GretagMacbeth Eye-One Display Problems

My Eye-One display arrived today.

I have two computers here. The first one is a desktop with a ViewSonic LCD. The other one is a Acer laptop.

I installed Eye-one on the desktop first. No problems of any type. The profile was quickly created.

Then I did the same with the laptop and everything was fine also. They both use Windows XP, etc etc same OS, same fixes...

The next step, I tought, would be to put them side by side and open the SAME picture in Photoshop 7.

Surprise!!!!!!!!!! The colours are different.

The Viewsonic profile has a certain redish cast that destroy almost all the gray. The laptop, altough cheaper, seems to give better colours with better fidelity.

I repeat the whole process over and over again, on both computers, using basic mode, advanced mode, different white temperatures, different gamas, but the result was always the same: the monitors do not show the same colours. And this destroys the firts and most important mission of a calibrator.

Any guess of what is going on?

Thanks for any input.

Nelson

Nelson,

One thought is that you may have Adobe Gamma or some other display calibration/profiling application running on one or both computers. Check by going to the Start Button, Startup Folder and if Adobe Gamma (or any other display calibration/profiling application) is there delete it. Then Right Click on your Desktop, Properties, Settings, Advanced, Color Management Tab and remove all the profiles. If you get an error that won't let you remove a profile go to the Windows\System32\Spool\Drivers\Color folder and delete that profile or profiles. Then Reboot and run Eye-One Display again.

Even if everything is done correctly and both displays look neutral when you re not comparing them they probably won't look exactly alike if you do a side-by-side comparison. Calibrating is comparing an unknown value to a known value and adjusting the unknown value as close as possible to the known value. Then profiling describes the difference between the adjusted value and the desired value. (This is not strictly true of what you are doing when you calibrate and profile a display and its associated graphics card because the profile of a display also makes some adjustments to the RGB curves of the graphics card so it blurs the line between calibration and profiling, but it that is how calibration and profiling usually work and is accurate enough for a general understanding of how the display calibration/profiling process works). Since you are calibrating and profiling two very different displays and their associated video or graphics card that have different capabilities and are of different quality then I would expect them to look similar but not exactly alike. How similar would depend on how close the two are in capability and quality. Although laptop displays have improved allot in the last few years generally laptop displays and graphics cards of lower quality and are very different than desktop displays.

And remember that laptop displays usually look different if they are running on batteries than if they are running on the AC adaptor because of the different power modes. Plus you are calibrating and profiling LCD displays, they look different depending on viewing angle. It would be very difficult to compare while viewing them both from the exact same angle. These are just a few reasons why LCD displays are not recommended for critical color work.
--
Cathy Stratton
http://www.cathysprofiles.com

Nelson Ricciardi said:

My Eye-One display arrived today.

I have two computers here. The first one is a desktop with a
ViewSonic LCD. The other one is a Acer laptop.

I installed Eye-one on the desktop first. No problems of any type.
The profile was quickly created.

Then I did the same with the laptop and everything was fine also.
They both use Windows XP, etc etc same OS, same fixes...

The next step, I tought, would be to put them side by side and open
the SAME picture in Photoshop 7.

Surprise!!!!!!!!!! The colours are different.

The Viewsonic profile has a certain redish cast that destroy almost
all the gray. The laptop, altough cheaper, seems to give better
colours with better fidelity.

I repeat the whole process over and over again, on both computers,
using basic mode, advanced mode, different white temperatures,
different gamas, but the result was always the same: the monitors
do not show the same colours. And this destroys the firts and most
important mission of a calibrator.

Any guess of what is going on?

Thanks for any input.

Nelson

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