Thanks for the response. If it was "sheer chance" that Atkinson's profiles work better than the Epson profiles for my 2200, I'll gladly settle for that. But I think there may be more than "chance" at work here.

Plots of the generic media profiles (from Epson and other paper suppliers) with this plugin

http://www.curvemeister.com/downloads/profileplotter/index.h tm

look very similar to each other. This may mean that there isn't that much difference between them. By comparison, plots of Atkinson's profiles are dramatically different, especially with the matte paper. I don't know how to interpret the plots, but the difference is very obvious and pronounced.

However, the ultimate test of a printer profile should be based on the prints. Soft Proofing (and printing) with the generic media profiles for a particular paper produce about the same results (on the monitor and in prints). Here again, Atkinson's profiles are very different from them in Soft Proof and in prints, especially with the matte paper. Proofs and prints with the generic matte paper profiles would have washed out colors and reduced contrast in the shadow areas. With Atkinson's profiles, these problems almost disappear. They may not be perfect, but are certainly way better than the generic profiles.

Many have explained that a custom printer profile's purpose is to overcome the manufacturing variance between printer units. But I wonder if a more important reason for a custom profile is to replace the generic profiles that are just plain bad. A so-so $50 custom profile (or an Atkinson profile applied to a different printer, as in my case) may not be optimal, but may still make a significant improvement over a generic one.

Bill Hilton wrote:

I took a 3 day course with Bill at Calypso shortly after he finished the 9600/7600 profiles a couple of years ago and he discussed some of these questions during the class.

There were some old postings suggesting that Atkinson actually made and provided profiles for the Epson 2200. If so, where can these be found?

He was asked this and said he didn't make 2200 profiles available for a couple of reasons. The 2200 is a consumer grade model while the 9600/7600/4000 are made by a different Epson division to tighter tolerances. So there is less unit-to-unit variation between the pro models (reason 1) and the 2200 drifts over time (reason 2), making the profiles slightly inaccurate after a year or so, he felt. This was a couple of years ago, perhaps he released some 2200 profiles at some point but this was what he said back then.

Atkinson provides a 1440dpi and a 2880dpi profile for each paper, except for the Enhanced Matte which only has a single 1440dpi profile. Is there an explanation for that?

On my Epson 4000 there is no 2880 dpi setting available for the Enhanced Matte, so it's likely there is none for the 9600/7600 either. Typically the highest dpi settings are reserved for glossy papers, lower ones for fine art papers which can't handle as much ink because they aren't coated (matte is typically in between). I see on my 2200 that there is a 2880 option for that paper so just go ahead and use the 1440 profile. There is very little color difference between printing at 2880 vs 1440 (most manufacturers would say "none").

Would like to hear from those who have used these profiles on the Epson 2200, especially with papers other than Epson's

They were created specifically for Epson papers printed with the 9600/7600 and if you're getting good results with these profiles on a different printer and/or different brands of paper it's sheer chance :) The 2200 uses the same inks but the heads and software are different.
Bill

PKM6543

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