I promised you an update after I had been using the new i1 Profiler in the field for a few weeks, so hear it is. I’ve done quite a few jobs with the new software now and I remain impressed with the quality of the profiles and have gotten used to, or worked around, or learnt to ignore some of the small interface niggles I have with the software.
I’ve used i1 Profiler to create profiles for two of my oldest and most regular customers - the artists Gilbert & George, and fashion and interiors company Photographic Interiors. Both are very demanding in different ways. Gilbert & George use two Epson printers to print their art and they use a mix of monochrome photography with bold graphic colours. Their works are often very large and so they need the two printers to match exactly so that panels can be printed across both. The nature of their work requires profiles that deliver very good neutrals and vivid colour saturation. The profiles I made with i1 Profiler for them matched their very high standards.
Photographic Interiors are demanding customers for a very different reason, they constantly are on the leading edge of digital production for the fashion and interior design market and use a very wide array of media. They produce garments and wall coverings for some of the very big names in UK fashion and design. In the past I have profiled printing onto real leather for them as well as many different fabric printing technologies. Due to the nature of the materials involved the gamuts are sometimes small and the processes sometimes inherently variable but they still need to achieve eye-popping colour. Again i1 Profiler was up to the task with the new profiling engine making the most of the fabric printing process I was profiling, even if I did have to wait an hour and a half for each set of patches to be washed and steamed before measuring them.
I’ve also done my first customer training on the software. I took a break from a family holiday to train the photographers of FotoLarko in Cyprus in creating profiles for their entire workflow. Explaining software to somebody else is always a good test of its ease of use and despite some slight difficulty with language (but obviously their English was much better than my Greek) we profiled their printers, cameras and monitors with the new software during the day and they haven’t come back with any questions yet.
There have been a few bugs found after the software was released, specifically problems reading dark colours with a i1 Pro, but X-Rite have produced fixes or work arounds and will probably issue a maintenance release soon. I’ve found I’m using the Saved Workflows feature a lot to store frequently used combinations of media size, instrument and black generation which makes things quicker. All the customers who have had profiles through our Custom Profile Service have been very happy with the results as well.
