I thought some of you may be interested in this little story after the boss at home gave me permission to proceed.
Earlier this year I noticed that monitor to print colour match was not quite right especially with orange tones. I wondered if my calibration device, an Eye One 2 Display, was playing up. Subsequent checking with the X-Right i1Diagnostics program showed it was working properly.
Later in the year I started getting inconsistent calibration results with my 22" Eizo Flexscan 95% Adobe RGB gamut monitor. It's a good quality monitor but has Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamps rather than the more modern LCD back-lighting so I assume they were "going off" after 9 years use. It was time to replace it in ready for Christmas.
Eizo have a reputation for good quality monitors at competitive prices but the latest Flexscan range did not seem particularly suited to photography so I looked at their ColorEdge range that have hardware calibration. This is where the monitor calibration settings are stored in a Look-Up-Table (LUT) in the monitor hardware rather than on the graphics card. This gives consistent calibration & precision colour . Some even have a built in calibration device that pops out at the edge of the screen. Most models have high gamut LED's too.
I bought a 24" ColorEdge CS2420 monitor which still needed my Eye One 2 Display for calibration. It's one up from the least expensive in the range and has 99% Adobe RGB gamut. It has excellent reviews and rated as good value for money - I did not pay the full list price! See attached image.
Calibration was easy. You start by setting target values, gamma, colour temperature and brightness which are saved. You can have several target sets and therefore several calibrations. The software does load the profiles into the operating system colour folder as you'd expect.
So why have several calibrations with different targets? I used this feature to check print matching with different brightness levels. Or, say, you are working with video you'd probably want to set the calibration to sRGB. The neat thing is, once these calibrations are done, you can instantly access them from the system tray (Windows) which will load the correct profile and monitor settings with one click.
(NB. I have no commercial interest with Eizo or their sales outlets
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Terry