Can I interrogate monitor profiles?

[bellephoto]

Happy new year, everyone!

I've recently started a new job, and one of my responsibilities is the calibration of monitors throughout the organization.

The company owns an Eye-One Design, and most of the monitors have previously been calibrated by somebody, but I have no idea what the targets were.

(I habitually name my profile with the targets - eg "6500_2.2_80.icc" - and I highly recommend this method.)

We use PCs running windows XP. Can anybody tell me: How can I interrogate a monitor profile to find out what its targets were?

Cheers,

Damo.

[Doug Nelson]

Monitor profiles are only valid for a few weeks, technically. So your best bet is to recalibrate.

You should be able to make out some details from the gibberish that appears when you open one in a text editor (just don't hit "save").

You can also rightclick on them and choose "Propeties" (if you're a Windows user) and get a little bit of info about them.

And there are utilities such as offered by www.chromix.com

[bellephoto]

Thanks Doug, you're right ... I am able to make out a bit of info amongst the gibberish.

Don't worry, I know how short-lived profiles are. Particularly where I work, at a newspaper, because nearly everybody's working on very old CRTs! I calibrate to 6500-2.2-80, as I said, but some monitors are barely even able to achieve 60cd/m2 at 6500K!

Management have promised a roll-out of new LCDs, which will be good, but we're not holding our breath ... the gestation period of a promise is longer than an elephant around here!