Spyder3Print - Printer ICC maker!

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Yeah, I'm guessing yours is an automatic one. For the amount of profiles we do for ourselves a year, a quicker one isn't worth the extra money for saving time. But, it is also why it's not worth my time doing profiles for other people at the price you can charge!

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My colormunki only prints 100 squares initially, hence quite quick. This gets everything in the right ball park and as such is fairly accurate. Where it gets clever is it can then do 50 squares to refine for the shades in a specific image, which it adds to the profile. Now you can build the profile up like that as you go, like adding extra blocks to build your lego kit!

Now the screen and the printer are calibrated to match each other and this is the bit I really like as, when I soft proof, what I see is what I get.

The next dimension is that I can send my profile to the photographers that I work with and they can soft proof and adjust their own images, so now I print what they see. Note this does mean their screen has to be calibrated.

All good stuff.

Janners

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There are options in Spyder to not do the full 1000 odd squares, with different sets of smaller amounts. I've just always figured I may as well do the full amount possible.
I have toyed with the idea of sending my profiles to the other designers we work with, but none of them have calibrated screens, so would create more problems than solve I think.

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I have two "camps" that I work with. There are the photographers who check their grey scales and colour charts with an image before they shoot and again if conditions and location change. These have very expensive monitors, those very posh tablets with the image on the tablet itself etc. They fully understand colour, its nuances, limitations of the various adobe etc colour ranges, profiles etc....... and those who don't.
Those who do have the profile, those who don't.... I don't even mention it!

One problem is that those who understand it are so anal and generally really boring. Great images but zero ability to interact with people.

Janners

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Whilst I remember I played with profiles for sublimetals aluminium and unisub....in no way compatible! The subli metals is very white, the unisub is a more neutral white. So if I print to unisub with the sublimetal profile it darkens the image.
I really must get out more!

Janners

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I tried making a profile for silver coloured metal (i.e. with clear coating on it, and not white) but this just confused the software and everything came out green! Emailed support at DataColor and they said I would need to upgrade to one of their industrial systems to get useful results!

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Love it Tim.
I thought about it, couldn't see how it would work so put it to one side as a rainy Sunday with a glass of wine job. I'll just have the glass of wine then!

Janners

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Want to try doing a glass one next, been holding off as the glass coasters are so expensive, and I'd have to use quite a lot of them! May have to hunt around for for some A4 sheets of sublimation glass without any awful 'Chinchilla' texture on them.

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The Chinchilla glass has me beat...haven't tried profiling it as I assumed the ripples and the green tinge would throw every thing. The lack of clean white is a problem I assume.

Janners.

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Hate the look and feel of Chinchilla, so only use flat/smooth glass products.