X-Rite GretagMacbeth Eye-One (i1) Photo LT?

[johnastovall]

Has anyone here used the X-Rite GretagMacbeth Eye-One (i1) Photo LT for both monitor calibration and ICC profile creation for printers? With the 200 dollar rebate it looks very attractive to me as a step up from just the Eye One Display 2 monitor calibrator and would let me do print profiles for my own papers.

[jeffkohn]

The "small test chart" feature raises a warning flag for me. Generally speaking, the more test patches the better the resulting profile will be although past a certain point you get diminishing returns. The Eye One Photo that I bought several years ago supports 256 and 918 patch charts for printing, but you can actually fool the software into using any testchart you want since it reads the chart definition from a text file and only cares about the file name, not the actual contents. I don't know if the same trick would work for this new LT software or not; might be worth finding out.

Another thing concerns me:

The resulting profile is based solely on perceptual rendering - the ideal solution for entry level color management

I almost always use rel-col intent, not perceptual, because it yields more consistent and predictable results for me.

[CobyPhoto]

John,

Just a question for you...do you use many papers that do not come with profiles? The reason I ask, I have gone the route you are considering now and I found that using the profiling software was much too time intensive and many times the profiles supplied by the paper company or RIP company was just as good or better than the one I spent so much time making.

I haven't used the profiling set-up you are mentioning. Just playing devil's advocate and making you think before making the purchase. I still have the profiling set-up I bought and I never use it.

If you use alot of off the wall papers that profiles are not available for, I would consider this. But if you are using Epson branded material, I would stick with the profiles furnished.

CJ