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User
Statement Spectro LFP from Andrew Rodney
Being a self described color geek; I’m always looking at
new Color Management equipment and consider myself a
Spectrophotometer junkie. My
first Spectrophotometer dates back in early 1990’s: a ColorTron, which measured one patch at a time. That unit
literally took hours to measure what today is considered
a small test target of patches. It’s amazing how the
technology has evolved since those early days. Recently
I was assigned the task of building an ICC color profile
for a new Epson transparent media for Epson’s new 7880
and 9880 printers. Because this media is
semi-translucent, a special Spectrophotometer is
necessary. I’ve had to build such profiles in the past;
it’s not an easy task primarily due to the few hardware
products that provide the capability to handle this kind
of measurement. While I own a GretagMacbeth Spectrolino
X/Y table in a version that supports transmissive
measurements, one has to measure a color patch one at a
time, just like the old ColorTron. Sorry, that’s just
too much work. Misread just one patch and you’ll likely
have an inferior quality profile. I also have an X-Rite
DTP-41 UV/T, the T standing for a model that can measure
transmissive media. Being a semi-automatic device, it is
pretty fast and does average multiple measurements per
patch but it still requires the user to feed the unit a
row of patches, one at a time. Depending on the density
of the transmissive media, it can fail to produce a good
ICC profile.
I then became aware of a rather new and unique
Spectrophotometer by an Italian company named BARBIERI
electronic that has a auto Spectrophotometer, called
Spectro LFP RT, designed to handle both reflective and
transmissive measuring in a fully automate mode. The
unit uses an X/Y/Z table that moves the chart under the
Spectrophotometer head allowing for unattended
measurements. When I contacted the company, I found out
that the light source was quite robust and would have no
difficulties measuring the rather opaque media I had to
measure. In addition, the unit has the ability to
measure incredibly thick media, up to 0.79in thick,
thanks to the automatic adjustments of the measurement
head. Another plus of the design is that I could alter
the aperture size from 2mm to 6mm, in addition to adding
additional filters such as UV to the head design. The
ability to adjust an aperture would be very useful for
those building ICC profiles for sign printing or those
output devices that produce very large dot structures.
The unit measures 22 x 17 x 6in and the build quality is
astounding. This isn’t like any Spectrophotometer I’ve
ever used in the past, it’s constructed almost entirely
of metal and there’s hardly any plastic to be found. I
imagine the Barbieri Spectro LFP could run 24 hours a
day, practically forever; it is built like a tank!
Download:
In order to measure the patches for my Epson profile, I
had to output RGB color targets from the supplied host
software that ships with the unit called Barbieri
Profile-Xpert Gateway. The software only runs under
Windows and I’m a Mac user but I had no difficulty using
the software on my Intel iMac with either Apple’s
BootCamp or Parallels Desktop for Mac software. In both
cases, I used Windows Vista.
Parallels was especially useful since I was able to
copy and paste the resulting LAB data file from Profile-Xpert
Gateway onto the Mac OS and build the profile in both
ProfileMaker Pro and PROFILER under Mac OS X Leopard.
The Barbieri Spectro LFP was connected via USB although
there’s the option for connection via serial port. The
software could use a bit of work in a number of areas
but it got the job done. Profile-Xpert Gateway has
options that allowed me to measure multiple samples per
patch although naturally this did slow down the entire
measuring process. With a single measurement per patch,
Barbieri claims a time of 10 minutes to measure 1248
patches. I used a slightly larger number of patches and
would have to say these times specified appear accurate.
I didn’t time how long the unit took to sample three
measurements per patch (total 1728) since once I loaded
the target onto the Barbieri Spectro LFP using the
supplied sheet holder, I could walk away and let the
unit do all the work. Profile-Xpert Gateway comes with a
number of reference files for RGB and CMYK targets and
supports a number of 3rd party RIPs for
profiling directly into the host software. I wanted to
test RGB profiles for both ProfileMaker Pro and Monaco
PROFILER but no reference targets were available for the
later. Within a few days of contacting Barbieri about
this, I had a new version sent to me which worked
perfectly in measuring the 1728 patch target, saving out
a LAB reference file that PROFILER was able to read.
That’s good tech support! Profiles from both products
were excellent and when compared to measurements made
from the DTP-41UV/T showed superior smoothness and
shadow detail. The Barbieri Spectro LFP was an ideal
solution for building these transmissive profiles. This
build quality and measuring flexibility comes at a
certain cost and is obviously a high-end product aimed
at production labs, print shops or those that need a
device that will see high usage in professional
production environments. However, for those users who
have a wide variety of materials to measure, especially
thick media or different transmissive materials, I would
highly recommend this product without hesitation. For
those not requiring this wide variety of material
support for measurement, such as photo studios and other
printing environments, BARBIERI has another
Spectrophotometer called Spectro Swing.
Thanks to Mr. Andrew Rodney for his consent to publish
this statement.
February 2008
Wolfgang
Passler
(Marketing&Sales Manager of BARBIERI electronic)
Andrew is owner of The Digital Dog, a digital
imaging training and consulting business located in
Santa, Fe New Mexico. Andrew is the author of “Color
Management for Photographers, Hands on Techniques
for Photoshop Users” published by Focal Press.
Andrew is one of the principle partners of Pixel
Genius LLC, a company that has created such products
as PhotoKit and PhotoKit-Sharpener (www.pixelgenius.com/index.html).
Andrew was named a "Top 40 Photoshop Expert" by
Wacom Technologies. In 2007, Andrew was inducted
into the NAPP Photoshop Hall of Fame. Andrew’s web
site can be found at
www.digitaldog.net.
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