Custom Printer Profiles - Advice?

[gverdon]

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I just opened a dispute in Paypal vs Cathy's Profiles services as it seems that she is out of business (but still steadily accepts the payments...).

 

Now that I lost one month, I have to find another good profiler, pref. in Europe. Any advice, experience?

 

Right now, I only found:

- Eric Chan (I use his nice ABW standard profiles), but in USA

- colour perfect - Home

- Pure Profiles : custom printer profiling to improve your colour photo printing with an ICC profile.

- PROFILES BY RICK - Home Page (US too).

 

Thanks for any input or suggestion.

 

Cheers,

Gérald

[archi4]

Gerald,

I finally bought the x-rite i1 pro set and make my own profiles.

I use quite a few different papers, and if I get a new printer I can make the new profiles myself and finally the program allows me to adjust brightness, contrast, saturation color balance of the profiles if they are not exactly what I want.

1700 EURO incl. VAT is not cheap, but I never regretted it.

maurice

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[winmore]

I have used the profiling services of Eric Chan for 4 papers. All have been excellent. I realise you seek a Europe based service, but my experience with Eric's service, from Australia, has been great - prompt, courteous, spot-on accuracy. And his pricing is hard to beat!

 

Cheers Ron

[wda]

Have you tried Permajet? Free for their own papers; small fee with others.

[gverdon]

Thanks, Maurice, Ron and David.

Maurice,

Not really an option for me for all good reasons:

- I'm not Super Kalibrator;

- I already spent money and time in others devices calibration;

- I don't' think I'll ever use enough paper/printer combo to cover that

price, and if or when I do, the technology will certainly be far different...

 

But I understand your point.

 

David,

An interesting offer (the "packs/circles"), but it seems difficult to order from outside the UK...

 

Ron,

As I had a excellent experience with Chan's standard ABW profiles, I'm tempted by his services. I e-mailed him to verify that is still working before sending money... Once bitten, twice shy ;-)

 

Thanks again,

Gérald

[archi4]

I agree with Ron that the Permajet papers and profiles are excellent.

Ilford also provide excellent free profiles for their papers and many printers and so do Innova art for theirs.

Certainly worth a try. I must admit they are so close to the custom profiles I make that only a direct comparison will show very slight differences. Most are made with the x-rite system by the way.

Maurice

[gverdon]

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I agree with Ron that the Permajet papers and profiles are excellent.

 

Took a quick look, but didn't find a Baryta type paper, am I wrong?

 

Ilford also provide excellent free profiles for their papers and many printers and so do Innova art for theirs.

Certainly worth a try. I must admit they are so close to the custom profiles I make that only a direct comparison will show very slight differences. Most are made with the x-rite system by the way.

Maurice

 

That's interesting. I used the Ilford profile for GFS and Epson 3880 and found that the color rendition was way off. Don't you think that a custom profile (*) would really improve the result?

 

With the same combo, I had almost no problem with W&B and Chan's ABW profile.

 

But I actually would like to compare with a custom profile too.

 

Cheers,

Gérald

 

(*) Oops, you were talking about your custom profile, not a standard one. Precisely, did you see a real improvement compared to a free standard profile?

Edited August 25, 2010 by gverdon
Slowly aging brain

[gverdon]

Ok guys, I just had a kind and very professional answer from Eric Chan.

 

So, that will be my choice. ;-)

 

If anybody is interested, I'll let know the result.

 

Cheers,

Gérald