In the meantime, I kind of assumed that a generic profile for the Frontier 370 would be the next best thing, but I can’t find one of those either.
I suspect a lot of people are fed up of my honking about colour management these days, but I thought I’d finish the story, both for the benefit of people who are still interested and for those who might someday find this thread via google or similar and are considering treading the same path.
I downloaded a generic Fuji Frontier profile from here:
http://www.popphoto.com/article.asp?section_id=4&article _id=480 then another one from here:
http://www.colab.co.uk/digital/colour_management/icc.html I didn’t know the difference at the time, but it appears they are for different paper types. The first is for Fuji Crystal Archive paper, the second for what appears to be a paper named something like "Lustre".
I got 3 photos, all in sRGB colour space from my camera. One is a shot of a walking trail here in Western Australia and consists mostly of reddish coloured soil and rock. The second is a shot taken from a boat at sea and is mostly light blue water. The third is a park scene in England and is mostly green trees and grass.
I converted each photo 3 times, according to this page:
http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Frontier/using_printer_profiles .htm Each photo was converted to sRGB (which it already was, but I did the conversion anyway), then each of the 2 Fuji profiles. I had all 9 photos printed at a lab on a Fuji Frontier 370 with no colour corrections. The lab used Crystal Archive paper, so all other things being equal, that profile should have been the best. (Of course, all others things are not equal, as has been pointed out in this thread.) I then printed each photo on my Epson895, allowing Photoshop to do the colour management and having the printer driver set to no colour adjustments.
Laying the photos out for comparison shows the following:
1) The reddish photos from the Frontier are all just about identical. I have to study them very carefully to find any areas which look even slightly different. The photo from my Epson is more heavily saturated in the reds, perhaps by about 15%.
2) The bluish photos from the Frontier are all notably different. The sRGB one has the water as really quite deep blue, while the other two are closer to each other. The blues are still notably different though. The photo from my Epson is again more heavily saturated than any of the Frontier ones. It’s not as overcooked as with the reds in the other photo, but it’s still maybe 8% more saturated than the Crystal Archive profiled one.
3) The green photos from the Frontier are all very similar, bordering on the identical. They mostly differ in the yellowish areas where sunlight is hitting the grass. Once again, the Epson photo is over saturated. The greens are deeper by about 8%.
The real question is how do the photos look against their soft proof versions on my supposedly (Adobe Gamma) calibrated monitor? I compared the Fuji Crystal Archive print and the Epson print for each photo. The answers:
1) The red Fuji photo is pretty good. Subjectively about 90% accurate. The Epson print is way off – the reds are far too saturated as usual. I gave it 70%.
2) The bluish photo from the Fuji is pretty close to spot on. I gave it 95%. The Epson version is also pretty good – 90% accurate.
3) The green photo from the Fuji is very good. I gave that 92%. The Epson’s greens are not quite so good. Light greens are very close to the screen image, but the dark greens are too dark on the print. Overall 85%.
My conclusion: based on how the Fuji soft proofs look, my screen is, I think, within an acceptable area of accuracy. Better than 90% in all three cases, and given that I don’t have a proper calibrating device or a proper profile for the exact Frontier I used, that seems reasonable to me. If I needed professional colour matching I’m pretty sure I could get it via a decent screen calibration system and possibly a specific Frontier profile.
I further conclude that the Epson printer profile isn’t accurate enough. It would be just about good enough for my requirements if the reds weren’t such a long way off, but as it is, it’s not much use. Maybe more modern/expensive Epsons have better profiles. I’ll be sure to ask in this newsgroup when I start considering a replacement. In the meantime I’ll use the Fuji Crystal Archive profile and the Minilab to get printed images.
