Hi!

I have received my copy of PP abit over two weeks ago and am no further ahead.....  All the profile generated give me something way oversaturated, contrasty, with an overall reddish/magenta slight color cast...

I am using Vista 64, with a screen calibrated three times! with a Spyder, Photoshop CS-4, Lightroom 3.4. I have a IP4700 printer, and two scanners: one that is integrated with my Canon MP750 multi-function, and one that is an old Scanjet 5300C, from HP. I am using VueScan. I have tried PP with output from both scanners: same result.

First thing, I tried to calibrate my scanner from within Vuescan. Used VueScan and tried the IT8 target that came with PP. Results were unsatisfactory: the colors as they appeared from the IT8 target were not as vivid on screen. Tried with PP: scanning the IT8 target from VueScan, with the recommended settings, as per the the PP help recommandation. When I read the scan from the MP750, I kept getting a high amount of "patches with an X" and clipping (like over 60). I was puzzled, this is a decent scanner, I've done photocopies of photos with it and it was pretty good! Decided to do it with the HP scanner. Got a good scan (less than 6 items with an X), all other settings were good. Generated the profile and tried to scan with that profile using VueScan: very washed-out colors.....   

The hell with it! I know PP looks at the differences between expected results (from the IT8 target) and the printed output.  I generated a printer output using the recommended settings from the PP Help using Photoshop to print (you know, Printer manage color, and within the printer driver, set color management to "none"). Let the print dry overnight.

The next day, used BOTH scanners (without any color management, let it to Factory within VueScan) to try to generate printer profiles. Got good scans, according to PP (good white balance, exposure, only 5-6 squares marked with an X). Generated the profile both times. then printed the PP test image from within Photoshop: ouch! Pink/reds come out wayyyy to bright, contrast is too strong. Tried this procedure several times with the same kind of results.

Tried to blame the monitor, re-calibrated, tried PP again, re-calibrated screen again, tried PP again..... same thing!

Anything I'm doing wrong here? Is this as good as can be expected with Profile Prism?

Terry, a couple of thoughts, if I may?


Re calibtating the monitor had nothing to do with profiling a printer.

What paper are you using.?
Are your settings in CS4 *exactly* the same when you printed the target as the settings you used when you printed the test print?
That means the driver setting to No Management, the correct paper, quality, and no interference from the driver at all.
It also means as Terry said, that you need your software which you used to make the target print needs to be set to nothing..... No color space at all.

Even if you would take the few moments to download and install the free demo of Qimage, and use it with the pre-target printing setup, that would be going a long way.
It eliminates 1/2 of the possible stumbling blocks.
From this pointm we can really help a lot because we can set your Qimage to print using the profile you made.

Have a try.

Fred

Did you use Qimage to print a new target using the special setup in Qimage that provides for printing targets?
Judging by the time stamps of your posts, you did it all in 35 minutes including drying time for the printed target?
Most people not having used Qimage before, would have spent that long finding the special target printing setup.... :-))

Fred

Ok, I played with the metamerism compensation. It did help a bit. I did several print, including one witht the slider all the way to the right.

Still, on the test photo included with PP, the skin tones of the hand and of the lady have a pink/magenta cast, and the D of the words "The Digital Dog" is dark green instead of the fluo green it is on screen. The background of the hand holding jewels has a shade of green to it.

I wish I could scan it and show you, but that's exactly the point, colors are not accurate!.... lol!

I have tried to use Canon paper with one of the profiles that came with the printer (Photo Paper Plus Glossy). The prints are OK looking, slightly undersaturated, slightly over-contrasty. Which is why I wanted to have my own profile, adjusted to my taste.

I will play tonight and try to adjust the Canon's original profiles (making a copy before, of course...). Maybe that will be an easier start to get to a result.

Also, Mike, if the printer gives me a consistant color shift, whatever it's quality, there's gotta be a way to correct it, no?

Steve,
I don't own either printer, so I have no first hand opinion, but if you take 5 minutes to compare the 4500 to the 4700, you will see they are not the same print engines.
The 4500 has far more nozzles than the 4700, and the Suggested price is 30.00 higher than the 4700.
The 4700 is offered all over the e-tail internet for about 49-57 dollars.
The best I could find (new) for the 4700 was 99.00
Just thinking out loud.

Fred

I've explained this before both here and via private email but I guess I should be more blunt.  You are expecting more than you can get from a printer you can pick up from B&H Photo for $39.95!  Take a look at the images you posted in your last post.  Look at the Canon print on the left.  There are no true saturated reds in the photo!  Look at the red patch on the GretagMacbeth ColorChecker chart.  It's magenta, not red.  Maybe you'd call it red if you didn't know, but it has a serious magenta shift.  And the scanned targets you sent me: remember me telling you to take a look at the saturated red patch on the IT8 (L17) and I asked you to notice that there was nothing on your printed target that could even come close to a true saturated red in comparison?  Your entire target looked faded compared to the IT8, which is printed on a relatively narrow gamut dye sub printer by comparison.

Canon, in their profile, is taking true reds and shifting them toward magenta in order to get more saturation.  But this is at the expense of hue!  Profile Prism doesn't do that, as hue is a priority.  It's a tradeoff really.  Would you rather print a red rose and have someone say "Hmm, that rose looks a little faded" or would you rather them ask "why does that red rose look purple"?  There is no "correct" answer.  The problem is, when a cheap printer like this has such a narrow color gamut and is missing large sections of the color gamut, compromises must be made.  You can compromise hue and force some (of the missing) colors to look like a different color... or you can do what PP is doing and reduce saturation to the point that hue can be reproduced accurately.  You cannot do both, because the printer is physically incapable of doing both.  You can see some other compromises in the Canon profile other than hue shift issues too.  Look at the color gradient at the very top.  See all the banding?  It's not smooth because of the compromises being made to try to "fake" the eye into seeing what isn't there.  Grays in the Canon profile also look magenta whereas they look more neutral in the PP profile.

Did you ever try Photo Paper Pro like I asked in my email?  Using Photo Paper Plus Glossy isn't going to help this printer.  The less capable printers do better with Photo Paper Pro as I said in my email.  Also, the hues in the PP profile look much more accurate than the Canon profile so you've already got a good starting point.  The PP profile certainly looks like one that could be tweaked!  Grays look good, and hues look good.  Just increasing saturation, contrast, or both for all colors could increase saturation of non fully saturated colors which would give the appearance of more overall saturation.  But again due to the printer's physical limitations, you'll run into a wall there too eventually.  For example, your printer cannot produce (good) saturated reds, so increasing saturation might improve the appearance of duller reds but it can't increase the saturation of bright reds.  What ends up happening then, is you create a non linear saturation curve where things are pushed up against the saturated end of the spectrum.  Here's an example result of that: a woman wearing a pink blouse is holding a red rose.  The pink blouse looks properly saturated based on the original scene because pink isn't very saturated, but now the red rose looks very dull and not as vibrant as it should.  So relative to the sweater, the red rose gets lost in the photo.

So as I said, printers with very limited capabilities force all sorts of compromises.  Do try the Photo Paper Pro though, because that could increase the printer's gamut a bit and thereby reduce the compromises being made.

Mike

OK.  In the post above mine, in the beginning of the post you called both (right and left) the PP profile and then switched to calling the one on the right the Canon profile.  I wasn't sure which one of those was the typo.  I just figured the one on the right was PP since it favors hue accuracy first.  It really doesn't matter though.  What I said was still valid.  With a printer with such a small gamut, it's a balancing act.  Even if hue is considered 2x as important as saturation, if saturation is SO far off that you can't come anywhere close, you have to shift hue.  There is simply no choice.  That's what I was explaining about the balancing act.  What this tells me is that PP found no way to get even in the ballpark with saturation and it was forced to shift hue to compensate.


Again, there are probably a lot of compromises going on.  And Canon printers generally don't like non-Canon papers so you may be running into problems there too.


I know which printer you are referring to: have all along.  The ip4700 is a printer that sells for about $79 (street price with no sales).  I see now that the BH Photo $39.95 sale on that printer ended yesterday but you can still get it from BH for $79.95 and down to about $55 from other retailers.  The price isn't the problem though.  The problem is the ink.  I have a Pro9000 and it uses CLI-8 ink tanks and uses seven colors plus black, including red, green, photo magenta, and photo cyan tanks.  The print head is different (better) as well on the Pro9000.  Your ip4700 uses only the basic 3 colors (magenta, cyan, and yellow) and a print head that isn't capable of putting down the ink with precision like the Pro9000, hence the small gamut.  The main limitation here is that a printer with only three color inks is going to have a very small gamut coverage.  In fact, there are very few printers left that try to get away with only three color ink carts for this reason.  Most at least contain photo magenta and photo cyan and the better ones include red and green or red and blue.

Mike