Need an icc profile creating please

[gbasource]

Ok, ive decided to do what I should of done in the first place instead of wasting my money on mugs by playing with settings. Im not prepared to throw away any more mugs so could someone point me in the right direction to get in touch with paul who creates the icc profiles? I cant find his website. Please let me know what you will need in order to make me a profile and how much id be looking at. My printer is and epson s22 and the ink is not inktec or sawgrass and i cant find a manufacturers name anywhere on the ink bottles. If Paul lets me know what he needs from me to create this profile and could let me know if the profile will just apply to that set of ink or to all the inks I put into the printer then that would be appreciated. I take it the profile installs into adobe photoshop/illustrator then i just change the settings in there to set it up for the profile?

[WorthDoingRight]

Well just PM him on the forum his user name is 'Paul' and he is a super moderator on here.

[pisquee]

Paul's website is here: http://www.frames4photoshop.info/shop/i ... at_12.html

The profile will only apply to the make/type of ink already in your printer, so only go through with Paul's service if you know you can buy more of the exact same ink again in the future,and trust that the seller is putting the same ink the unmarked/unbranded bottles, otherwise you will be wasting your money.
Each manufacturer's ink will be different to the next, and an ICC is used to compensate for these differences.

If you aren't sure about being able to continue getting the same supply of ink consistently for the next few years, then you would be better off flushing your printer out, and loading in an ink from a seller you can trust (an official dealer), selling in branded/marked bottles, that you can get a continuous supply from and then getting the ICC made. Sorry if this sounds a faff, but you don't want the hassel of wasted time and money everytime you buy a new set of inks.

[WorthDoingRight]

Well if a profile costs £20 everytime you change inks and given that it is impossible to even guarantee that branded inks will be identical given differences in age etc it would seem to me to be more sensible to just factor in a new ICC profile every time you swap inks regardless of whether branded or unbranded ink (hey Paul do I get commission now?). Yes it is one more hassle but then a couple of wasted items would probably cost more than £20.

Now this is where I put the cat amongst the pigeons - I much prefer how my mugs turn out using my Brother printer and bottled ink (and not as yet profiled) than I do using my Ricoh with Sawgrass cartridges and Powerdriver. Not sure if it is because I am used to 180 sec at 180 deg with the Brother but afraid to go to 180 deg or 180 sec with the Ricoh and maybe therefore I am undercooking my items but the image quality is just not as sharp or as clean on the Ricoh compared to the Brother - it just doesnt have the same WOW factor.

[JSR]

Although we're not allowed to discuss non-approved inks, one option that hasn't been mentioned is to invest in your own profiling device. That way you can happily profile whenever you feel like it without having to wait on a profile being made. Whenever you change your printer (or anything else in the print process - of course you wouldn't be changing your inks, because we can only talk about approved inks ), you'd just make up a new profile.

The first thing you'll say is that a profiling device is expensive. Mine was just over £300. That's a chunk of change ... or is it?

I used to buy the best "approved" printer that was available - the Epson 1400 (and the 1290S before that). The printer and ink together cost in excess of £600. The printer itself was over £300. But I paid that because I believed it would give the best results (it was the "approved" option, after all).

What do I use today? A £20 Brother printer. Had I spent this £300 on my profiling device back when I'd started, I would not have spent £300 on an Epson 1290S, nor two lots of £300+ on two Epson 1400s. Instead of spending close to £1,000 on printers, I'd have just spent £300 on a profiling device and been using printers that cost pennies. Suddenly it doesn't sound so expensive, does it?

[pisquee]

Equally, my budgetting for our profiling device was that I could be forking out £25 each time I wanted Paul to make another profile, or buy a profiling device and do as many profiles as I need - for both sublimation substrates, as well as the different art papers and canvasses we use, and this then tied in nicely with stopping using Epson inks in our main printer, and switching it to InkTec pigments inks.
If you think you may need more than 10 profiles doing over the rest of your business, then it can work out cheaper and more convenient to have your own device. Although I must also point out that Paul's system is a lot more than the £200-£300 systems JSR and we got.

[WorthDoingRight]

Well, I have a very basic ICC profiling package that I bought a while back that uses a flatbed scanner to do the profiling. It came from the US and cost I think around £50. I use it for my normal photoprinters and it is called Profile Prism http://www.ddisoftware.com/prism/ and is from the same guy that does Qimage. I am however now looking to buy a handheld device just because I tend to use my flatbed scanner as extra desk space and cannot be bothered to uncover it that often lol.

[JSR]

Although I must also point out that Paul's system is a lot more than the £200-£300 systems JSR and we got.

This is true. Paul sometimes does profiles for me so that I can compare them to the ones I make. Because his profiling device scans many more colour patches first time out, it's immediately more accurate over a wider range of colours. However, having a profiling device of your own means that you can optimise your own profiles on a per-image basis, and you can use it to scan specific colours to see if anything needs tweaking to match what's on-screen.

Getting your own £300 device doesn't mean you'll never want the odd profile from a device such as Paul's, it just means you have more flexibility to do profiles at any time, without waiting, and that you can optimise on-the-fly.

[gbasource]

Thanks for your help. Ive printed out the colour charts and sent them to paul.

[Andrew]

What profiling devices are best for around the £300 mark?