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Home >> Photography >> Digital Photography ColorVision
PrintFIX PRO
In the late 1990s HP began their foray with the PhotosSmart printers with Canon coming shortly after. Now in 2006, the same three companies of Epson, HP and Canon, dominate the photo-quality inkjet printer market, each with unique technologies or features to offer to the digital photographer. In only a decade of development we’ve gone from printers that offered brutal print life, questionable tonality and awful B&W print quality to units that offer tremendous saturation and tonality, archival qualities that can satisfy museums and B&W printing that is making believers of those that formerly lived in the wet darkroom. Hardware aside, the software side of printing technology has also come along nicely. It wasn’t so long ago that users muttered about the quality of the “canned” profiles that came with their printer.
I
can only speak of my own experience, as other users will undoubtedly
say otherwise, but with my Epson 1270 printer, I got nice looking
prints when I was lucky enough to get some color ink cartridges
made in
The solution to these ills would be custom printer profiles for the 1270 to match the output of its ink with the types of papers I want to print on. A capital idea especially since there are papers that aren’t listed in the Epson driver for the 1270, such as Epson’s Enhanced Matte (formerly known as Archival Matte back in the day), or Premium Luster, or Premium Semi Gloss. I bought and used for a short while, ColorVision’s PrintPROFILER, a low cost scanner based profiling system that was at the time, more consistent than using the profiles that came with the 1270, but not exactly “what you see is what you get” kind of quality. Back then, being so new to digital printing I didn’t really know what quality was until I got a chance to use the GretagMacbeth Eye-One Photo package with its high-priced spectrophotometer. The custom profiles created with the Eye-One finally made me aware of what color management was all about and how important it is no matter what computer system or printer brand you use. PC and Mac users alike that care about digital image quality calibrate their monitors and both benefit from good printer profiles. There’s just one problem with the Eye-One kit; back in 2003, if I wanted to buy the Eye-One Photo kit for myself, it would have cost me CAN $2000, or more than 3x what my Epson 1270 cost to buy. Whew! Even if the results are good, it’s expensive enough that for most photographers, professional or not, would be a pretty good outlay of quid. Today, in early 2006 as I type this, the Eye-One Photo kit has come down in price, but is still a princely CAN $1650 to purchase and still getting extravagant especially given how good canned profiles have come along in the last few years. GretagMacbeth does offer a more basic Eye-One Design for just over CAN $1100 and all the Eye-One profiling suites can profile CMYK printers instead of just RGB units (most inkjet printers). Epson has obviously heard the complaints about their canned profiles and for their professional line of printers, like the R2400 (don’t know about the consumer models such as the R800 and R1800), the supplied profiles are pretty good. Epson has even produced better profiles available for download from their various regional websites, but I’d say that the difference between the original and the new profiles is subtle. Still, users have to appreciate Epson’s efforts in providing these new profiles. But, (there’s always a “but”) can we do better still if we used a good profiling package and make our own custom profiles? ColorVision provided a review sample of their latest profiling package, the PrintFIX PRO, to allow me to try and answer that question. I should also note that a profiling suite like PrintFIX PRO isn’t just about improving on existing profiles, but also for creating profiles that don’t exist for some papers that photographers may want to use. PrintFIX PRO should not be confused with ColorVision’s lower cost PrintFIX, which is a scanner based printer profiling package (ColorVision supplies the scanner). PrintFIX PRO is more appropriately seen as an update of ColorVision’s previous top of the line profiling package, the Master Spectro Suite (going by memory of what it’s called). The Master Spectro Suite sold for about CAN $1100 the last time I checked a couple of years ago, but the new PrintFIX PRO lowers the cost considerably. There are two versions of PrintFIX PRO available, the profiling-only package for CAN $600 and the suite that includes the Spyder2PRO for only $100 more at CAN $700. Either way, it’s significantly lower in price compared to the Eye-One packages, especially for those users that have no need for profiling CMYK printers. The price is now at a level that most serious amateurs can consider buying and using their own custom printer profiling suite, instead of being something only the rich or professional photographers could contemplate. Considering that most of the good basic monitor calibration packages are in the CAN $400 range, an extra $300 isn’t that much more to add excellent printer profiling capabilities. About the PrintFIX PRO The suite comes in a nice black cardboard box with a flip-up lid. Inside is custom cut foam to protect the Spyder2 and its companion PrintFIX PRO spectrocolorimeter. Included software are:
The spectrocolorimeter is a low profile, squat triangular shaped device, vaguely reminiscent of a Romulan war bird (for the Trekkers reading this J) The reading tip has a LED light source that comes on when the top button is pushed. A small green LED on top of the unit lights up when the button is pushed for a reading. The rear of the reader has an input for the USB cord. The reader sits on top of a base station that has two sets of knobs for the reader to sit on; the rear knobs are for resting position and the front knobs are for positioning the reader for calibration. A black piece of ceramic tile fits into a square cutout in the base plate which is for the reader’s tip to rest on when it’s not being used. In front of the black tile is a white tile built into the base station and is used for calibrating the reader.
The Spyder2PRO is the same as what I reviewed in 2004 (but with updated software), so I’ll refer you to that article. There was one additional piece that came in the package that I didn’t recognize and in looking it over I could quickly see that it’s meant for use with a tripod, but I didn’t know for what purpose. A read through the literature provided by ColorVision quickly determined that it’s meant for profiling digital projectors. It’s a rather small piece, but it’s significant in that with one CAN $700 package you can calibrate and profile monitors, projectors, and printers/papers. The GretagMacbeth Eye One Photo software can also profile all the same, as well as scanners, but in the regular Eye One Photo package, you can only profile monitors and printers/papers. Enabling the scanner and projector profiling capabilities requires you to upgrade the package and I don’t expect these upgrades to be cheap. As I already have the Spyder2PRO software installed, I just had to install the PrintFIX PRO software and proceed with following the wizard based software to create my custom profiles. Using PrintFIX PRO When I reviewed the Spyder2PRO in 2004, I was quite impressed at how much better the software had evolved since the days of PreCAL and OptiCAL, ColorVision’s previous generation software for monitor calibration. The Spyder2PRO software is based on a step-by-step wizard and is very easy to follow with plenty of information and assistance along the way to explain what certain settings are for and which settings are appropriate for which type of monitor being profiled. It’s slick and well though out. The PrintFIX PRO software is the same step-by-step wizard interface and again, very easy to follow with good information and tips along the way. If anything, I’m even more impressed with the way ColorVision has developed PrintFIX PRO, as compared to GretagMacbeth’s Eye One Photo application. There are little touches here and there that I appreciated with some features not available in the much more expensive Gretag package. I won’t show every single screen shot that comes up, but I’ll show the more important ones and how I used the suite for creating custom profiles. Installation of the software was quick and simple. Be sure to note the tip screen about where the driver is located at the end of the installation, as you should direct the PC’s auto detection and driver installation wizard to this folder to find the driver after you plug in the spectrocolorimeter into a USB port. After detection and driver installation I fired up the PrintFIX PRO software and began the process.
After the introduction screen, you come to the screen seen below that prompts you to enter some basic information about the profile being created, including the paper type, the printer, the ink set used, the paper selected in the printer driver, etc. This information is relevant because it gets printed on the patch chart used for creating a profile. It makes it easy to know exactly which patch chart is for which paper and profile if you’re creating multiple profiles at the same time as I was.
After inputting the data you have a choice of following the wizard, or to skip directly to the profiling part. I suggest you follow the wizard the first time to get a feel for the application, but afterwards you can just skip ahead and get right to creating a profile. Some of the screens that follow after the Printer Definition screen are below:
Skipping ahead gets you to the screen seen below where you would print off a patch chart. Before doing so, you should confirm that the printer settings are correct, such as correct paper type selected, ICM off, high speed off, etc. You should ensure that your page setup is for landscape mode and letter size printing unless you're printing the largest 729 patch chart.
You have four choices for patch charts; a standard chart with 150 patches, a high quality 225 patch chart, and an uber expert level chart that will print off 729 patches spread out over three letter sized prints, and finally, for large format printers, the 729 patch chart can be printed on one 13x19 inch sized paper.
If printing on matte paper, ColorVision suggest waiting at least 10-minutes for the print to dry before reading the patches. Glossy prints take longer to dry. I generally gave most of the patch charts an overnight drying before reading them. If you close out of PrintFIX PRO and then open it up again, it remembers the last set of information you typed in at the beginning of the process, so you can get going again very quickly. Skip ahead to the profiling screen then click on the “Next” arrow. The next screen after printing a patch chart is to calibrate the spectrocolorimeter. Position the reader appropriately on the base station so that the tip sits on the white tile then click on the reader’s top button or “Enter” on your keyboard to calibrate the reader. This only takes a second and an audible beep tells you when it’s ready to read. The screen also changes to prompt you to save the measurement, which is really just to give it a name, after which the screen changes to allow a greyed out "Read Patches" button to be active. Or, you can choose an existing PrintFIX PRO profile to modify.
After you click on the “Read Patches” button, a pop-up window with an image of the patch chart shows up in front of the regular PrintFIX PRO screen to provide you with a visual guide for the reading. The default view is of each patch being split into two triangles with the top representing the color and the bottom one being white to represent that the patch hasn’t been read yet. For the very first patch you see a red triangle instead of a white one with red indicating which patch is up for reading. As you read a patch the red triangle skips to the next color patch for a visual confirmation of where you should be at. There is also the option to see each patch as a whole color instead of being split into two triangles, as well as an option to see patches being added one by one as they’re read.
Reading a patch is simple. Place the reader’s tip on a color patch then click on the reader’s top button. A little green LED light on top turns on every time the button is pushed for verification. An audible beep also goes off on the computer’s speakers to give you another confirmation. When you finish a row of patches an audible ding is heard to tell you to move down to the next row. At the end of the process a double ding-ding is heard to advise you that you’re finished reading the patch chart.
This is a great to have both visual and audible confirmations and while I primarily relied on the audible confirmation, I did glance up on the screen every now and then to confirm that I was reading the right row. Slick, reassuring and foolproof!
Now, some of you may be thinking, geez, I gotta sit down and click on each color patch 150, 225 or 729 times to read a chart. Well, I’m not going to kid you and tell you that it’s not a tedious process. The 225 patch chart can be done fairly quickly, no more than about 30 minutes if you go at it nice and steady, but the 729 patch chart requires about an hour to complete because you need to take breaks every so often to get the kinks out of your neck and hands. Neck? Yes, the neck. I found myself hunched down at a low angle in order to be able to clearly see the individual patches and ensure that the PrintFIX PRO was in the middle of the patch before reading. It’s a mild case of repetitive stress syndrome for the neck and right hand I used to handle the spectrocolorimeter. In lower ambient light sessions, I used my desk lamp pulled down to a very low position to allow me to see the patches being read.
Tedious as it is, you at least have full control over the process and you can stop anytime and resume when you wish without any hang-ups. Sometimes you need the break, but other times a break is forced upon you, as in my situation of being at home alone with two young daughters and them coming to me every so often to load up a DVD cartoon, or to make them popcorn, or to get them juice, etc. – my life as Mr. Mom. If you flubbed a patch (it happens), no problem, hit your cursor button back and do it over again; the PrintFIX PRO is forgiving and really well thought out for making custom profiling easy as 1-2-3. After finishing a chart you close the pop-up screen of the color chart on your monitor then click “Next.” The following screen allows you set some parameters if you wish such as the name of the profile (it defaults to what you typed in a previous screen, but you can name it whatever you want within a 27 character limit). I named my profiles along the likes of:
CV for ColorVision; Epson Prem Glossy for Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper; and 225 or 729 for the quality of the profile in terms of whether I used the 225 or 729 patch chart to create the profile.
You can also select whether you want the profile optimized for low-bit (8-bit) or high-bit (16-bit) images. I chose high-bit for all my profiles. Naming and choosing low or high bit is all that you really need to do for creating a profile quickly and easily, but if you wish to be able to tweak or customize the profile further, the lower section of the screen provides you with that flexibility. While it’s an interesting option, I prefer creating as accurate a profile as possible and would rather leave tweaks such as saturation for Photoshop editing instead of trying to accomplish the same with a printer/paper profile. I’d also suggest that you get a handle on how well the basic profile is before getting into tweaking them. You can call up profiles you’ve created in the past, so you’re not limited to just tweaking the one you just created. After making your choices PrintFIX PRO takes only a few seconds to create and confirm that a profile has been created. On Windows PCs, the new profile is automatically saved to the proper Windows folder for any color managed application to access.
Lastly, you have the option of printing a test print that will allow you to compare different rendering settings. I’m sure more than a few people have wondered about “perceptual” versus “saturation” versus “relative colorimetric” versus “absolute colorimetric.” Now you can easily print all four rendering intents on one sheet and compare what the differences are using your newly created profile for the paper type. I did so with Fuji Premium Plus Professional paper and while I did see some differences between the four rendering modes, they were so subtle that I wouldn’t worry at all for everyday printing needs. Very quickly and very basically, for human eyes, the relationship between colors (perceptual) is more important than the colors themselves (absolute), which likely explains why most people suggest using the “perceptual” or “relative colorimetric” rendering intents. However, if you're into B&W printing, I'd very much suggest using perceptual instead of relative colorimetric for print accuracy, but this is a matter for another article. That’s it for creating a profile.
Printers and Papers Profiled Printers used were the Epson R2400 (still on loan) and my own Epson 1270.for a limited number of papers. For
the R2400 session I used a good range of papers that I had bought,
begged, or borrowed in the last little while. As of this writing,
I’m waiting for more papers to come from Hahnemuhle
, Legion, and
The list of papers custom profiled were (if I had enough samples I used the 729 patch charts for creating the profile, otherwise I used the 225 patch chart):
Most
of the papers have profiles available for downloading except for
With the Epson R2400, if a profile was already available, I printed a sample with that profile and then another with the PrintFIX PRO profile and compared them critically after an overnight drying session. If a profile was not available, I followed the paper brand’s instructions for printing and then compared it to a print made with the PrintFIX PRO profile. For the R2400 I initially created a number of profiles using the mid-level 225 patch chart, but it dawned on me that why would I go to the trouble and expense of buying a custom printer profiling suite just to compromise my results. After this minor epiphany I proceeded to print off the 729 patch charts to profile my most used papers. If 729 sounds like a lot of reading, yes it is, but then some of the really expensive profiling suites require reading thousands of patches – most likely, the reading is automated rather than manual, otherwise you’d end up with a very nasty case of carpal tunnel and/or repetitive stress syndrome. With the Epson 1270, because I already had some profiles created with the GretagMacbeth Eye-One Photo, I ran off some new prints with these older profiles and then compared them to the prints created with the PrintFIX PRO profiles. As there were only a limited number of Gretag profiles created, I was limited to printing with Epson’s Premium Glossy, Premium Semi Gloss and Enhanced Matte papers. Firing up the old 1270 after a few months of non-use just made me appreciate what the R2400 has to offer in terms of print speed and lack of noise compared to the old unit. I kept the 1270 testing limited to 225 patch chart profiles because it’s an old printer that isn’t going to elicit much interest anymore given how quickly printing advancements have been made. The 225 chart is also around the same number as the chart used to create profiles with the GretagMacbeth Eye One Photo, so it’s a more appropriate comparison. Update: I realized afterwards that I didn't mention differences between the 225 and 729 patch profiles. In short, I wasn't able to detect any meaningful differences between profiles created with the 225 or 729 patch targets. However, I would still go to the effort of making profiles with the 729 target, because you never know when you might edit and then print an image that will require the degree of accuracy of the bigger target. The first image below is a comparison of a profile created from a 225 target and a 729 target using Microsoft's Color applet. The colored profile represents the 225 profile while the grey overlay represents the 729 profile. You can see that the 729 profile is modestly larger in gamut than the 225 profile.
Comparisons With the Epson R2400 Prints To reiterate, Epson’s been lauded for providing better quality profiles for their most recent printers. With the R2400 a number of profiles are installed with the driver installation to cover a wide range of quality Epson papers. However, Epson also provides better profiles for downloading at their website for the Premium and some matte series of papers. I downloaded all of them and I’d say that the difference between the new and old profiles are subtle with the main difference being able to choose a specific profile for a specific printer resolution setting. For example, with the original driver and Premium Luster paper, there was just one profile to choose from, but the new download make available three profiles for Photo, Best Photo and Photo RPM settings. These correspond to 720, 1440 and 2880 dpi printer resolution – I don’t see any point in wasting time and ink (double of both) to print using the Photo RPM setting compared to what I get with Best Photo, but I’m anal enough to not want to compromise the quality by using the lower resolution Photo mode. Anyway, the supplied Epson profiles are already pretty good and I’d be lying if I expected to see any significant difference in custom profiles made with PrintFIX PRO. Using
the image of Yosemite below, taken by a friend in
With Enhanced Matte paper, the differences were in the shadow regions where the waterfall is located. With the PrintFIX PRO profile I could see a little bit better sharpness and clarity in the details. While both the Epson and PrintFIX PRO profiles were virtually identical, the one consistent difference seen for all the Epson papers, was in the blue sky portion of the test image. The Epson profile prints all showed a greater washout of the blue sky as the sky got closer to the mountain. I also saw the slightest hint of a red tinge compared to the more accurate PrintFIX PRO prints. When reviewing the sample scans below, do remember that a paper print cannot retain the brightness, contrast and detail of the original file.
Despite not seeing too much difference between the supplied Epson profiles versus the ones made with the PrintFIX PRO, I think this is actually quite significant. You would expect that Epson and the other paper vendors to use some professional quality and very expensive profiling suites to create their profiles. Suites that cost many times more than the PrintFIX PRO and yet PrintFIX PRO is well under $1000 and creates profiles the equal (and sometimes ever so slightly superior) to the more expensive suites. Moving on to the Ilford paper, I profiled Smooth Gloss and Smooth Pearl papers. The Ilford profiles for both papers were warmer than the PrintFIX PRO profiles. A bit of added warmth is not a bad thing, but it’s not accurate if wanting to match the monitor view. The PrintFIX PRO prints were more neutral and using a different test image, I got better shadow detail. The dirt piles seen in the lower left corner of the False Creek industrial image showed better detailing than the Ilford profiles – nothing like digging the dirt for the details. The Ilford profiles are good, the PrintFIX PRO profiles are better. Using the test image below with Epson papers and Epson Best Photo profiles, again yielded almost identical results when compared to the PrintFIX PRO prints.
Using a paper that had no supplied profile available such as Fuji Premium Plus Professional, I used the Epson driver’s Enhanced Photo mode to print. I got a nice, but not great looking print relative to what I saw on the monitor using the Epson driver. However, the PrintFIX PRO profile remedied the washed out colors and restored the saturation to what I saw in all the other custom profiled prints. This is exactly why you would want to buy and use the PrintFIX PRO. With the Epson 1270 Prints I
noticed a rather curious thing as I was making all the sample
prints for comparison testing. Prints made using the GretagMacbeth
profiles showed poor tonal transitions on the three papers I had
profiles for in the reflection portion of the
I had seen this poor tonal transition before so I chalked it up to the 1270 just being too old and surpassed in print quality by the R2400. Then I printed a sample using Ilford Classic Gloss paper using the Photo Enhance mode (no profile available for the 1270 and the 1280 profile is not suitable for use with the 1270). The colors were completely off, as expected with the Ilford paper, but the tonality that I expected to be muddy looked as good as the R2400 prints. It was intriguing to think that the GretagMacbeth profiles were at fault in providing a reduced print quality because it was clear that the 1270 could lay down ink fine enough to accurately reproduce the details seen on the monitor and the R2400 prints. Thus, I had a good test to see what the new PrintFIX PRO profiles could do to remedy this curious fault. The 1270 itself is a rather demanding printer to profile and Ilford posted a statement on their website that they would not create profiles for their papers to be used with the 1270 because of the color shifts that can occur during drying. This is probably related to complaints about the 1270 laying down more ink than necessary and some suggestions that no matter which paper type is actually used, to select Heavyweight Matte as a way to minimize the amount of ink sprayed out. Based on what I saw on the first sets of 1270 prints, there’s truth to the criticisms of the 1270 because the glossy prints had higher saturation than they should have for the green leaves in the trees. The print on Epson Enhanced Matte was more accurate and of course the paper setting used was Heavyweight Matte. A quick note about Ilford Classic Gloss paper: don’t bother buying this paper if you still use a 1270 for printing. It’s not as thick as other glossy papers and it takes a long time for prints to dry fully, as in days instead of hours. If you stack prints of Classic Gloss paper without them being fully dry, the ink will adhere to the back of the top print. This paper is quite similar to some of the Kodak Ultima papers I used years past and those prints sometimes took a week or more to dry out fully. Longevity is not good and it’s not compatible with pigment ink prints, which makes it not recommended. It’s probably not fair to compare profiles made with the Eye One Photo from three years ago, but then life’s never fair, so on we go. The PrintFIX PRO profiles suffered similarly from a bit too much saturation from the 1270 inks, but the prints were more accurate than the old Eye One profiles, which is not insignificant given the price discrepancy between the Eye One Photo and PrintFIX PRO.
Crop of original image file below - much reduced in size This test also confirmed for me that I never want to hear the annoyingly loud whine from the old 1270 again. Once upon a time I thought the Epson 1270 with GretagMacbeth profiles were the best things since sliced bread. Who knew I was eating paper thin white bread instead of tasting real, whole wheat goodness. Such is life and you live and learn and hopefully progress. In other words, I'm not such an old dog yet that I can't learn something new and understand that what was good yesterday doesn't mean that it's good today. Conclusion I’ll cut right to the chase and declare the ColorVision PrintFIX PRO to be an excellent product that delivers for a whole lot less than the competitive GretagMacbeth product I used in the past. The software is easy to use yet feature rich in allowing you to create profiles quickly and efficiently (if a bit tedious for the big 729 patch expert target). In fairness to the GretagMacbeth product, the Eye One Photo does offer a few other features not available with the PrintFIX PRO, but they’re features that I’d rarely, if ever use, and therefore I appreciate not having to pay for them. As easy to use as it is, if the PrintFIX PRO does not create excellent profiles then there’s no point. However, the profiles do deliver and in some instances, improve upon the profiles provided by paper brands that I’ve tested. The fact that the PrintFIX PRO produces great profiles so affordably speaks volumes about this package and ColorVision’s development for high quality profiling at real world prices. Not every great paper with its own dedicated profile will require the PrintFIX PRO treatment, but not every great paper comes with a profile so you either have to buy a custom profile, or buy your own profiling package. Given how convenient and flexible the PrintFIX PRO is there’s no doubt that I would prefer buying this package than pay someone a small fortune to create all the profiles that I would want to have access to. And the PrintFIX PRO seems to make a lot more sense to me than spending an even bigger fortune on a third-party RIP that costs as much as the printer itself – unless you’re doing a lot of B&W printing, which is an entirely different matter. Whenever a new promising paper comes to market you’ll be ready to profile and print right away rather than wait for a profile to be created by the vendor, and don’t forget in some instances, the paper vendor won’t be able to supply one for legal reasons. ColorVision has to be lauded for improving on their products while keeping the prices sensible for amateur and professional photographers serious about color management. I’m very impressed and consider the PrintFIX PRO to be a highly recommended product for those that want to be able to create their own custom printer profiles affordably without compromising any quality. The new profiles I've created with the PrintFIX PRO will now be the ones I call upon first and foremost whenever I'm making prints with the R2400. May 28, 2006 - Color Management Shoot Out - ColorVision, GretagMacbeth, and X-Rite/Monaco products compared with my rankings. |
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Correspondence & About this website Copyright © 1998-2008 Edwin Leong |
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Digital
printing has come a long ways since the early and mid 1990s when
Epson was the only brand trying to make any headway in producing
photographic prints from an inkjet printer.
If
you let the printer handle the color management of the printing
process, depending on your individual qualitative requirements,
the prints were either good enough, or useless. And God help you
if the printer manufacturer decided to change the production of
the inks midway through the life of your printer.
