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

[pharmacist]

The slightly narrower patches should not be a big problem. Just take care you center the opening as central as possible when scanning.... also scan slowly about 4 to 5 seconds per row. I have sometimes the same problem when scanning with similar smaller patches with my i1studio. I will try to repeat the process tomorrow with my i1studio

 

[itsab1989]

I was very careful with that and made sure to measure very slow and steady. The thing is it could also be because of some issues with turing off colormanagement during printing although I made sure everything was set to off.

Edit:

I have a feeling that it is a colormanagement issue. On friday I printed multiple versions of the same chart and could devide them into two variants: one with less contrast and saturation (looked more dull overall) and one with more saturation and contrast (darker patches were darker, lighter patches were lighter compared to the other variant). I thought the more contrasty one was wrong because macOS own Colorsync Utility specifically allows to print as a target and that print was exactly the same as the less saturated version.
A few minutes ago I printed another target. One wit the colormanagement turned off in the printer driver and one where the driver reset to the perceptual mode. This time the perceptual one was the dull one. No I don't really know which is correct and whether the driver even reliably respects the settings I make...

 

[pharmacist]

OK, try it again and see how it works:

I will do the test again with my i1Studio (Colormunki).

Terrible thing that MacOS always seems to cause havoc on color management, despite being the craddle of color managed printing in the early days. Can you virtualize Windows on your Mac or have a Windows machine: that can help to overcome the color managed printing process ?

Edit: just finished my scanning of the TC9.24 with my i1Studio (2 sheets of A4):

This is the softproofing:

Seems to be legit to me

Another softproofing:

Perfect profile to my eyes: not strange banding (reading errors).

This is the same modus operandi as your A3 version with the Colormunki, but on 2 sheets of A4: as you can see this test target is a bit too narrow as you can see the adjacent colours, but scanning was succesful.

 

[pharmacist]

I have done some work: the TC9.18+Extended greys target (1160) has been coverted to a A3+/Super B (483 x 329 mm) target for the Colormunki/i1Studio

@itsab1989: this might give you better neutral grey printing compared to the TC9.18. I have done the testing with my Colormunki using the classic TC9.24 (TC9.18 with some extra black/white patches). The TC9.18+Extended greys target gives me slightly better neutral grey printing (as expected) on my Epson ET-18100 (CcMmYK printer), but the standard TC9.24 target still suffice in most cases: if your printer has at least 1 grey ink (ET-8550 for example), I don't believe you will see any diffference with the larger TC9.18+Extended greys target.

 

[itsab1989]

I just turned off my computer. Will check this later. After a lot of struggle I managed to send an email to the Canon support with my (Claudes) findings and attached a video where I show the driver behaviour with different apps. Hope they have a look at this.
I have a Windows VM for developing so maybe you are right and I should give this a try. It is a shame that I am developing this mainly on a mac and now it is working better on Windows…

But although the target was seemingly fine for the i1Studio it is pretty hard to measure. So the bigger one is very welcome. Thanks for that!

 

[itsab1989]

@pharmacist
I implemeted the new target in the afternoon. But before I try again myself I wait for a reply from the Canon support.

By the way since yesterday you can combine the patches of multiple ti2 files in the ti2 editor and visualise the distribution of the patches. Just in case this might be useful for someone.

 

[Alan G]

Just to clarify the Argyll and i1 driver from X-Rite are different. If you have installed X-rite software, it automatically installs their driver which has to be dealt with when you are using Argyll. I only know about Windows and you need to go into the device manager and disable the i1 driver from X-Rite so that the Argyll driver will load properly.

 

[itsab1989]

I heard about this. On my Windows virtual machine this wasn‘t an issue because I have not installed any X-Rite software there. And on macOS I think you can use both Argyll and Calibrite / X-Rite software in parallel without any of those issues (but even there I have not used those programs for quite some time with my Colormunki as Argyll was better).
But what I noticed on Windows is that the calibration process of the device is much faster than on macOS. When I click the button to start the measurement on Windows it instantly tells me what to do to calibrate the device. On macOS it takes a few seconds until something happens.

Edit:

I made the 3D distribution view a seperate tool so you can see it for the chart that is currently loaded in the main window. This is for the A3+ target from @pharmacist