Product Review - i1Photo Pro 2: Part II From X-Rite

X-Rite has release three new color management solutions. i1Basic Pro 2, i1Photo Pro 2, i1Publish Pro 2. They are spectrophotometer based units for high end profiling, quality verification, and spot color management. The unit I will be reviewing is the i1Photo Pro 2 which handles monitor, printer, camera, and projector profiling for the RGB world. The i1Publish Pro does all this but allows you to work with CMYK workspace as well.

The i1Basic Pro 2 provides for high-end monitor and projector profiling, monitor and RGB print verification, and spot color measurement. The i1Photo Pro 2 also adds in the ability to calibrate the camera to the monitor and the projector, along with the RGB printer. The i1Publish Pro 2 is the ultimate, fully-featured ICC profiling solution for those that need to color manage their cameras, displays, projectors, as well as their RGB/CMYK+ printers and presses with complete quality assurance validation and verification functions. In this second part will look at the projector and camera calibration.

After your hook up the projector to the computer that you will use with the projector, you will want to turn on the projector. As with your monitor, you want to make sure your projector has been on for at least 30 minutes to make sure that the colors are stable. Once it has been, you will want to plug in the i1 Pro Spectrophotometer in to a USB port and then start up the i1Profiler software.

At the bottom of the screen you will see the workflow that you will use to make a projector profile. The i1Profiler gives you the controls to customize the color temperature of your digital projector. This constitutes your white point - the color of the white on your computer display. A standard viewing room comes in at D50, for daylight at noon it is a D65, and for a cooler daylight you would go with a D75.

Next you are given a choice to set your profile settings. As with monitor calibration these are for chromatic adaptation, ICC profile version, and tone response curve. In just about all cases, the default values are the ones you will want to use. On the measurement screen, you will calibrate the spectrophotometer as you did for the monitor.

Article Author: T. Michael Testi

T. Michael Testi is a writer and a photographer out of Edmond Oklahoma. You can see his photographic and art work at T Michael Imaging.

Visit T. Michael Testi's author page — T. Michael Testi's Blog