Calibration: Macbook with second monitor

[TimCCR]

I use a Macbook, the white one with NVIDIA graphics card, and use whatever I find along the way as a second display. Not great I know but I can't carry another display around with me as well as everything else. I have an Eye One Display 2 which I thought would mean I could calibrate both displays and they would look the same but it doesn't seem to work. At the moment I am using a cheapo Dell display in my mate's office as the second display and after calibrating it and the Macbook the colours on the Dell are way more saturated than on the Macbook. Does anyone know why? It's not a big issue as I use the Macbook display only for tool palettes and the second display for the photos I work on but I would like to understand why this happens.

Tim

[Doug Nelson]

Are you using the automated mode or the manual mode? I saw a big difference between my two monitors after calibration using my i1, even after using the automated routine, but it disappeared once I used the manual mode and followed the (admittedly sometimes complicated) instructions. The automated mode seems to only be able to handle slight corrections.

[TimCCR]

I have tried both and the results seem about the same.

[Doug Nelson]

Another stumbling block I had when I first got my i1 was wrestling control of the monitor away from the vidcard's utility. My system is very different from yours, but it turned out I had two profiles being applied. I had to dig through two different vidcard utilities until I finally found the place where I could turn off its own profile loader.

[TimCCR]

I have only 1 graphics card but when I go into the display preferences it tells me it is applying a different profile to each display.

[Doug Nelson]

Unfortunately I don't use a Mac, so can't offer much help about Mac-specific settings. Perhaps another Mac user will see this and offer some help.

[ylwdog]

Tim,
I have had the chance to speak w/ i12display techs on several occasions. Profiles can only be applied to one monitor, not two. It would require the i1 to generate a separate profile for each and then apply it to the correct monitor.
What I would recommend is to calibrate them separately and store each profile w/ a unique name, when you only using the mac as a display apply the mac profile, when using your second monitor, if that monitor becomes your main monitor, then apply the profile for that monitor. This will make your mac look worse, but your bigger monitor will take priority.
I saw this done at a lighting class by the instructor.

[Flashtones]

Originally Posted by TimCCR

At the moment I am using a cheapo Dell display in my mate's office as the second display and after calibrating it and the Macbook the colours on the Dell are way more saturated than on the Macbook.

More than likely the Dell simply has a wider color gamut than the Macbook. Laptop displays aren't typically the best.

[TimCCR]

Here is the reply I got from Xrite:



Product: eodis2

Symptom: EODIS2 - Bad or unexpected results when using monitor profile

Proposed Resolution: EODIS2 - Second video card or profile primary display and manually adjust the secondary to lo ok like the primary

Notes:


Dear Tim

When you calibrate multiple montiors to match each other, they may match closely but not exaclty. You may especially notice a change in cases where you are using a mix of backlighting technologies.

In order to be sure that your monitors match each other as closely as possible, please be sure to set them to the same color temperature, gamma, and luminance settings. After you calibrate each monitor, determine which one has the lowest luminance and use that information as a reference for your other monitors. If you are using the Advanced mode in i1Match, you c an use the "Open ICC profile" feature to import a profile from one monitor so that the software can automatically apply the settings to your additional monitors.

After profiling, you still may find that your monitors display very slight color variations due to hardware differences. Depending on your workflow, you may choose to designate one monitor as the color critical monitor and use the other for additional workspace.

Following that advice has not improved things much but at least I am beginning to understand why not.

[Pictus]

Try ColorEyes Display Pro, it is the best soft for calibration and can work with your Eye One Display 2, they got a 10 days trial. http://www.integrated-color.com/cedp...esdisplay.html