[Tool] ChromIQ – a macOS and Windows GUI for ArgyllCMS printer profiling (v4.2.0)

[nertog]

trying to connect:

Weird. Mine shows up as a BT device both on my PC and Android phone...no idea what goes wrong there

 

[itsab1989]

In 4.2.2 I made it so that you create a chart with hexagonal patches for the CR30 in guided mode the hexes are rotated. That way you can use a ruler as guidance for reading the strips which should make it a litte easier and it also fits 6 more patches on one sheet of A4 portrait paper. This was a suggestion from another user which I did not think about before.
Spacers now also work correctly for those hexagons (they hurt my eyes a little and of course they are optional and off by default but they work now).

 

[Im-back-Arno]

A message from Knut:

Could you please remind Arno and the users that there are 130 presets with ready made patch sets ready for a user to use, so they do not need to create their own, or can use them as starting point for editing the patches using the patch editor… Also, they would start by reading the landing page

https://itsab1989.github.io/ChromIQ/

And read the first help card “Getting started (a tour of ChromIQ)”


So now you know where to look at

Hi all,

Today, I had an entire Sunday afternoon to finally dig deeper into the seemingly endless possibilities of ChromIQ, read extensively through user guides, played around a bit, and see now where it far surpasses the limited options of the i1Profiler software. Yes, I found the ready-made patch sets, and also played around with the patch generator. It seems that ChromIQ enables the creation of profiles as refined as one could ever need in terms of colors, which is brilliant in itself, but its main strengths (to me, and as already pointed out by @pharmacist) also lie in the possibilities to create profiles optimized for neutral B&W printing, which is one of my goals.

This is my current understanding: When I print with only one black ink (not willing to give up color printing by replacing all inks with various greys...), highlights become very pixellated, so one needs to blend in some color inks to retain smooth highlights. This is only possible when the greys remain fully neutral, which requires profiling specifically around neutral greys and ChromIQ has me covered: I can create custom patch sets that focus around the neutral greys (as @pharmacist already pointed out) which is easily visualized in the 3D cube in the patch generator. Hence, with ChromIQ, I can generate two separate profiles: One optimized for color printing, and one optimized for pure B&W printing.

What still puzzles me is the amount of patches that can be fitted onto one sheet of paper. This number seems to vary quite a bit, but should depend on the minimum patch size that is acceptable to my i1Pro2, no? Any thoughts on what this could be?

Thanks in advance,

Arno

 

[itsab1989]

Knut just made me aware of your post here. Thanks for your kind words. This is really nice to hear

I will just paste Knuts reply here:

You can tell Arno that all the i1Pro presets with 7.5mm patch width is tuned in to what is considered the maximum patch density for a i1Pro2, also taking into account the ruler-board limitations for strip length. Bigger patches are easier to scan.


Edit: Since you mentioned black and white printing in particular, do you maybe know some "best practices" for this? Usually I am pretty happy with my (color) prints. Yesterday I tried a very simple light setup that I saw on social media to take some photos of my daughter. I can't remember really doing b&w before but I wanted to give it a try. In the end a few pictures turned out ok, I tried editing them and noticed that b&w edits are not as easy as I thought. Then I settled with an edit I made and wanted to print it. I only had some semi gloss paper at hand which I like for my color prints. But even in the softproof I could already see a slight blue cast as soon as I enabled "simulate paper white" also it now looked somewhat flat. I played around a bit and just out of curiosity tried absolute colorimetric intent (usually I use relative). Sooftproof looked better immediately (at least more like what I wanted the image to look and what it looked on my screen without softproofing). The blue cast was gone and the print had more contrast. I don't want to overstate this. If I showed both of those prints my mother she would not see a difference, but I clearly do.

Another thing I have noticed: my iPhone brightens up those images a lot. On my computer the background of the portrait is a very dark grey - most people looking at it would say black. On my phone the same background is now a lot brighter. And not because my screen brightness is was so high. I don't notice this to the same extent with color images. Or maybe this is just more noticable with b&w?

Anyway, I would be happy for any tipps. Thanks in advance!