Screen probes (c’td)

From: "Daniel Masse"

my screen won’t be profiled, but at least what I
will see in Photoshop will be identical to the prints made on the Frontier – anyway, I am not considering getting a printer : a Frontier print is cheaper.

Does that make sense ?

No.

Bill Hilton wrote:

No.

?? What is it, that does not make sense ? I am willing, and wanting, to learn…

Daniel Masse wrote:

Me again…

Considering all the problems I am having, I am wondering if the EyeOne probe is the best tool to profile a screen. There are others probes on the market

My advice is to save your money for the time being. Use Adobe Gamma to get your screen looking about right, give them sRGB images to print, and your Frontier prints should be excellent. Ask the tech to disable the PIC module’s FDIA/Image intelligence auto-corrections and image enhancements and print straight sRGB. Don’t be surprised f they don’t know what you’re talking about.

Print a gray step wedge and make sure that you can discern all the steps and that there are no color casts. There are those who will pour scorn on this recommendation, however I strongly suggest if you give it a try you may be pleasantly surprised at the results, and in any case you will have a baseline for comparison with your profiled results.

is there anywhere a comparison between the results obtained with each probe ? Some people have tried several probes, and they say that the results are far from being identical, but I have not found any detail or conclusion.

FWIW:
http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/monitor_calibration.htm

Yesterday, I spent some time talking to a technician in a professional lab, which uses a Frontier. I wanted to know how he profiled his screens. Blank wall : the settings have all been adjusted by Fuji technicians, and Photoshop does not show what profile the screen uses…

This is typical. Part of the advantage of the Frontier is it’s very cookbook, and less need to spend money on training than with other printers.

I am now wondering if I should not forget about profiling. I have written down the hardware settings corresponding to the 6500

Thank you so much Mike for your long answer, anf for giving me the address of Drycreek. This site is very rich, and there is a lot to read – and learn…

Mike Russell wrote:

is there anywhere a comparison between the results obtained with each probe ? Some people have tried several probes, and they say that the results are far from being identical, but I have not found any detail or conclusion.

Well, Drycreek says that the EyeOne probe is the best around… So, my problem may not be due to the probe or the software.

Yet, it is said that weird results were obtained with the EyeOne and very cheap LCD’s… Mine is not a very cheap model, but it is not a top-of-the-line either : it’s a NEC LCD 1700V : could it be that the quality is not quite there ?

Although turning the knobs on your monitor is a pretty easy way to match a print, I wouldn’t recommend it for several reasons. In particular, you may wind up with weird looking colors for your non-Photoshop work, and for the web.

Right. It means then that I should adjust the colors in Photoshop… I have already spent hours trying to do it… Not much luck… I find the corrections to apply to one picture, then I try another picture, and I apply the same corrections : not good. I correct the corrections, go to a third picture. Not good… Etc…

The drycreekphoto.com web page has profiles for a large number of digital printers, mostly Costco’s Frontiers, plus instructions on how to use these profiles. If you’re lucky, you may find your machine listed, or you may be able to print a target and have them measure it for you: <http://www.drycreekphoto.com/> .

The technician of the lab I have been using has given me the profile of his machine : it "should" be alright…

But do take this all with a grain of salt. I have looked at some of these profiles using curvemeister’s profile plotter action (free at <http://curvemeister.com/downloads/>, and seen some scary stuff that makes me doubt the usefulness of these profiles, for example, the Costco Frontier nearest me (in Richmond) CA, renders everything up to RGB(26,26,26) as pure black!. Converting to a profile like that, for my money, is simply a horrible idea.

Thank you for letting us this tool ! But I must confess that I have not been able to use it yet – part of the problem being that I am French, and the menus on my copy of PS are in french… It reaches a point where it stops, telling me that it cannot apply Dispersion, as the file is empty… I still have to figure out what that means…

Thanks again !

On Sat, 12 Jun 2004 18:51:35 +0200, "Daniel Masse" wrote:

T
Well, Drycreek says that the EyeOne probe is the best around… So, my problem may not be due to the probe or the software.

Yet, it is said that weird results were obtained with the EyeOne and very cheap LCD’s… Mine is not a very cheap model, but it is not a top-of-the-line either : it’s a NEC LCD 1700V : could it be that the quality is not quite there ?

It’s still the case that any you less spend large amounts of ,money on something like an Eizo LCD, colour is still more accurate on a CRT. Even with a spider.

—

Hecate

veni, vidi, reliqui

Hecate wrote:

It’s still the case that any you less spend large amounts of ,money on something like an Eizo LCD, colour is still more accurate on a CRT. Even with a spider.

Agreed. Yet, I had a chance to look at my images on a NEC LCD (same brand as mine), in a minilab. The screen display was definitely much closer to the printed images than what I get at home. I could live with that…

I suspect that the differences I observe have a different reason.