[Tool] ChromIQ – a macOS and Windows GUI for ArgyllCMS printer profiling (v4.0.0)

[itsab1989]

@itsab1989 - Happy Birthday!!!! Mine is coming up near the end of the month.

Thank you very much

 

[pharmacist]

Happy Birthday to you Sebastian

 

[itsab1989]

Thanks

 

[itsab1989]

This is a little emarrasing now but yesterday I discovered this repo on Github by accident:

https://github.com/QiuJueqin/Yet-Another-Color-Gamut-Visualizer

And since I liked the animated gifs and it was somewhat related to to ChromIQ I challenged Claude to create a nice GUI around it in the ChromIQ style and think of options that might be useful for such a gamut viewer. Some hings I requested on my own. I don’t know if this makes sense at all and have not even tried it once myself. But on the plus side it looks nice I think

Here is Claudes take on this:

https://github.com/itsab1989/ChromIQ-Gamut-Viewer

 

[pharmacist]

Is Claude also taking into account to read version 4 ICC profiles ? I am not sure if ChromIQ can write version 4 profiles (I did not check this), but maybe this would be nice.

 

[itsab1989]

For ChromIQ in the beta settings there is a profile building engine. That should be able to write ICC v4 but I have not tested this at all and left it disabled because of this. Might be completely bad.

The gamut viewer did not support v4 yet but since you asked I am adding it now

 

[Alan G]

Is Claude also taking into account to read version 4 ICC profiles ? I am not sure if ChromIQ can write version 4 profiles (I did not check this), but maybe this would be nice.

I don't think Argyll can do that.

 

[rjanowsky]

I don't think Argyll can do that.

If you try to dump a v4 profile with iccdump you got a warning: ICC V4 not supported!

Seems pretty clear that v4 isn't implemented in Argyll-CMS in the actual v3.5 package.

 

[Arno]

@itsab1989 : Delayed happy birthday Sebastian!

I've been following this thread with huge interest since Epson stopped producing cartridges for my old but beloved Epson R1900 and I switched to Marrutt refillable cartridges. Hence, the Epson profiles no longer work accurately enough and I need to profile my printer. After some dabbling around with Vuescan (which claims to be able to profile a printer with my scanner but I can't get that to work) and cProfiler (Argyll-based), which seems to correct the wrong way since its for input devices, I decided to go Argyll, but was reluctant because of the lack of GUI. Then I discovered this thread and your (fantastic!) efforts on ChromIQ, so I want to try it, but have the following questions:

1. I do not have much cash so am reluctant to shell out for a proper spectrophotometer (Xrite and the like) since they are very expensive. My flatbed scanner (Epson V30 Photo, not (yet) calibrated) seems to rather accurately scan my ColorChecker passport, at least visually on my calibrated monitors, which is sufficient for my purposes. Is it possible to, for now at least, print a target, scan it with my scanner, and use that (TIFF) file to generate a profile with ChromIQ? I realize that it is not ideal, and that a dedicated spectrophotometer is a (much) better solution, but it should at least get me in the ballpark, and could perhaps be sufficient for my purposes. I also think that for many (less professional/picky) users, this could be a sufficiently good solution that is convenient and fast. If it does not seem accurate enough, the next step would be to purchase a dedicated spectrometer of course, but I have the feeling that using my scanner for now might suffice for my requirements.

2. I read about a cheap Chinese spectrophotometer (CR30) which is a fraction of the cost of an Xrite version, and folks seem to like it. Would this be an alternative route and would it work with ChromIQ?

Yes, I realize that these are simple questions and perhaps can be considered cheap skating, but alas, not all of us have the stringent requirements of a perfect profile, nor perhaps have the cash to purchase a dedicated Xrite device for what for many is a hobby, while a much larger user-base could be reached if more cost-efficient solutions would be available and/or at least enabled by ChromIQ, which in itself seems an ideal approach.

Thanks very much in advance for your thoughts and for taking the initiative to create a UI for ArgyllCMS!

Arno

 

[itsab1989]

@itsab1989 : Delayed happy birthday Sebastian!

I've been following this thread with huge interest since Epson stopped producing cartridges for my old but beloved Epson R1900 and I switched to Marrutt refillable cartridges. Hence, the Epson profiles no longer work accurately enough and I need to profile my printer. After some dabbling around with Vuescan (which claims to be able to profile a printer with my scanner but I can't get that to work) and cProfiler (Argyll-based), which seems to correct the wrong way since its for input devices, I decided to go Argyll, but was reluctant because of the lack of GUI. Then I discovered this thread and your (fantastic!) efforts on ChromIQ, so I want to try it, but have the following questions:

1. I do not have much cash so am reluctant to shell out for a proper spectrophotometer (Xrite and the like) since they are very expensive. My flatbed scanner (Epson V30 Photo, not (yet) calibrated) seems to rather accurately scan my ColorChecker passport, at least visually on my calibrated monitors, which is sufficient for my purposes. Is it possible to, for now at least, print a target, scan it with my scanner, and use that (TIFF) file to generate a profile with ChromIQ? I realize that it is not ideal, and that a dedicated spectrophotometer is a (much) better solution, but it should at least get me in the ballpark, and could perhaps be sufficient for my purposes. I also think that for many (less professional/picky) users, this could be a sufficiently good solution that is convenient and fast. If it does not seem accurate enough, the next step would be to purchase a dedicated spectrometer of course, but I have the feeling that using my scanner for now might suffice for my requirements.

2. I read about a cheap Chinese spectrophotometer (CR30) which is a fraction of the cost of an Xrite version, and folks seem to like it. Would this be an alternative route and would it work with ChromIQ?

Yes, I realize that these are simple questions and perhaps can be considered cheap skating, but alas, not all of us have the stringent requirements of a perfect profile, nor perhaps have the cash to purchase a dedicated Xrite device for what for many is a hobby, while a much larger user-base could be reached if more cost-efficient solutions would be available and/or at least enabled by ChromIQ, which in itself seems an ideal approach.

Thanks very much in advance for your thoughts and for taking the initiative to create a UI for ArgyllCMS!

Arno

Hi Arno!

Just noticed your post here let me try to answer your questions.

1. This workflow would be possible within ChromIQ with the "Build profile with scanner or camera" tool. The caveat is that you would need to have a profile for your scanner first so the app knows how it interprets colors. That is probably the tricky part where other software like PrintPrism (I think this was the name) might be helpful.. But you would have to check whether your scanner is on its list of supported devices.
If you somehow manage to get a profile for your scanner you could then print one of the built in presets for profiling with a scanner and build a printer profile from it by dragging a mesh over your scan of the chart. BUT: nobody has tested this so far. At least I am not aware of it.

2. I have heard about this as well. And it would probably be possible to to get this supported by ChromIQ. But I'll be honest here: Next week my Claude account is running out and this time I will not subscribe again. Although this is a relatively small project in the broader perspective I have to at least buy the 100$ per month subscription of Claude to get some work done in a way that makes sense. Also I would need to have such a device at hand because this would be the easiest way to reverse engineer it and make it work (maybe - with a big ???). But the money isn't the part that troubles me the most. The bigger issue is that all of this consumes a lot of time that i spend sitting in front of my computer chatting with an AI to try and fix other people problems or adding features they request (please don't take this one personally - I don't mean it this way). This is time I could spend with my family, especially my daughter and this project caused me more than one argument with them already.
Since I think ChromIQ is in a decent shape now my plan is maybe not to never work on it again but I want to take a break, collect some feedback (as there is still very few at the moment) and then in a few months maybe spend some time with the project again in a few focussed sessions to implement some improvements. Also the whole project is open source on GitHub and free for anyone to modify in the mean time.
I hope you understand this.

Best regards
Sebastian