Profiling Backlit Film

[Lee Hutchinson]

I have an OCE Lightjet RGB contone output device (siumilar to Durst Lambda) which we use for high quality prints on photo gloss paper and also backlit film. I have profiled the gloss paper and have great results.

Anyone have any ideas how to go about profiling the backlit film. We have used Eye one and Profile maker for all other machines in the plant but not sure if I can profile tranmissive as opposed to reflective. Think it should be feasible as you can profile your monitor with Eye one?

We currently use same paper profile for backlit but it is not good enough.

thanks

[MSP Graphics]

Hi Lee. What you need is a transmission spectrodensitometer, such as a Spectroscan T, a DTP41T (both discontinued), or Barbieri LFP.

Best of luck,

Mike

[Terkelsen]

It is my experience that you don't need to measure transmission in order to profile Backlit film. It is a few years ago but I have done this using EyeOne and ProfileMaker. What I did was measuring the actual print on the backside of the film. Make sure that you are using white backing when measuring.

[meddington]

>Anyone have any ideas how to go about profiling the backlit film. We have used Eye one and Profile maker for all other machines in the plant but not sure if I can profile tranmissive as opposed to reflective. Think it should be feasible as you can profile your monitor with Eye one?


I would try reflective per Terkelsen's recommendation. For one, you have the capability already, and it may be sufficient. The i1 is not a transmissive device. It can profile monitors in emmisive mode, and this theoretically could work for backlit material, but the software won't support it. Profiling monitors involves having the software display a series of patches, which you can't do with a hard copy output. It also could be possible to use the i1 in emmisive mode, take spot measurements of color patches on the back-lit material (with the illuminant behind it) and record the values in an excel file to create a text file that can be utilized by ProfileMaker. This would be interesting, particularly for taking the actual illuminant into account, but its defintely more work, and possibly for little improvement over reflective.

There was a similar thread here a while back, but I can't remember the results. Let us know how it goes.

[chromix]

We have found that some users are able to use reflective readings and others are not. Overall we have found better results from true transmissive readings rather than reflective.

We offer transmissive readings as part of our Maxwell / ColorValet measurement services. It's an economical way of getting measurements without having to invest in instruments you would rarely use (and X-Rite doesn't make transmissive spectros at this time either).

Contact our Rick Hatmaker at hatmaker(at)chromix.com if you want more information.

regards,

Steve Upton
CHROMiX.com