I always print on an A4 piece of paper.I used to print the image at
the bottom and attach the reference card just above it.I never got
a good profile.I have upgraded to PP2.7,changed my scanner as
recommended and still print on an A4 sheet but now I cut the print
out and lay both aligned on the glass and covered with black
card.The results are far better.I think one of the problems was
attaching the card to the printed A4 which doubled the thickness
therefoer causing errors.
That's certainly something that can cause trouble in some cases.
First, the extra white border around the targets can cause problems
with internal reflections in the scanner bed, which is why the help
recommends trimming the target like the included PP target.
Second, if you don't put something that is matte black behind the
targets, you can have problems with bleed-through where light goes
through the color pathes and bounces off the white backing behind
the paper, and back through the color patches. The effect of these
two problems varies greatly among scanners, type of paper used, and
other factors.
At this point, I would suggest two things to Vlad:
(1) First, if you haven't already tried the profiles on the Profile
Prism FTP site, go there and download the profiles for the 870 and
1270 or even the 1280 and see how they work. I believe there are
some there for the paper you are using. I believe you will find
that the profiles on the site do not have the shadow problems that
you have been having, but I'd be curious as to what you find. I'd
also encourage you to download some of the images in the
"test-images" folder there to see how they print. Those images are
in known color spaces so you don't have to deal with issues like
whether or not you are looking at an anomalous image or whether
your camera profile could be affecting things and you've been
trying to "fix" your printer profile when it's the camera profile
that is the problem.
(2) Next, whatever you find from (1) above, I would go back and go
through the help one last time and regenerate your target(s) from
scratch and make sure you follow all the help tips along the way.
Since more than a few others are using equipment identical to yours
(both scanner and printer) and don't have the problems you are
having, I have to assume that something in your workflow is just
not right.
This is not intended to belittle or insult you; it's just that
there are a lot of factors that affect color management. It could
be anything from a bad input (camera) profile causing your problem
to using the wrong target or driver settings when you scanned.
Sometimes you end up with a pile of targets and they get mixed up
and you think you scanned the "color controls" version when it was
actually the "sRGB" or "no color adjustment" version.
Also, you even need to check what profile is being used for the
input image on the camera side of the equation. Your printer is
the "to" side of the equation but the image itself also has to have
a profile associated with it also, so the problem could be there as
well. There are still a lot of unanswered questions like what
profile are you using for your
images , what camera did they come
from, what software are you using to print and what are the color
management settings in that software, etc.
I'd say 80% to 90% of the time, generating accurate profiles is
pretty straightforward (given a good scanner at least). The
problem is, when you run into a snag and are in that 10-20%, it can
sometimes be difficult to find the problem because there are so
many factors that affect profiling. I'll continue to help you as
long as you are willing.
--
Mike
http://www.ddisoftware.com
