can differentiate the color gradients between them. I'd say it's accurate enough.

 

[msmart]

Thanks for the reassuring note, but I guess the concern I have is that in step 5 of the Printer Profiling steps, it says to "Print the "printer-target-40.tif" file at its original size (approx. 7.92 x 5.77 inches)". Since the DVD is smaller than that and has a hole in the middle, can PP create a good profile when scanning the DVD back in? A thought I had was to print sections of the file on multiple discs to scan, or even cutting them up after printing to create a mosaic that approaches the full size image. Am I over thinking this?

If you've created a profile for DVD discs, what steps did you use?