Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

I'm thinking buying it, but before I do, I would like some input from actual users. It would replace my dtp94 colorimeter.
Thank you!

Do a search on "colormunki" and just "munki" on this forum and you'll see some comments about it already.
Terry.

Hello Terri,

Do you think Eye One 2 is a good calorimeter? I have purchased it, but first time I used it on U2410 I could not get any normal results. I trust that the colorimeter works fine.

Please advise.

Roma

What's a normal result?

Hello,
I used the Eye One 2 first time in my life and my first results were far away from what I read on the forum. For the U2410 in Advanced mode, after I adjusted contract to 69, brightness reached only 59. When I tried again, though the contract changed slightly, the brightness was still less than half of 120 (59) even though I top it up to 100%. For these two tests I used 6500 settings. When I tried Native White Point, the number was higher and almost reached 120, but then was sliding down and stabilized at around 103. After I proceeded to the end of the calibration the final report showed 130! I am reading the forum to find answers. Perhaps I am doing something wrong as I have no experience with any calorimeters. For example, after I read the tutorial, I am not sure if I have to do the Eye One 2 calibration (on a black non-reflective surface). So far, I certainly see that I need more knowledge about how to calibrate properly using this calorimeter.
Best wishes,
Roma

Hello,

I have just completed two more calibrations with my brand new Eye One 2. Both calibrations are not good as the 120 target was not even within reach. In 6500 degrees calibration, I had to use 100% brightness without much luck.  Colours are much worse than in the Dell settings. Is it a monitor or a calibrator problem? Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Roma

It seems to me that that monitor electronics vary considerably and, particularly cheaper models, have limited scope for adjustments.
Look at my comments here and on this thread generally:
http://ddisoftware.com/tech/computer-hardware/improve-your-monitor-calibration-result/msg5269/#msg5269

If you go back to the Dell settings and calibrate in "Simple" mode , the graphics card LUT will look after most things except brightness.
If you use the IMatch 3 software in Advanced mode, when you adjust for Colour Temperature, you need to increase the individual RGB values (gain) so that the target luminance can be achieved. The RGB Gain and Brightness settings are linked.
It's really how you set the monitor, the calibrator just reads what it sees on the screen.
Hope that helps.
Terry.

Hello Terry,

Good to hear from you as you are use Eye One 2 with great results posted on the forum. Thank you for the link. I have read this forum a few times by now looking for answers. Very interesting and educational. I will try to put colour settings higher as the monitor does not have colour temperature settings and all colours are set at 50%. Perhaps that explains why black letters do not look black as on my Philips monitor at work.

I am happy to hear your opinion that the Eye One 2 is working. What do you think about LaCie Blue Eye?
Thank you,

Roma

Roma, if the factory default settings for RGB is 50%, you don't want to raise them any higher.  Lowering them slightly to white balance the monitor is acceptable and should not cause any noticeable banding.

Hello ChasP505,

But in this case I will never be able to reach 120!
Roma

Raising the RGB gains will only raise your luminance further!  You should only adjust the RGBs (minimally) to white balance and hit a "color temperature" such as 6500k.  Use your Brightness and Contrast controls to achieve a luminance value such as 120cd/m2.  And don't confuse the monitors Brightness setting with a luminance value.

120cd/m2 Luminance should be easy as cake to reach on the Dell U2410.   Read this review:
http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/dell_u2410.htm

They used a Brightness setting of 30% and Contrast 50%.

A useful article, and looks like it's an excellent monitor.
After scanning through this report, wonder if Roma is attempting calibration while in one of the pre-set modes (sRGB or AdobeRGB), rather than using the "custom color preset mode" and that's causing problems.
Just a thought and worth checking.
Their RGB values were 82%, 86%, 83%.
That should be a good guide for Roma to get a sensible luminance value and 6500K  :)
Probably coincidence, but the % values are similar to those I use on my Eizo  :o

Roma, you asked I know nothing about it, sorry.

PS. I noted that the review of the Eye One Display 2 on that TFT Central web site is now out of date with respect to the software. The software does now have (since 18 months ago at least) a means of validation and giving the Delta E results.

Terry.

Yeah... And their review of the ColorEyes Display Pro software that I use is flawed.  They omitted the key step of setting the white balance.  I think they are in bed with LaCie BlueEye as they use that software as their reference standard.  It's excellent software but no better then many other software packages available.

Hello,
Thank you for looking into my issue. I have checked all possible modes with the same success. First of all, I went to the X-Rite site and checked if my driver was up to date. No. I downloaded the update and installed a newer driver. Then I checked if the solfware was up to date. No. The latest version is v.3.6.2. I reinstalled it as well.

Then I calibrated the monitor in Standard mode using Native White Point settings with 2.2 and 120. Same result - after brightness was adjusted to 100 it gave me 94.3 reading. The final calibration report is as follows.
Then I calibrated the monitor again in Standard mode using 6500K. Brightness was adjusted to 100 giving only 40.5 reading. The final calibration report is attached.

Then I read Terry's post and decided to check his idea. I used Customs Colour mode and 6500K. Default settings for RGB were 50-50-50. My contract from 100 did not go down at all! Calibrating the colour was very hard as the bars were jumping from one side to another. Though the result was not perfect, at 51-43-49 it was somewhat close. I decided to check it I could get something interesting at the recommended 82-86-83 setting. I put those numbers, and the final (not perfect) result was at 81-70-80. Again, I do not know much about the perfect colour calibration, but I could not get the bars perfectly at ZERO mark. Because the colours numbers were this time higher than before, as expected after adjusting brightness to 100% the reading was 88.5. Still not at 120. Final calibration report is as follows.

When I sat down to write this post, the screen was so bright (100% contrast and 100% brightness) that it was impossible. I had to bring everything back to Standard mode and 30 Brightness - 43 contrast.

I know it sound all very unusual to you, however, I have never seen anybody calibrating a monitor other than an Apple Display, what is different. Please help me to find out what is wrong. It makes me believe that my sensor could be less sensitive fro some reasons, however, when I used a test from the X-Rite site, it passed it without problem. What else could be wrong? What do you do before the calibration?

I tried to use the same devise at work on my display. The same result - Luminance was not even close to 120. I am going to the shop tomorrow to check if they could check my unit or give me another one to test. As they calibrate the Apple Display, I do not expect to help me much. Very frustrating experience, not good yet, but I am willing to get to the bottom of it and learn from you.

Roma
 

Hello Again,

I have read many reviews on this monitor before I bought it. It is considered to be a great monitor by most users and all reviewers. However, I still can not get it to work (agree) with my EyeOne 2!. I have bought it to read text and work with pictures. I am now more inclined to replace it with Dell 2209WA as it has been recommended on this forum. It does not have many features of U2410, but could be good for text reading and working with pictures.
However, now I must find out how EyeOne 2 works. So far after a lot of reading and watching video I have not seen anything I have not done yet to make it to work.

Roma

Roma,
What about your graphics card driver, check that for updates too. There seems to be something strange going on and I wonder if it is with the graphics card.
Alternatively there is a fault with the monitor; it should not be as difficult this.
Some observations/comments:
Contrast 100%, why so high? Ignore the software recommendation to set to 100% and leave at factory setting, around 50% I assume, like in the article. You will find that the software will accept that and no contrast adjustments are required.
The minimum luminance values on the results are high; I would expect values of less than 0.5, probably around 0.2 CD/M2. The poor result is possibly related to the high contrast setting.
You must use the custom mode for calibration, the other pre-sets are what they say and will override the monitor settings.
Is there anything else that could affect the brightness setting like an automatic adjustment for ambient light? If there is it must be turned off for calibration.
That's as much as I can think of at present.
Terry.

Roma--  I agree with Terry...  Set your Brightness to 30%, your Contrast to 50%, than LEAVE THEM ALONE!!!  Forgive me for yelling but I do website tech support for my company and I often have to tell our employees, "Listen to my words and instructions only and not the demonic voices in your head telling you to do something else!"

Only adjust the RGBs as needed to to get "CLOSE TO" 6500k.  Don't try for perfection as the software will take up the slack.  The point of adjusting the RGBs is so that less color correction work is put upon your video card.  The reason I recommend MINIMAL RGB adjustment from the default settings, is that the more you deviate from the factory settings, the more color tones you are throwing away, and the more likelihood of causing "banding" or "posterization" on your display.

Hello,

Thank you, Terry and Chas, for your comments. One thing I have changed - I REMOVED the ambient light attachment. I know it sounds silly, but I listened to a salesman who left it on when he arranged the product demonstation. I have read a lot today and even in the one-page instruction, which came with the unit, they said to remove it!

OK. I redone my calibrations (sorry, Chas, I read your message after I finished). Before I began, I noticed GENERAL OPTIONS screen (image is attached). This option has never been explained anywhere. Which options do I have to use? I have tried both - for small display (image is attached) and for Large display. This was done in Native White colour mode.
In all calibrations, when I followed the instructions and set up Contrast to 100, after calibration it went down to 63-64. However, my brightness from 0 did not move anywhere as after the constract calibration it stayed too high at 136-142. Certainly, the final result - luminance was too high - about 140. This is in the Standard mode with final contract at 63% and Brightness at 0%.

I also calibrated at 6500K. Before the calibration I switched to Colour Mode and made sure that the colours were set at the default setting 50-50-50. This time contrast from 100% did not move anywhere and  stayed right in the middle. Colour calibration was fairly good, the final RGB setting is 64-54-58. They were not perfect but very close to it. Calibration of Brightness was good and it produced 120 easily at 56%.
The final report was fairly good (attached).

When I am using this setting right now, I see that the screen is a bit pink. Certainly 100 Contrast is strange, but Colour Mode is not bright to start with. Perhaps low default setting (50-50-50) is responsible for it. Visualy I would not be happy with the calibration as the colour of the screen is pink instead of white and the brightness affects my eyes.

I will try a calibration at 30-50 Brightness/Constrast. However, if this parameters should not be calibrated, how do we know that they are right? Why not 40-60? From the review referred by Terry one can see that the calibration was successful producing 30-50, but not in my case.

Any comments would be greatly appreciated.
Roma

Roma.
EDIT:Where are these options? I don't recognise them from the IMatch 3 software used with EyeOne display 2. I'm confused, are you in fact using a ColorMunki? REply #4 on this thread says you have an Eye1 - 2. Ok I found that on IMatch3, I am  using the "Large LUT" setting.
Use the large display (LUT) option. This indicates that the LUT (look up table) in the graphics card is loaded by the profile which is what you want.

IMatch 3 software seems to accept any value of contrast you set as correct; I think this is the case for LCD but not for CRT monitors
I really think you should use 50% contrast, your minimum luminance value is still on the high side and that may be why.
I note too that your gamma is a little off, 2.3 instead of 2.2. I'm not sure what you can do to improve that, I used to get the same thing on my previous (budget) monitor.
I expect this is purely your perception, you really do have to rely on the calibration and not your eyes.

What do you mean here? 120CD/M2 is the normal value for luminance on a LCD monitor!

Yes, please do. Leave contrast alone at 50% but you may have to adjust the brightness a little after setting the RGB values which should be in the order of 80 to 90%.
A note for Chas, the IMatch 3 software gets you to set the brightness (and therefore luminance) after setting the RGB values so a little tweak at that stage is likely to be required.

You seem to be getting there  ;)
Terry.

Yeah... I actually owned and used an iOne Display 2 for a while before I sold it to buy my DTP-94 puck.  All these mainstream monitor calibration packages are very much alike, differing mainly in their GUIs.

Hello again,

Well, after a lot of reading and thinking, also trying different calibration modes, I decided to send back the Dell U2410. First reason - not too happy with calibration results. Main reason - I wanted to use the monitor for photography also for reading text. Reading text is not as good as on my old ViewSonic VG2230wm, which is just  a TN panel. However, less painful for eyes...

By the way, when I tried to calibrate the ViewSonic yesterday, my results were not bad. I will post them later, though they are not very important as the screen was not designed for  colour accuracy.

Now I am thinking about Dell 2209WA as somebody has suggested on the forum. I will certainly wait when it will be on sale as the regular price is unrealistic for the monitor with limited functions and connections. It could be a good panel for reading text and working with pictures. Any thoughts?

I would certainly love to buy NEC 2490, however, in Canada its price is way too high ($949) when in the USA it is only ~$700. Canadian dollar is par to USD now or very close.
Thank you,
Roma

A little afterthought inspired by a discussion I read on another forum.  Regarding Contrast settings... when these calibration devices instruct you to set monitor Contrast to 100%, that should should NOT be taken literally.  The INTENT is 100% of the factory default value, which may be 100%, 75%, 50%, or whatever.  On my personal monitor, that setting is 75%, so I keep Contrast at full factory setting-- 75%.  Even 1% higher than this starts to clip highlight tones.

Hello Chas,

That is a very interesting thought. I will certainly check it out when I have a better monitor. Do you still own Dell2209WA and what you think about it now? I am going to try it out when on sale.

As I can see from your latest post, the recommended setting while calibrating are not to follow all the time. Perhaps, somebody else will share his/her experience. That would be great for someone like me who makes first steps and learns from others.

Roma

I still own, use, and love the 2209WA for what it is:  A great value in an ENTRY LEVEL photo editing monitor.  If you're making your living from photography, or plan to, I would think you'd want to invest in more professional equipment.  On another forum I contribute to, I'm always amused by members who list their other equipment-- tens of thousands of dollars/euros in lenses and camera bodies, but edit photos with the cheapest quality monitors.

Well, finally I purchased CM and what a spectrophotometer it is GREAT!
My U2410 profiles perfectly in Standard mode at 30 brightness and 50 contrast.
My paper profiles rival those made professionally at $30 a clip before.
Worth every penny.
BTW, I also discovered a new software from Quato in Germany, iColor Display. It has a "correction matrix" for dtp94 to use with wide gamut monitors. It's the best software I have used so far. They tell me that later in 2010 it will support CM as well.

Adam,

I have a U2410 at work that I will be using for editing videos.  I currently have it set to the Adobe RGB setting in the menu.  It's supposedly been factory-calibrated, but I'm wondering whether your calibration with CM results in a noticable difference.  I have a CM at home (I love it too) and wonder if it will make a difference in the accuracy of the U2410.

Thanks

IMHO it will make a noticeable difference, but try calibrating it in standard mode setting br to 30 and contr to 50, RGB will not be accessible on OSD.
Try it. What you got to loose?

Hello Adam,

Perhaps I was not lucky with the U2410 as my calibratration was not good as I explained in my previous posts. I can see you sucessfully calibrated it in the Standard mode and reached 30 and 50 for brightness and contrast.
For your calibration you used CM, however, I could not find information on the net. Could you please provide more information so I could read about it? I am still thinking if EyeOne 2 is good for me, as I have read about dpt-94 which is a good product as many reported. However, it is sold with various software, what is confusing.

Please let me know what you think.
Best,

Roma

Roma, perhaps it's just a language thing, but Adam did not "reach" 30 and 50 for Brightness and Contrast.  He PRESET the monitor to these settings BEFORE running the software and he did not touch the Brightness  and Contrast controls again.  I agree with Adam when he says

Hello Chas,

I can see it now. Thank you for clarifying this point. I believe when a monitor gets old, these settings must be changed. There is so much to try out, as the standard software and recommendations do not always work. What is CM? Just wonder.

I am now waiting for DELL to put 2209WA monitor on sale. In the meantime I have noticed that NEC is selling refurbished LCD2690WUXi-2 for a very attractive price ($749 USD). I have read reviews and they are very good.
http://www.necdisplay.com/Products/Product/?product=02e0c734-0bbf-4b25-bb28-03d1e7f855cd

I do not do professional photography, but I would like to have a monitor I can trust in terms of colour reproduction. Should be good for wrokign with text too though.
Thank you!

Roma

CM=Colormunki

Just so we are all on the same page, CM usually stands for Color Management.
You might want to adjust to C-Munki for Color Munki.
:)
Fred

It's either Color Management or ColorMunki.



That NEC is an incredibly good monitor.  Many steps beyond the Dell.


I'm not a pro photographer either, but I edit real estate photos for a magazine and color accuracy is important.  Text rendering is also important as I create advertising materials for print.

Hello again,

I have got DELL 2209 WA. I have tried to calibrate it a few of times with EyeOne 2. First impression is good as the calibration is much easier than of Dell U2410. I will post my results later. However, it takes the monitor about 30 min to come up with real colours (final) starting with very pink. Interesting that after calibration I have a pink tint on my monitor. It is noticeable when the monitor is just  turned on, and goes down with time. However, I believe I still can see it. May be I have a problem with my EyeOne 2 which is a bit more than a month old.

Does it have to take 30 min and more for an IPS panel to heat up? My old ViewSonic with TN panel is bright right after I turn it on. Is it a major difference between TN and IPS panels?

Please advise. Thank  you!
Roma

The advice I have heard - I think it's from the EyeOne 2 Display help - is to allow an hour for a monitor to stabilize. It may actually take less time but I prefer to be sure it's properly settled down. When due to calibrate, I turn off the screen saver and monitor auto-off and leave it for an hour.
Terry
PS. With the Imatch software you can do validation checks at intervals and look for changes in the Delta E values; that will give a clue as whether the monitor is stable or not.

Hello Terry,

Thank you very much for your advice. I will try it out per your recommendations. I just wonder if this happens to all good monitors (Eizo, LaCie, NEC) used for professional colour editing. It might only be related to cheap monitors like Dell, as they do not have as much electronics to boost the colour and brightness fast. It seems like wasting a lot of time to start working with pictures.

Regards,
Roma

I have an Eizo monitor and from checks I have done, it needs at least 30 mins to become stable. My old cheap one would need a full hour. I think it all depends on how much the electronics and illumination system are rated . I would expect better quality monitors to have components working well within their full capacity and use components that are inherently more stable.
Just leave it on all the time like me  :o
Terry