[Tool] ChromIQ – a macOS and Windows GUI for ArgyllCMS printer profiling (v4.3.0)

jctay said:
@itsab1989
Is there any timeline constraint for the beta versions?

Thank you.
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Not really. They are ready when they are ready. That depends on how much time I have to work on it.
 
Thank you for all the support. Unfortunately my printer stopped working due to some power supply issue. So I not going to be doing any printing for some time. Hope to rejoin once printing resumes.
 
itsab1989 said:
Not really. They are ready when they are ready. That depends on how much time I have to work on it.
Click to expand...

:) I meant, will the beta version stop working after a certain amount of time?
 
@ajaytanna
That sounds annoying. You just spent all this time for the calibration and now this…

@jctay
Oh sorry, I misunderstood this question :D
No, the beta versions don’t stop working. It is just the easiest way to share progress with Knut and other people who want to test stuff without increasing the version number everytime a minor fix goes in. Sometimes we used to release multiple new beta versions every day and I think someone who just wants to try the app does not want to get so many notifications. Last night I released two new betas and since Claude misunderstood what I wanted the last time a third one is coming in a few minutes. Also some people are experiencing printing issues from withon the app on macOS so I am trying to look into this as well…
But the app is not paid or so. So there is no real reason to build a timer into the beta versions. This would just he another thing that needs maintanance.
 
For all the macOS users:

I have some hope that with the latest beta version I have fixed the printing issues on macOS.
A user with a Canon Pro 1000 printer reported that the charts printed from ChromIQ looked different compared to the same chart printed from ACPU or Apples ColorSync Utility.
So since I now have a little more experience in working with AI I thought I might give it another try.
Claude looked into the issue and found that when printing with a Canon macOS does a conversion of the image before it is sent to the printer.
If in the the driver dialog you select semigloss paper macOS does the conversion from the profile that is currently assigned to the image you want to print to the profile the printer uses for semigloss. Testcharts created with Argyll and in turn with ChromIQ have colorspace device RGB. MacOS interprets this as sRGB and then does a conversion from sRGB to Canons semigloss ICC profile.
Claude analyzed how Photoshop handles this when printing with Photoshop manages color. It seems that PS figures out the ICC profile the printer is expecting for the selected media type and then before sending the image to the printer assigns the very same ICC profile to the image that gets sent to the printer. MacOS now sees that the sent image already matches what the printer expects and in turn does no further conversion.
So Claude applied the same behaviour to ChromIQ.

To test this I have tried to create a profile for my Canon Pro 300 with Epson Premium semi-gloss paper again.
In the screenshot you can see a comparison between the profile I have created today with my Colormunki compared to the one Keith Cooper created a while ago based on my request. They are not exactly the same but pretty similar I think. Keith has better equipment than I have, certainly measured more patches and his profile was created in i1Profiler instead of colprof.


6138565-691dd00587d8e8125924cea25eb52e2b.jpg.png

When I tried the same in June with the old printing approach my profile had a 30% smaller gamut which was clearly wrong. Claude also confirmed that Epson printers behave differently.

I have attached my project from ChromIQ with the measured chart and the ICC profile I have created if anyone wants to check.

The latest beta version can be downloaded here if anyone wants to give it a try:

https://github.com/itsab1989/ChromIQ/releases/tag/v4.3.4


BTW on macOS you can now also install ChromIQ via Homebrew.

Latest Stable:

brew install --cask itsab1989/chromiq/chromiq

Latest Beta:

brew install --cask itsab1989/chromiq/chromiq@beta
 

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The latest version of ChromIQ seems to have a major problem, my computer refuses to run it:

1792259911320.png


Version 4.3.5

This app cannot be executed on this PC: ask your software developer if a PC version exists.

This is the first time I encountered this error message on my PC (Windows 11 64-bit)

What could have caused this problem @itsab1989 ?
 
Did the latest beta before this work? I changed nothing except the version number. Sometimes while building the app on GitHuB some components might have gotten an update which then cause trouble. I have to check this but I am not sure how much usage I have left in my account so worst case this might have to wait until monday night.
 
Sorry for the silence guys. Work took over and is still taking over at the moment so I can’t keep up. I did scan the posts since my last one and noticed that Knut figured out that Argyll does proper smart curve fitting, which is good to see.

Regarding profile testing: I started with a 10x15 three (or four?) pager from pharmacist, and couldn’t generate a profile until I rescanned patches. Eventually it spit out a profile that it called excellent and making a color print with that seemed good. I then bought a large pack of A4 Epson Archival Matt to test profiling before I switch to expensive Hahnemühle paper.

Based on the feedback here, I started with a 3-pager A4 from pharmacist (1944 patches with focus around neutral grey) but no matter what I tried, I didn’t manage to have it create a good profile. It kept on telling me that there were too many large deviations in the measurement and that I best start from scratch. I then did a one-pager (6xx patches), and got very neutral B&W. I then tried a three pager, also 1944 patches with extra skin tones as opposed to neutral grey optimized. This did give me a profile, but again it complained that there were too many large deviations from the measurements so I re-scanned the rows where the largest deviations were and lo and behold I got an excellent profile (at least that’s what it said). During the first measurement I had quite a few rows with a couple of red boxes around the patches and rescanning these rows did not remove the red boxes but apparently did give better measurements which confused me somewhat. When I printed B&W with that profile, there were slivers of red ink in some of the highlights, which more or less disappeared after drying overnight.

In the end, I think that the by pharmacist 1944 three pager with optimized grey should be better for B&W but I can’t seem to get that scanned properly. It might well be user error on my side during scanning. I go very slow and take care of alignment, but I can’t seem to get lines without red boxes easily.

I saw some discussion on margins influencing measurability? In your more experienced scanning ability: How easy or difficult should it be to get proper scans? At the moment, I have error sources that I do not entirely grasp. When I test the quality of a profile that it generated and it tells me to start from scratch, this seems magically be resolved after rescanning a few lines in which the largest errors appear. Then suddenly it calls it excellent.

Hence, I’m still learning and not yet able to compare profiles. My main question involves the scanning step: Is it indeed hard to properly, and will it also depend on the provided patch sets that I pick?

Have to work like a dog this week en then travel again so it won’t be before 2 weeks from now that I can give it some attention again

Arno
 
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