The i1pro Driver

## How can I have confidence in the i1pro Driver ?

A question that has been asked is : "You've written your own driver for the Eye-One Pro. How can I have confidence that the measurements are accurate, and will match those made with the original manufacturers driver ?"
This is a quite reasonable question. The following attempts to answer it.

#### Why does Argyll use it's own i1pro driver ?

Primarily because the Original Manufacturers Driver (OMD) isn't available for all the platforms that ArgyllCMS supports (Linux in particular). A side benefit is that it's possible to tweak many of the driver parameters for slightly better results and more flexibility. It has also helped in understanding the characteristics and limitations of such instruments.

#### Does it match the OMD ?

In principle the behaviour should be very similar. While the Argyll driver has been written from scratch, it does use exactly the same calibration values from
inside the instrument, and attempts to use the calibration values and process the raw instrument readings in an equivalent manner to that of the OMD.
But the proof of the pudding is in the measuring, so to actually verify this, the following experiment was conducted:
The Argyll version used was V1.2.0
The OMD is the original version prior to the introduction of the i1pro2, and hence reporting the native instrument measurements, rather than applying a conversion to the XRGA standard
The Macbeth 24 patch ColorChecker was used as a sample target. For each patch (and the calibration tile), the following steps were performed:
1) Place the instrument on the calibration tile.
2) Use Argyll spotread to calibrate the Argyll driver.
3) Change drivers to the OMD.
4) Use the OMD to calibrate the instrument.
5) Move the instrument to the patch on the ColorChecker.
6) Read the color using the OMD.
7) Change the back to the Argyll driver.
8) Using the calibration made in step 2), read the color using Argyll.
Each calibration or reading was performed 15 seconds from the previous one, to put the instrument lamp in a repeatable state.
The instrument was kept in exactly the same position for calibration and patch measurement with the two drivers.
(The whole idea is to reduce all other sources of error, other than the driver itself.)
This measurement was repeated just once for each patch + the calibration tile. This was done in one run, and the readings were not specially selected.

#### Results:

The following D50 L*a*b* values were recorded for each measurement:
A) The OMD internally calculated L*a*b* value
B) The L*a*b* value calculated by Argyll from the OMD spectral values.
C) The L*a*b* value calculated from the Argyll measured spectral values.
D) The L*a*b* value calculated from the Argyll Hi-Resolution mode measured spectral values.
A is compare to B, to check that the spectral to standard observer calculations are equivalent.
The result was an average Delta E (CIE76) of 0.006, with a maximum of 0.012.
This shows that there is very close agreement in the way spectral values are converted to XYZ and L*a*b*.
B is compared to C to check that the Argyll driver behaves the same as the OMD.
The result was an average Delta E (CIE76) of 0.028, with a maximum of 0.051.
This shows that the OMD and Argyll driver are in close agreement in spectral measurement.
This error is an order of magnitude smaller than uniformity induced errors typical in the media being measured.
A is compared to C to check that the Argyll driver and spectral to XYZ differences don't compound.
The result was an average Delta E (CIE76) of 0.026, with a maximum of 0.048.
Rather than compounding, any spectral to XYZ differences tend to cancel out slightly. This is the bottom line experimental difference between the two drivers. The actual underlying difference may in fact be less than this, but it would be necessary to do multiple test runs to filter out experimental error.
C is compare to D to check that the Argyll Hi-Resolution mode is behaving reasonably.
The result was an average Delta E (CIE76) of 0.158, with a maximum of 0.353.
Because the ColorChecker samples have relatively smooth reflectance spectra, it can be expected that
the normal and Hi-Res mode results should be fairly similar. And indeed, this is the case. The biggest
differences are for patches with the largest spectral transitions in them, which is to be expected as the
Hi-Res measurement more closely follows the spectral shape, while the differences for spectrally flat
patches is neglegable, since both can follow the spectral shape well.
Example Yellow-Green Patch, Hi-Res & Normal spectrum:

#### Conclusions:

The experimental average difference of 0.026 Delta E76 shown above provides evidence that despite using a completely different instrument driver to that supplied with the instrument, the ArgyllCMS Eye-One pro measurement values have comparable accuracy, and can be relied upon to match measurements made using the original manufactures driver.

#### Raw Data:

The raw data is available in this spread sheet.