Ok, so will I get a better profile with more patches than 936? Maybe 1248 patches on 4 sheets? And what kind of patches should I add? More neutrals or near neutrals? Which ones?
Thanks!
Hi
@MeandmyET18100 ,
Wonderful to hear you had such good results compared to your previous profiling.
The presets that have "... w14.0mm-Ergonomical target by Pharmacist..." in their name for the ColorMunki / i1Studio give maximum easiness with respect to placing a ruler one strip below the strip you are measuring, but it is not optimal with respect to comfort in reading speed, as the dense number of patches per strip require a quite slow pace, which you now have experienced.
When I chose to "standardise" on some parameters or principles for most other presets for the ColorMunki instrument, I chose 10mm wide strips with a helper marker at the top and bottom of each page, which helps align the ruler easily one and a half strip below the strip being read. This allows a bit more patches for each page, at the same time making it just as easy to place a ruler. If you found it doable to use a ruler with th 14mm strip width, then you should have no problem with the 10mm wide strips. Furthermore, the preset collection for the ColorMunki is devided into "...w10.0mm-Slow Reading Speed" and "...w10.0mm-Fast Reading Speed". The "Slow Reading Speed" presets are similar to the "... w14.0mm-Ergonomical target by Pharmacist..." presets, as it has a higher number of patches per strip, but still slightly longer patches (thus not demanding as much from you to keep slow reading speed) and looks like this:
Preset "ColorMunki · A4-1224p-4pages-Portrait-w10.0mm-Slow Reading Speed" (around 10 sec reading speed per strip):
The "Fast Reading Speed" presets have elongated patches in the reading direction, allowing for a more comfortable reading speed of 5-6 seconds per strip. Though, this naturally also reduces the total number of strips per page.
As an example, the "ColorMunki · A4-1224p-6pages-Portrait-w10.0mm-Fast Reading Speed" preset looks like the below, and has, as the name states, 6 pages for 1224 patches:
(Note the extra helper marker lines above each strip letter, the middle of each strip width, which is the marker to align the ruler against)
So, It is up to you if you want to prioritise to reduce ink usage rather than comfort of reading speed.
When it comes to number of patches, I have had good success with 1200 to 1300 patches, and would recommend that. However, it seems that you are especially attentive to accuracy to the grey neutrality, which makes me lean towards making the effort to print a couple of pages.
Users on the forum, including me, have had very good experience with
"i1Pro · A4-1944p-3pages-Portrait-w7.5mm-Uniform 11x11x11-Edge Emphasis" or
"i1Pro · A4-1944p-3pages-Portrait-w7.5mm-(expert quality)-Real World Target-by Pharmacist"
But these are for i1Pro series.
However, equivalent preset for Colormunki is:
"ColorMunki · A4-2142p-7pages-Portrait-w10.0mm-Slow Reading Speed"
"ColorMunki · A4-2040p-10pages-Portrait-w10.0mm-Fast Reading Speed"
If you prefer a middle ground between 1000 patches and 2000 patches, I am very confident that the following would also give good results:
"ColorMunki · A4-1615p-5pages-Portrait-w10.0mm-Slow Reading Speed"
"ColorMunki · A4-1623p-8pages-Portrait-w10.0mm-Fast Reading Speed"
The two las presets are both just above 1600 patches, and look like this in the 3D cube view:
I think the patch sets of the presets are generally very good, so you should not need to fiddle with creating your own patch set for a chart layout, unless you have strong preferences. For example, the above presets with about 1600 patches have 20 near-neutral grey steps with two rings. This is known to give great results.
The equivalent preset to the famous TC9.18 target I think uses 16 steps. And the two 1944 patch presets for i1Pro uses 24 and 32 near-neutral grey steps with two rings.
It is also worth noting that, as of today, nobody had proven that 32 near-neutral grey steps with two rings give better results than 24, other than using a few hundred more patches on the grey. So, the verdict is still up for verification. All-in-all, it should come down to a balance between the various aspects, greys vs. other colors and edge emphasis etc. Feel free to test what gives the most beneficial results for you, and report back your findings
, preferably with the settings you used.
Cheers,
Knut
