Profile Prism and clipped colors.

Need some tips for a good scan. I am getting 12 to 24 red x's on the color target scan. I have a Epson 1660 (very fast) scanner. Also what are you supposed to do with the scanner profile and do you use the scanner profile when making printer and paper profiles.

Thanks
--
Steven
D30
22-55
24-85
28-80 L
80-200L
100-300L
50 1.8
2x Tamron
420ex

Open the scanner lid and scan it like that.

Once you make a profile, you assign it to an image and then convert it to your working space (a well know color space like Adobe 1998).

BTW - I am concerned at this moment with the accuracy of my profiles - how do you know if your profile will be accurate? Without knowing that you might make it (your image) worst.
See my post: http://www.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1003&message=3459993

Steven said:

Need some tips for a good scan. I am getting 12 to 24 red x's on
the color target scan. I have a Epson 1660 (very fast) scanner.
Also what are you supposed to do with the scanner profile and do
you use the scanner profile when making printer and paper profiles.

Thanks
--
Steven
D30
22-55
24-85
28-80 L
80-200L
100-300L
50 1.8
2x Tamron
420ex

Click to expand...

Steven said:

Need some tips for a good scan. I am getting 12 to 24 red x's on
the color target scan. I have a Epson 1660 (very fast) scanner.
Also what are you supposed to do with the scanner profile and do
you use the scanner profile when making printer and paper profiles.

Click to expand...

i use a mac and i think you are using a pc so i can't help out on how windows stores/uses profiles, but when you are scanning to create printer profiles you should not use any scanner colour corection, just scan with all such features turned off

are you scanning against a matte black background? if not then you should always do so, most scanners have a bright wihite backing, this means that light can pass through the scanned target (or whatever else you scan), hit the backing, then reflect back through the target

this reflected light can badly degrade the quality of your scan and will produce an inferior profile

you may find black backing is enough to eliminate the red x marks

the profile prism help files for creating scannerand printer profiles give detailed instructions on set-up, if you follow these exactly you should be able to get excellent results

with pp i have profiled my scanner (epson 1650) and my printer with several different media types (canon s9000), i can now scan a kodak test target, print it on different media and produce results that are visually the same as the original, i.e. i have end to end colour matching

Steven said:

Need some tips for a good scan. I am getting 12 to 24 red x's on
the color target scan. I have a Epson 1660 (very fast) scanner.

Click to expand...

Try out to setup your scanner to the most neutral settings, e.g. don't use it's drivers collor correction settings or it's accompanied vendor profile.

Clean the glas plate of your scanner and maybe you want also to try to cover the target on the glas plate by an full black cheet of paper, so that the rest of the A4 glas plate is covered with that black sheet when scanning.

I'am getting really good scan results and only a max. of 2 red x's even with some unusual cheap CIS based Artec scanners here.

Try out your scanner profiles with some before/after capable image view tools. E.g. those which allow you to apply input/output profiles and which will then show you a side by side comparision of a loaded and via the profiles processed image. - This gives you often a good chance to compare shown images on your monitor with the original film based image/photos. Of course it's wise to have your monitor first calibrated therefor and also later from time to time.

Member said:

Also what are you supposed to do with the scanner profile...

Click to expand...

I use that final scanner profile for scanning in my analog film based pictures, which I'am going to archive and preview. I also preview, as described before, scanned in images this way to the originals in order to see if their coloring and lightnings are near by each other.

Member said:

... and do
you use the scanner profile when making printer and paper profiles.

Click to expand...

Well, that's a good question. I think Mike can tell you best if a PP generated scanner profile should also be used afterwards for printer profiling scans or not. I can imaging that PP's printer profiling generation steps are already taking this themselves, but I'am not sure for this here. So Mike Chaney should know this much better and thus can tell you for sure.

I for my part would have to find out this via the try'n'error pricipe, in order to find that out. E.g. generating a printer profile once with the use of a pregenerated scanner profile and also once without the usage of any scanner profile. Then I would compare the printed out results in order to see if they make any difference at all, or if one is more pleasing as the other one.

However, as I said before, Mike Chaney should know all this much better than I and possibly is willing to tell us here, what's the right and desired way to do it.

--
vkyr

It often helps to use a black piece of construction paper behind the targets to minimize bleed through. Scanner settings are even more important though. When using an Epson scanner, click the "Configuration" button and check the radio button at the bottom for "no color correction". That will gray out a lot of the other options. Make sure to uncheck "Unsharp Mask" and scan at 300 PPI (no higher). At the top of the Twain window, set "Image Type" to "Color Photo" and "Destination" to "Epson Stylus Printer (Photo)".

Also important with Epson scanners, if you have the auto-preview turned off so that the scanner does not do a quick preview before the "real" scan, you will need to scan twice and throw the first scan away, using the second. The first pass after you open the Twain driver is used to set the exposure, so if you have preview turned off and only scan once, that scan may be overexposed.

Hope those tips help. Also, you should never use a scanner profile when scanning the two targets for printer profiling. When scanning the two targets for printer profiling, you should use the above settings and use the resulting scan with no profile.

--
Mike
http://www.ddisoftware.com

Scanning your printed targetlace the targets on the glass of your scanner, against the edge of the scanner glass for easy alignment. Place the Profile Prism target (pp-10, pp-11, etc.) on the top and your printed target right underneath with the bottom edge of the Profile Prism target touching the top edge of the printed target as shown below. Set your scanner for 300 PPI resolution and turn off all color management in the scanner software if possible. Also, if your scanner software offers a "Descreening" option, make sure that option is ON. Scan both targets and save them as a TIF file.

Note that your Profile Prism target that you received when you purchased Profile Prism (labelled pp-10, pp-11, etc.) is on the top and our printer target (labelled "printer-target v3.0+" in the lower right) is on the bottom. Also note that it really doesn't matter which target is on the top/bottom. The above layout is used for simplicity. It is also not important that the two targets be aligned left-to-right or that the two targets are exactly the same size; the only thing that is important is that neither target appears rotated.

Important: See the importance of a good scan below for information on how to get a high quality scan and how to evaluate your scan to determine if it is acceptable for creating a printer profile.

All of this is from this page:

http://www.ddisoftware.com/prism/help/psteps.htm

So to answer whether to use the profile created for the scanner when scanning for profiling the printer, it appears the answer would be no... use the basic settings to get a raw scan.

Mane

Thanks Mike, those instructions were extremely helpful.. I assume those scanner settings are also preferred for scanner profiling? I just redid the scanner with v3.22 and those settings seemed to work for the profile creation process... have to now test the actual scans.

Thanks again. Great Product.

Mane

Thanks for all the tips. Mike thanks for the scanner tip a second scan did help. I got rid of most of the red x but now I have a lot of green ones. I am getting closer to the original colors and exposure and I am enjoying the learning curve. How about some tips to get the monitor closer to the profiles?

--
Steven
D30
22-55
24-85
28-80 L
80-200L
100-300L
50 1.8
2x Tamron
420ex

Mike Chaney said:

...
...
Hope those tips help. Also, you should never use a scanner profile
when scanning the two targets for printer profiling. When scanning
the two targets for printer profiling, you should use the above
settings and use the resulting scan with no profile.

Click to expand...

Yes Mike, I think your valuable hints'n'tips help people a lot. Thank's for clearifying those points.

BTW, created today two printer profiles for HP printers. One for a HP d155xi and one for a HP 1215. Used HP's Premium Photo Paper Glossy for both printers and afterwards compared the results. - Without any profiles, the coloring of the HP 1215 on the PPPG was better and nearer to the original colors than the ones from the HP d155xi. The d155xi always had much more oversaturated reds. After using the profiles for both printers, which were generated via PP 3.22, both printers created nearly absolut identical prints, which were nearly perfect. Best of all, nobody was able to say which print came from which printer now after using the PP generated profiles. Even I myself were not able if I wouldn't had made notes on the backsides of the prints.

PP 3.22 did a great job here and I highly recommend it as a first class profiling tool!

--
vkyr