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[OM] Profiles R Us -- Living Large with the S9000

Subject: [OM] Profiles R Us -- Living Large with the S9000
From: AG Schnozz <agschnozz@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2005 06:49:39 -0700 (PDT)
I recently converted over to MIS bulk inks for the Canon S9000
printer. My paper of choice is either Ilford Galerie Classic
Pearl or Ilford Galerie Classic Gloss.

When using Canon Inks (at $12 per tank) I was able to just stick
with the built-in Canon driver color profile from Canon and/or
bypassed the color profile and used my own slight modifications
to the color balances/intensities in the driver itself.

Then I went to Colorlabs Inks (at about $3 per tank) and had to
do a lot of serious setting changes to adapt to the colorcast of
the inks.  They definitely were not neutral and were a complete
fading disaster when printed on Canon Photo Paper Plus Glossy.
They were fine, though, on the Ilford Classic papers.

In neither of these cases was I ever able to use the color
profiles from Ilford.

Now, I'm using MIS inks (at probably an average cost per tank of
less than $1) the inks are noticably very close to Canon.  The
color fading aspect is still a mystery, but I have a print
containing several test charts (ITC, GratagMacbeth, and some
handmade ones) taped to the south wall siding of my house, just
under the eave.

My color-profile wasn't quite right. I had to do too much
tweeking for it to be predictable and repeatable without test
prints.  I reenabled the ICM setting in the Canon printer driver
and set the color profile to the appropriate one from ILFORD for
the paper.  Crossed my fingers and let her rip.

I compared the print to the monitor and thought "that's funny".
Other than a very slight warmness to the print, the two were
nearly a perfect match.  I made a tiny white-balance change to
the monitor and now I've FINALLY got a pretty close to perfect
match. Zone I (near black) is a touch darker on-screen than the
print, but the rest of the scale is visibly close enough for
government work.

The ILFORD profiles seem to work far better with the MIS inks
than they did with the Canon inks.

The one thing I've noticed right away is the improved neutrality
in the blacks. The MIS inks appear to be slightly better
balanced than Canon's.  Except for my midtone. 18% gray appears
just a touch more magenta than the other shades.

So, I've got a couple test prints--one is taped to my siding,
the other is sitting on the dashboard of my car. These tests may
not necessarily be the most "scientific", but are pretty harsh
and should give me a good indication of the stability of an
ink/paper combination.  Past experience with this testing method
gives me a good indication in as little as two weeks. I've run
these tests for as long as six months--one of them for over two
years.

The one characteristic I am seeing with this particular
profile/ink/paper combination is a slight muting of the red and
green squares in the Macbeth, but a more intense yellow.
Skintones have held very well.  Blues are clean and linear.

I did make a minor change to the selected dithering pattern. I
changed to the "diffused" setting and the result appears
"smoother" to the naked eye, but slightly more "mottled" when
viewed under an 8X loupe.  This mottling is a nearly identical
look to that found in a dye-cloud film/paper.  Definitely not
anything resembling digital output. Without a magnifier of some
type the dots are invisible.

I'll keep everybody updated on my tests and further
calibrations.

AG


                
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