Printer profile editing in Eye One Match

2012 - Note that the currently shipping profiling product from X-Rite (i1Profiler - full review) does not support profile editing any more. You may still find copies of older software/hardware, but do check if they will run on your chosen computer system.

Profile editing?

The editing software comes as part of the Eye One Match software and needs to have a licensed device attached to your computer, in order to use it. In some ways this storing of license details makes using my Eye One a bit easier - I can have the software installed on several computers (and my laptop) and use the device with whichever may be most convenient.

You'll have to check with GMB what particular packages include icc profile editing.

Plugging in my Eye One Display did not work (as I'd expect), but my Eye One spectrophotometer did.

I believe that the basic Eye One Design package does not include the editor, but I was unable to find a clear example on the GMB site comparing what software/options you get with each package.

FYI: I've set up a LinkedIn group (~4700 members) for people interested in all aspects of Digital Black and White photography: Digital Black and White

Note that this is from a GMB Marketing email I received a few months ago:

If all is well you will see the profile editor option enabled in the start screen.

Editing profiles

The whole process is pretty straightforward. You select a profile and a reference image, make some adjustments to different aspects of the profile and create a new version of the profile to use.

First choose which profile to edit - I've selected one here for an Epson 890 that I'd profiled.

Now comes the question as to which profile in your printer profile to edit?

Printer profiles contain two profiles, one for printing and one for soft proofing. Normally you will want to start by getting the print to look right. Note the useful help text to the right, which explains the difference and what to do.

I'm showing how to go about fixing the print side of things, but editing for soft proofing is done just the same way.

In order to see the effects of the edits during editing you need a test image. This image needs to cover a full range of colours and be good enough to show details where your profile needs changing.

In general, do not use one of your own photos! you are just compounding potential sources of confusion and error.

A lot of work goes into making good test images...

First of all I've loaded one of the Kodak test images (more info and description). I sometimes use these for printer testing. It's OK, but is in the sRGB colour space, so may not show up any problems in the areas where the gamut of the Stylus 890 exceeds sRGB.

GMB supply a test image in Lab colour which works well, but do remember that significant parts of the image may be outside the gamut of your printer. How it prints will vary with your profile _and_ the rendering intent you use.

In case you were wondering how much of the image is out of gamut, it's shown below (reduced and converted to sRGB for web use).

If you mouse over the image, the bits that are out of gamut for my Epson 1290, using Epson dye inks on Epson PGP paper, will go grey. If you click on the image (and hold the mouse button down) you can see the increase in gamut when using Epson K3 UltraChrome inks on the same paper in an Epson R2400. The image below is from screen grabs of Photoshop CS2, using soft proofing to look for out of gamut colours. The accuracy of this is dependant on the profiles containing the correct gamut information -- both profiles below are Epson ones.

You will probably need a print of your test image to check for errors that you hope to correct by editing your printer profile. Remember that you need consistent viewing conditions for true comparisons.

Editing your profile

There are four aspects of the profile you can adjust:

Lightness/contrast
Saturation
Grey balance
Colour correction

It's probably best to make the biggest changes first, although you could do them in the order above if you like.

Variations are displayed, showing the changes to the output profile. You can move the sliders by clicking on the image that is more like what you want. The examples below show how the different adjustments are made.

Clicking on the image at the right results in a brighter print, while clicking the top image bumps up contrast.

The image that you select then becomes the centre image for subsequent editing.

Here, I've moved the grey balance to the red, and clicked on zoom button (button at the left) to see a larger version of the image.

Now, I've used the compare button to see a 'before and after' view -- you can see the red tinge to the greys in the lower image.

The grey balance adjustments only affect parts of the profile with very little colour (the greys).

Global colour corrections, like those below, affect everything.

For corrections like this, you can have a 5 or 9 image view.

You can go back and forth between the various edit options until you are satisfied, and are ready to create your new (edited) printer profile.

Saving the profile

Profiles have internal names which you should make use of to record the profile settings.

Once you have more than a few profiles, you -will- curse yourself if the contents of the name do not tell you what basic settings you used for the print :-) Write it down somewhere, and try and come up with a meaningful naming system!

You can save the edit settings as well, if you need to apply them to several profiles.

Just because you have changed the internal name, the profile file name is not altered, so trying to save gets this very helpful reminder.

Conclusions

So, there you have it. You just open the printer profile, modify it, and save a new version.

But ... consider just one thing before you rush off to create lots of versions of your freshly created profiles ...

• Each one needs testing -- that means more prints, a good test image, waiting for prints to dry, repeatable viewing conditions, and the ability to critically evaluate results.

It is worth considering whether your starting profile was the best that could be produced,

Was the paper properly dry?
Was the printer working at its best?
Are the measurements OK?
Did you select the best printer media settings?
Might you need a bigger target (more patches)?
Did you pick the best rendering intent?
What viewing conditions did you use
Are you sure your colour vision is OK?

If, after that, you feel a profile could be improved, then give it a go. I'm just saying that profile editing should probably not be your first move if you are not quite happy with what you are getting.

If you've looked at the adjustments in the screen shots above, you may have wondered how you actually decide on a correction to a particular fault?

One thing you can do is to try and duplicate the fault on your display, note the settings, and then apply the opposite changes. A simple version would be where your print was not saturated enough, so you desaturate the reference image until it looks similar to what you are getting, then apply the opposite amount of saturation increase.

If this sounds a little hit and miss, then you have probably got the right idea. One other way to try is to make several test prints at fairly large adjustments to see if they are going the 'right way'. You could then try versions with more subtle variations.

-- you have got enough spare ink and paper?

Summary

The software is easy to use and has good clear help information to guide you along. The whole Eye One Match application is well thought out and designed, and this new addition is not out of place.

I'd have liked to be able to resize the application window to make better use of my large monitor, but the image size is not a problem (the screen shots in this article have been reduced in size).

My biggest question would be the overall utility of editing profiles in the first place. I've heard several real experts in the field of printer profile generation say that they hardly ever do it.

As long as profile editing is not your first move when trying to find out why a particular profile is not giving optimal results, then this application should help.

Do remember though, that an improvement in one aspect of a profile may harm other areas -- you are just going to have to experiment a bit.

One time when you might want to alter a profile is when you know that the viewing conditions are going to affect how the print will look.

An example would be the difference between daylight and tungsten lighting. Correcting for this is a feature of higher end profiling packages.

With this profile editor, you are going to just have to experiment with the colour balance yourself.

It would be nice to see a few of these 'higher end' features find their way into Eye One Match - not the full range of options in the 'Pro' packages, but enough to allow advanced users to explore some options.

More info and articles

An Introduction to colour management article by Keith and collection of CM info.
The Viewing page - basic monitor set-up
Colour management links on this site
Eye One Design - review
Eye One scanner profiling - review
Using the Eye One with a scan target to get better results from your film or flatbed scanner.
Printer profiling with the Eye One Photo - review
More advanced printer profiling with the Eye One.
Review of the Camera Profiling option in the Eye One Photo SG package.
Colour Management Check-up kit - review
The PrintFIX - review
The Spyder2 Pro - review

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