The Bottom Line
The one huge variable with all three packages is the scanner. Although we believe that the results we obtained are typical, there’s no guarantee that your scanner will give results that are as good — but then again, it might give better results. Clearly, scanner-based profiling is a viable technology, and all three packages work surprisingly well.
If your work involves matching spot colors or you want to use your printer as a proofer, then MonacoEZcolor is almost certainly your best bet — it came very close to rivaling the performance of an instrumented profile on Absolute Colorimetric rendering and also did a very good job on Perceptual renderings. Praxisoft WiziWYG fared rather less well on our Colorimetric test but still produced very acceptable Perceptual renderings, and the aggressive $79 price point is hard to beat. MatchLock Profiler II is also compelling — you don’t have to worry about keeping a scanner target in good shape, and the RGB preview and profile editing capabilities it offers aren’t found in the other packages. If you want to fine-tune Perceptual rendering for different types of images, you’ll find that Profiler II does the job nicely.
RATINGS:
Monaco EZColor 1.6 – 90 out of 100
Praxisoft WysiWYG – 85 out of 100
HorsesLLC Matchlock Profiler II – 85 out of 100
This article was last modified on January 18, 2023
This article was first published on May 10, 2000
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