[Tool] ChromIQ – a macOS and Windows GUI for ArgyllCMS printer profiling (v3.8.0)

[itsab1989]

@pharmacist

For your first question: in manual mode I do not automatically replace the grey patches with with neutral axis steps when a pre conditioning profile is set. So you have to disable them yourself.

Second: Your reference for grey, black and white was 32 grey, 4 black, 4 white for one A4 page for the i1Pro which is roughly 560. You said when doubling the amount of total patches grey should be doubled as well up to a maximum of 128 and b&w should be multiplied by 1.5 up to a max of 8 (I am pretty sure you said this should be the maximum last time). I added a bottom of 8 grey, 2 black and 2 white so it cannot go below this.
That is the current formular. So the 560 patches are the anchor for 32g, 4b, 4w and you can change this anchor in the settings. Set it to 400 and now for 400 total patches it uses 32g, 4b, 4w. 800 would then automatically be 64w, 6b, 6w.
I did not want to hardcode any values. So I decided to set your suggested values for neutral patches in relation to the total patches. And because I knew some people would disagree with the choice I allowed some configurability. Again this is for guided which should give you good out of the box result.
Manual mode is for perfection.

But of course we could change the formular if you could come up with a better idea. But please take into consideration that some people might try to create a profile out of a target with very few patches say the regular Colormunki target and maybe 16 grey would be too much for 90 patches total.

Edit: I have to apologize. I just woke up and I am a little tired still. At first I read your comment about the neutral axis steps as a critique that something was wrong. But reading it again it sounds like you intentionally chose those settings.

So overall: Is it getting better now and does the app now behave more like what you would expect?

With the i1iSis setting in manual you can convert ti1 files into something that i1Profiler can read.
And in the build profile tab you can now load txt measurement data from i1Profiler and convert it to ti3 with txt2ti3 as you described in another thread a year ago

 

[pharmacist]

I don't understand this for the guided mode:

I choose for grey ramp reference: 290 patches and get: targen -d2 -G -e6 -B6 -g64

Increasing the amount to 1140 for the "grey ramp reference":

I choose for grey ramp reference: 1140 patches and get: targen -d2 -G -e6 -B6 -g16

So I think the formula should be inversed: now the amount of greys DECREASES with total patch count instead of increasing, which is weird.

Of course the amount grey steps for the Colormunki/i1Studio should be reduced significantly to maybe about 8 grey steps.

 

[itsab1989]

I don’t know how to phrase this option in a good way and I already predicted that it would cause confusion but the tooltip says how it works.
Whatever value you choose in the setting will give you 32g, 4b and 4w.
You set 290. So a target with 290 patches will have 32 grey, 4, black and 4 white patches now. A 576 target as you have created is roughly 290 x 2. Therefore based on our current formular you get 64g, 6b and 6w.

 

[pharmacist]

I will have a look at the programmed generated ti1 files and use manual printtarg to see how the finally tif files look like without scrambling: this way the white/black/grey patches will be put on the first rows and we can count.

Let's have a look:

With the grey ramp reference: 1140 patches we get this (1 page A4: 576 patches):

With the grey ramp reference: 290 patches we get this (1 page A4: 576 patches):

You see the amount of grey steps with the lower grey ramp reference produces MORE grey steps.

 

[itsab1989]

At this point I am wondering if you are even reading my comments

This is absolutely what is expected and the description clearly tells this. I see it might be counterintuitive but I don‘t know how I would phrase it and make it so it easier to understand.
Again I totally see where the confusion is coming from but I don‘t know how I would make this intuitive AND correct. Because it is correct now just not intuitive.

You set total 1140 patches as reference for 32 grey, 4 black and 4 white. Then you created a target with half the amount of patches. So based on the reference you chose you get half the amount of greys (=16) and white and black divided by 1,5.

 

[pharmacist]

Sorry, maybe my slight autistic look at this, but when tell me so I can appreciate it. OK, now I will have a further look at things and test other options....Maybe the heat is also playing a role

 

[itsab1989]

Nevermind
Again I really apprechiate your feedback. But despite the details you set more than 6 black and white patches are not necessary? In that case I would at least make this cut right nowso it won‘t go to 8 as before.

 

[Alan G]

I would keep the guided approach as simple as possible. Perhaps a user guide for various approaches using the manual one is needed. that is where the customization should come in. In the notes, Graeme says that you should start out with '-n' equal to the cube root of the # of patches and go up from there in terms of near neutrals.

 

[itsab1989]

This is my intention for the Guided mode. Easy, few options, but hopefully good results anyway.
And your suggestion only proves that there will be different opinions on the perfect settings.
Of course I could make it more customizable but then it would scare a first time user. So it would be good if we could agree on a good default and „pro“ users can do whatever they want in manual mode.

I am just not the right person to decide what those good defaults might be because I don‘t have the experience.

 

[pharmacist]

Not sure, but would it be beneficial to have some my special combined TC9.18 + Extended Greys patchset (Spyderprint) to be used as a standard target that can invoked in the guided method ?

The argument of printtarg of "printtarg -ii1 -pA4 -L -a0.95 -m10 -M10 -r -c/b -A0.90" will put this industry standard target exactly on 2 pages of A4:

page 2 (the most interested version with the CMYK and RGB stained near neutrals):

The special ti1 file included in the zip-file

My idea is similar to the i1Profiler method: a standard option (guided) with 400-800-1600 patches and the expert option (manual).

So maybe I can generate some standard workflows (standard/medium/expert) for the Colormunki/i1ProX) that can be invoked. Also Spyderprint has a similar option: standard target, high quality target and expert target (with/without extended grays target included). Choose, scan, generate target and forget.