Finally, you launch the plug-in again, this time choosing step b: Build Profile. Profiler II asks you to name the profile and then builds it and saves it in the correct location, reminding you to quit Photoshop so that it will recognize the new profile when you next launch it. (See Figure 8)
Figure 8: Profiler invisibly builds the profile and saves it in the correct location in your system.
Unlike the other packages, Profiler II also contains some basic but effective slider-based tools for profile editing: It lets you edit any output profile, not just ones created by Profiler II, while previewing the results of the edits. (Horses LLC also offers MatchLock Doctor Pro, a full-blown profile-editing Photoshop plug-in that lets you tune profiles by using any of Photoshop’s tools.) With these tools, we were able to make significant improvements on the profiles.
The Profiles
For our objective test, we started off with a Photoshop Lab file of the Macbeth Color Checker, a paper target that photographers have long used to judge color accuracy. (See Figure 9) We then printed the Macbeth file through each profile, using Absolute Colorimetric rendering, and measured the Lab values of the resulting prints, using a GretagMacbeth Spectrolino/Spectroscan, a high-end automated spectrophotometer. Last, we calculated the difference between the source values and the printed result in CIE Lab delta-e units. (One delta-e is, in theory, the smallest color difference someone with normal color vision can detect. In commercial printing, hitting the target value within 6 delta-e is usually considered a decent commercial match.)
Figure 9: The Macbeth Color Checker is a standard color reference tool for photographers.
When we factored out the four colors (R1C6, R3C1, R3C3, and R4C1) in the Macbeth Color Checker that were simply outside the gamut of the printer, we found that MonacoEZcolor gave the most accurate result of the three packages, with an average delta-e of 3.97 and a maximum delta-e of 7.7, followed by WiziWYG, with an average delta-e of 7.41 and a maximum delta-e of 16.9, and then Profiler II, with an average delta-e of 10 and a maximum delta-e of 19.6. In comparison, the profile we built from measurements we made with GretagMacbeth’s high-end, industrial-strength ProfileMaker Pro 3 package had an average delta-e of 2.53 and a maximum delta-e of 5.6. (To see a spreadsheet of the numerical results, click here.)
This article was last modified on January 18, 2023
This article was first published on May 10, 2000
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