|
|||||
|
Home >> Photography >> Digital Photography Color
Management Shoot Out Since the beginning of the year, I’ve posted four reviews of color management products and frankly, they were all beginning to merge into one another with each offering strong points and being worthy of consideration. Read each one separately and you’d conclude that I liked all of them and that I would have purchased all of them if given the opportunity (or rather the money). For those that just want the highlights and a specific recommendation, I’ve written this consolidation article as an appendix to all of previous articles. You should still read the individual reviews for how each operates. To read the individual reviews, click on the appropriate link below:
I
should note that reviewing can be difficult at times when you
get one package in, try it out, report on it, and if you liked
it, declaring that opinion. Then you get another packge in, try
it, like it even more, and then declare that opinion, and so on
and so on. If your fine dining experience is limited to something
like the Keg steakhouse (a local, upper-middle chain of restaurants),
you’re going to think that the steaks you order and enjoy is as
good as it gets. Then you go to a place like the
Wild Garlic (one of
Reviewing can be like eating at the Keg, if you've never used the best equipment, you don't know what you've missed. But when you do get a chance to use some of the best gear, it's hard to go back to what you had before. I certainly continue to like the more cost effective color management equipment mentioned here, but I can't deny that the more expensive packages offer a total package of quality and usability that becomes addictive over time. In other cases, the change is immediate and brutally obvious how good higher end equipment is over the lower cost gear. For example, the Nikon D200 is, overall, so far and away superior to its predecessor, the D100, I can barely stand to even have the old camera around in my cabinet and can hardly wait for when I can scrounge up the bucks to send it away for infrared conversion, at which point it will have a new lease on life. Reviewing is also not static. A positive opinion expressed in the past may no longer be appropriate or relevant after time passes and new gear has been tried. The Contenders
The PrintFIX Pro is the lowest cost printer-profiling suite that offers a digital photographer the ability to create custom profiles without having to save up cash into the four figures. Compared to the other brand’s products, the cost cutting has come in the form of time spent and convenience in creating the profiles. You’ll spend significantly more time in creating a profile as you need to manually read each color patch on a print target. While you could save time by using the one-page patch chart, but I’m of the opinion of not compromising quality, so you should always use the three-page 729 patch targets for your custom profiling. The PrintFIX PRO can be purchased with or without the Spyder2PRO monitor calibration and profiling colorimeter and software. The Spyder2PRO is a big improvement both in hardware and software from the original spyder and OptiCAL software. The wizard based interface makes monitor profiling a breeze, but ultimate quality is still a step behind the big boys like the Monaco Optix XR or Eye One Photo.
The spectrophotometer unit that comes with the Eye One Photo is a multi-purpose device. Depending on the package purchased, the Eye One Match software may or may not allow for profiling of all the devices the spectrophotometer is capable of profiling. You can profile monitors, projectors and printers with the spectrophotometer, but the Eye One Match software can profile cameras and scanners too. Various accessories attach to the spectrophotometer to allow for profiling LCD monitors and projectors. You can also use the spectrophotometer to measure ambient light. Using the Eye One Photo to create custom printer profiles is slick. It’s easily the best method I’ve come across from the three companies’ packages I’ve used. You clamp your target sheet to a base station; then you slide a guide over the sheet; the spectrophotometer is placed on the guide via a custom fitted shoe that also glides on rollers. The spectrophotometer glides back and forth along the guide in a very smooth manner. The guide glides over the target sheet, up and down, in a similarly smooth manner. As long as your gliding motion is smooth, steady and consistent you’ll finish off a profile in no time, but I did it find it less forgiving of scanning than the X-Rite spectrophotometer. X-Rite is the other big boy in color management and they’re going to get even bigger because they’re taking over GretagMacbeth. It’s officially a merger of the two companies, but from the news I’ve read, it really looks like X-Rite is swallowing up GretagMacbeth.
X-Rite has a similarly excellent reputation as GretagMacbeth for providing very high quality spectrophotometers and software for color management. The Pulse ColorElite System that I reviewed is in the same price range as the Eye One Photo, but the X-Rite spectrophotometer is a single purpose device for printer profiling rather than being multipurpose like the GretagMacbeth unit. The Pulse Elite software can also profile scanners. X-Rite
recommends colorimeters from the company it swallowed up a few
years ago,
The X-Rite method of creating printer profiles is not as smooth as the GretagMacbeth Eye One, but you won’t lose much if any time in creating profiles with the X-Rite method. The Pulse ColorElite system also uses a guide that goes over the print target with the spectrophotometer gliding over the guide for reading the color patches. Not as buttery smooth in the gliding motion and more manual in moving the guide down the rows, but shaving about a minute in time is nothing to be concerned about. Both the X-Rite and GretagMacbeth methods take around five-minutes per profile and are far superior to the 30-plus minutes it seems to take me to create a single profile using the ColorVision PrintFIX PRO. Monitor Calibration and Profiling
For a CRT, you adjust the RGB guns first to neutralize color casts and set the color temperature (white point) then you adjust brightness and contrast. The typical target result is a color temperature of 6500 K and a gamma of 2.2. Luminance values are usually in the 90 cd/m2 range for CRTs. LCDs should only be profiled to their native white point. There’s no point in trying to do RGB adjustments because it’s not a real hardware setting like it is with CRTs. You still adjust contrast and brightness if your LCD allows for such adjustments and your target luminance value is typically 140 cd/m2. CRT Profiling Ranking
The GretagMacbeth Eye One Photo no longer comes with a CRT attachment, so I could not test it with my CRT, but I may have an opportunity to try one again and will update this ranking if so. After seeing the difference that a really good monitor calibration and profiling package provides, I bought the Optix XR and EZ Color software for continued use with my Sony CRT. Previously, I was using the Spyder2PRO, but there’s a noticeable improvement in color fidelity, contrast, and neutrality after I profiled the Sony CRT with the Optix XR. On a subjective scale of 10, I'd rank the Optix XR at 9/10 and the Spyder2PRO at 8/10. LCD Profiling Ranking
Profiling to the standard 140 cd/m2 is too bright for my needs with my particular Samsung LCD, but the GretagMacbeth Eye One Photo provides flexibility in being able to profile to specific luminance levels and that puts it tops in my book. No subjective ranking because I don't consider myself experienced enough with good LCDs to go any further than this. I will revisit this when the time comes to replace my Sony CRT with a new LCD monitor. Printer Profiling
With your monitor appropriately profiled, the next step is to make sure that your printer profiles are up to snuff. If you use one of Epson’s current printers, like the R2400 and 4800, you may find yourself perfectly happy with the canned profiles provided. However, you’ll want to test out the Epson profiles at different resolution settings and see if they’re still good, as I found a 4800 printer profile at 2880 dpi to be markedly different than the 1440 dpi profiles. However, if you like papers other than those made by your brand of printer, you may find yourself dismayed at the quality of the profile provided by that specific paper brand. Some papers don’t even have profiles available, so you’re stuck with getting custom profiles made by a third-party, or making your own with a printer profiling package. Quality can be very subjective. I've read posts on some forums where people rave about the quality of a profile for a particular paper. Now that I've had the opportunity to try out a few fine art matte papers, I can state that my subjective opinion is that most profiles supplied by the paper companies are crap compared to what I can produce using a good printer profiling suite. Given what this article is about and that you've actually read this far without falling asleep, I’ll assume you want to create your own printer profiles and are wondering which printer profiling package will provide you with the best results. My rankings are:
Subjective scale out of 10: X-Rite and GM 9/10, PrintFIX PRO 8.5/10. Most of the paper brand profiles I'd rank in the 6/10 range with the better ones like Hahnemuhle's at 7.5/10, but for Epson, I'd place at 8/10. Do keep in mind that these subjective rankings pertain only to the quality that I receive and see in my system with my particular printers and subjective means exactly that, subjective based on my opinion. Others may be less or more critical than me and you'll have to guage how good my rankings are based on how much you trust my word and how accurate my other reviews and articles have been over the years. I know many of you appreciate what I have to offer, but I also know a few consider me a lightweight as a reviewer and writer 8^) Although my Monaco EZColor software allows me to create printer profiles with a flatbed scanner, don't bother with this kind of feature if you have something similar. The quality of the profiles just won't be good enough if you're serious about high-quality printer output. Using a variety of Epson and third party papers over the time period that I was provided with the three suites, I found that all three packages produced excellent profiles and that comparing profiles was a case of splitting hairs on an ant’s gluteus maximus. Coincidentally (or not) my ranking also follows the dollar amount value for the packages with the X-Rite and GM packages being the most expensive and the ColorVision package being the most cost effective. The two expensive suites produced profiles that were nearly identical in quality and while the Eye One Photo was a tiny bit better in shadow detail, it faltered in producing a red that’s really red, as opposed to deep, dark orange. For those of you not liking the four-figure cost of the X-Rite or GretagMacbeth options, I have little fear in continuing to offer the ColorVision PrintFIX PRO as a highly recommended solution. As I’ve written before, the difference in quality of the profiles created with the more expensive suites is not commensurate with the cost of entry when talking strictly about quality of output. The PrintFIX PRO profiles err generally on a slightly more saturated rendition of the monitor image compared to the other two suites. Where the PrintFIX PRO really shows its lower cost origins is the convenience and speed in creating profiles. If you’re going to be a low volume profiler then the more cost-friendly PrintFIX PRO merits a very serious look. If you’re the type that likes to dabble with every new paper that comes out on the market then you should look into either the GretagMacbeth or X-Rite suites to make the profiling process faster and easier. With either of these suites, after you’ve allowed the print target enough time to dry, you can measure, save, and print with a new profile within five-minutes of measuring. Specific Recommendations If you really want to taste the fruit of custom monitor and printer profiling here’s what to do, based on my experiences with the three brands:
Other related articles and reviews |
|
Correspondence & About this website Copyright © 1998-2008 Edwin Leong |
|
  |
|
ColorVision has been making cost-effective color management products for several
years now. In the early going, ColorVision was known more for
low cost with spotty quality, but with its current generation
of products, the company now does provide good quality while still
being very cost-effective compared to the big boys in color management.
The company offers a variety of products tailored from the complete
newcomer to color management, to those that are more advanced.
GretagMacbeth is one of the “big boys” of color management. It has Swiss precision
in its highly regarded spectrophotometers and of course, the Eye
One Photo package costs significantly more than the ColorVision
PrintFIX PRO (more than double or triple, depending on which package
you choose).
The
three monitor calibration processes from ColorVision, GretagMacbeth,
and X-