ICC Profiles procedure?

1

I’m currently running Piezography Pro (QTI Gui) on a Win10 using the supplied curves in QTR for my P800. My question is what is the procedure you use with the ICC profiles in order to get a preview when the ink set can be mixed to thousands of combinations and the profiles only list “cool”, “neutral” and “warm” for the papers I use (Canson). I’m sure this has been asked before and I’m sure that when I attend the workshop this fall, it will be explained in greater detail but for now I’d like to see some sort of procedure.
Keith

2

Cheers!
walker

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I wasn’t asking anything about PiezoDN & don’t know anything about a Mac os system since I have only worked on a windows system.

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@KeithR - I’m not exactly sure why @walkerblackwell quoted that post of mine from another thread. That said, the question you’re asking is one I’ve struggled with, in a Windows context. I’m on the road at present, but if you can wait until I’m home again in several days, I can discuss what I’ve done and the extent to which it was successful.

One thing I thought that Walker might have mentioned is Piezography Professional Edition. I don’t have PPE, but my understanding is that it enables you to create an ICC for a given blend, which you can then use to soft-proof. This is easier and faster printing out a test chart and measuring, particularly if you want to compare a number of blends.

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Thanks for the response! I don’t have PPE either but I’m scheduled for the workshop in September so I may find out more at that time.

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@KeithR - I just looked at the PPE web page and I hope what I said was correct. The Curve Blending tool allows you to create a new QTR curve as a blend of existing curves, but I thought that you could also then create an ICC to enable you to soft-proof it without having to print and remeasure. I can’t see that now. Perhaps @walkerblackwell could confirm or contradict what I said.

Here in brief form is how I roughly simulate a blend without PPE. I have an i1Pro. I print and measure the 21x4 test chart using cool, neutral and warm curves and check their linearity. If necessary, I relinearise using the QTR relinearisation QTR-Linearize-Quad droplet and reprint and remeasure and create ICCs for each of the three curves.

Next, I take the image I want to soft-proof, and create three temporary copies. I convert the first to the cool ICC, and then convert to AdobeRGB. Repeat for the neutral and warm ICCs using the second and third copies. Now create a new TIFF file and copy each of those three converted copies into the new TIFF as layers. So you have a TIFF with three layers, one cool, one neutral and one warm. You can simulate a blend by varying the layer opacities.

You may ask whether the order of the layers matters? I’m not sure, as it’s been a while and I don’t recall. Try it and see. This is a bit of a rough approximation and at best provides a rough guide to experiment with blends. Once you’ve settled on a blend you’d be well advised to print the 21x4 again and create an ICC for that blend, as it greatly simplifies soft-proofing.

The other question you might ask is how to use this technique to simulate a split-toned blend? This gets harder and more approximate. You would need to apply layer masks to the layers to constrain each layer to either the shadows, mid-tones or highlights. At best this gives you a rough starting point.

This is a fairly succinct summary, and assumes you have the gear to do all this and are familiar with this sort of manipulation in PS.

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Thanks for the information. Unfortunately I have to put everything on hold due to a death in the family.

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I’m sorry to hear that @KeithR. Our condolences.

9

Thank you.
I tried to send that last night but was because it was to short, the response bounced back as undeliverable.
Again, thank you.