Calibrating new HP 30" and new Apple Cinema 30"

General Color & Graphics Monitor Calibration & Soft Proofing
1

Hi,

I have a question about doing this. We were a totally PC business, creatives and printing until a couple of months ago when we switched over to Macs. On the PCs we were using Eizos and calibrating with a SpyderPro using the ColorNavigator software that came with the Eizos, using 100cd/m, 2.2, 6500 and got really good results with this without further tweaking.

At the same time we got the Macs we had to get a new SpyderElite 3 because the software we had didn’t work with Leopard, 10.5 and it had also went missing. Anyway, we got new 30" HP LP3065 monitors and an Apple Cinema 30" just to test and I found that I could not get the HP and Cinema to match after calibration and that neither were as good a match as the Eizo to our printed sheets. Both new 30" monitors are too dark in the shadows and way too bright in the highlights for print simulation. I got pretty much the same results whether using the profiles the Mac creates itself when plugging in the monitors, using the Spyder or using my EyeOne and Profilemaker.

I was able to get the HP toned down by tweaking the white point or luminance and the black point and using the EyeOne with Profilemaker to be a pretty close match to the Eizo, if I turned the briteness down about halfway AFTER calibrating also. I could not get the Mac toned down, or tweaked right to match the Eizo no matter what I did.

Why won’t the Spyder calibrate these 2 monitors into a fairly close match when used on the same system? Am I overlooking something that’s different on Macs vs. PCs? With the Spyder software I could not set the software to 100cd/m and start there because they were to bright to be calibrated at that setting so I had to up it to about 120 or more to get it within the software’s tolerance range so it would go ahead and finish the calibration.

Any input greatly appreciated,
Thanks,
Terry

2

Hi Terry,

I think this is what’s going on in your situation.
You were fine with the Eizo because the Color Navigator software works directly with the graphics system inside the Eizo via “DDC.” That way, all you had to do was set your aim points (100cd/m, 2.2, 6500), go through the process and you’d get 100cd/m, 2.2, 6500.

Without this DDC, you had to do things more manually - bringing down the luminance on the HP as you said. It is not uncommon to have to reduce an LCD’s brightness down to zero, or close to it in order to get it in the ballpark of what you need. And as you apparently discovered, some Apple monitors are still too bright even at zero.

The Spyder requires the luminance to be taken care of in the hardware. So, you have to actually be able to turn down your monitor’s backlight to 100 cd/m2 in order to get there. By contrast, the CN software can make use of the graphics card inside the Eizo to meet the desired luminance.

Since you have ProfileMaker, you can use MeasureTool to reduce some of the brightness using the Mac’s video cards for the HP and Apple displays. It’s a bit of a complicated process, but you can do it!
We talked about this elsewhere in ColorForums:
[url]http://one.imports.literateforums.com/t/brightess-at-0-and-still-too-bright-now-what/516/1]

The reason I’m focusing on Luminance so much, is that that is really the first step in getting two displays to match each other. You have to get them putting out the same brightness first, and then the colors fall into line much easier.