I have this new Canon Pro-1100 and I went to make a custom ICC profile for my preferred papers. I've always found that custom profiles are miles better than the stock versions. Up to recently I've used the simple Color Munki, which I found did an ok job. I had never compared it to the i1 Pro line. Anyway I had one Color Munki but at one point it broke down. Bad luck, so I got a 2nd one a couple years back. I used it to make some profiles for an older Epson printer and it mostly lived in a drawer. Wouldn't you know it also sh*t the bed all on its own. I think the rotation mechanism in the unit is often faulty, it would not register that the sensor rotation was happening or was in the right spot. Ugh..ok...
So I think to myself, I make prints a lot. I make prints with an Epson D1070, and this Canon Pro 1100. I have high standards, maybe it's time to get an i1 that'll really last. They used to make 3. Basic, Photographer, and Publish. Now they only make Basic and Publish. Basic is around $2k and Publish is $3300.
In the description of Basic it lists things like "Single-pass measurement capability for polarization and optical brightener compensation." So yeah, it's talking about paper calibration, of course it does that.
The kit includes all the physical hardware for scanning color patch targets too. So based on the B&H description, I figured this was like a really advanced color munki and it would make ICC profiles! Why would they give me all these tools to do it if I can't?
Well...you can't. You need to buy PUBLISH to make printer profiles. So this is frustrating because they discontinued the in betweener model that I might have been able to swing, ie i1 Pro 3 Photographer edition. I checked the 'upgrade' price to unlock ICC profile creation, which will set me back a cool $1800.00.
Yeah that's a big nope. This is going back to B&H. I'm just really annoyed that they don't make it clearer that this is a totally gimped product for an obscene amount of money. Who needs a $2000 monitor calibrator? I have a Spyder unit that was a few hundred, works great.
I'm looking into a different set up for making ICC profiles. It looks like Datacolor also sells a cheap system for $345 called Spyder Print. Reviews are mixed and it's quite old, but it will make a nearly 800 patch target. Hopefully that will be good enough for my system. Just a bummer all around. I was really hoping to be confident of this spectrometer and was looking forward to doing a lot of fine art printing.
Please, if I'm wrong about this, someone correct me. I have the RMA from B&H but have not mailed it yet.]
X-rite functions are all based on licensing. So what you're seeing makes sense even if it is ridiculous. If you had an old "publish" license that allowed print profiling, you could buy the cheaper "basic" device and transfer your license to it. if you are starting from scratch, you have to buy the "publish" device to get the license.
Have you looked at the Calibrite ColorChecker Studio? That is probably the least expensive profiler for RGB and CMYK printers. The photo and consumer level products are now under the Calibrite brand. X-rite is now just the commercial grade products.
All of the handheld manual paper scanners are tediously slow to use. I had the older x-rite branded version of the i1Studio. Auto scanning spectrophotometers are much easier to make paper profiles in quantity. The i1 ISIS might be the least expensive at $5,000.
It looks like to me the Colorchecker product is just a re-branded Color-Munki. Those are nice units but as I said in my post, I've had 2 of the fail over the years. I think there is a fundamental problem with the hardware that causes them to break down over time.
I'm going to try the Spyder Print product, which is half the $ anyway and appears to scan more targets.
The Publish version of the i1 line is just too expensive IMO. I can swallow a roughly 2k purchase of something that is gonna last but $3300 to calibrate my small/medium format printers is a bit too rich for my blood. Hope I don't come to regret that...
X-rite shifted all their photo products like colormunki to the "Calibrite" branding ~4 years ago. So yeah, the hardware looks the same but the firmware is different. Many of the pre-calibrite x-rite branded devices don't work with the latest apps and the upgrade paths are confusing.
The auto feeding paper scanners are just faster. The manually pushed scanners like the i1studio and Spyder Print require you to push the devices over the paper. They do the same job. I found it takes many attempts to get the manual scans to work. You might have to scan 10 or 20 rows of color patches on a sheet. It might take 3 or 4 passes on each row before the software accepts the input. So creating a single profile could take a while. If you're only doing one profiles occasionally that may not be an issue. If you're doing several per day the auto feeders are a big time saver. The manually fed devices often need larger color patches so you use more ink printing them.
Let me know how the Spyder Print device works out. If the profiles are good and it isn't too frustrating to use, that might be quite the bargain.
With over 25 years of experience in printing on CMYK, offset, RGB, and other printers, I can say that you are embarking on a journey which may or may not be worthwhile. If you are using a modern RGB printer especially Canon LFP's with their internal color calibration features (Epson has them too, but they're harder to access and have to be manually performed) and you're using the OEM inks and standard papers with commercial profiles, it's really difficult to improve upon them. And, I've tried. The only real reason in my mind for someone to venture down this route is if they're using 3rd party inks or non-commercial media.
That being said, if you do want to embark on creating high quality profiles, the iProfiler and an i1Pro3 are the easiest way to go. If you are more crafty, you could consider purchasing older i1Pro's or other spectrophotometers such as the i1iO, ISIS, etc. and learn Argyl CMS. Quite candidly, buying an inexpensive colorimeter and software won't yield optimal results.
But don't take my word for this. Email Keith Cooper over at Northlight Imaging and ask his opinion.
