I am calibrating and profiling my 2 monitors (LaCIE electron 22 blue IV) with the Monaco Optix XR pro colorimeter and Pro software - and am finding it impossible to match the monitors. It seems I must create 2 .icm profiles, one for each monitor, but windows only allows me to use one profile at a time. Is this a correct assumption. The video card I’m using is nVidia Quadro FX 3000. Is there a way to tell Windows to use one ICM for one monitor and another for the 2nd monitor?
I don’t know your software but I imagine you need to make the monitor you wish to calibrate the primary screen in display properties/settings, then run the software calibration. This should build and store your profile. Then make the other monitor the primary display and calibrate that.
You should be able to change the profile but bringing up display properties/settings and selecting the monitor you wish to check (just click on either of the two screens in the settings window) and then clicking on the advanced then colour management tabs. You should see the default profile for the monitor there, and be able to select a different profile if you wish.
Some video cards don’t play nice with 2000, and you get one profile for both monitors because the display is changed from (for example) 1024x768 to 2048x768.
EDIT Sorry I didn’t see the title of the thread before I responded.
XP should not have a problem using one calibration per monitor. Just select the monitor and change the settings appropriately. I don’t know, however, if this applies in “mirror” mode where the two displays show the same image…
Yeah, I’m having exactly the same problems. I have just purchased a Dell 2405FPW to go with my 2005FPW & am having trouble setting individual profiles. Well, the problem is not in setting them, it’s getting them to be active for each seperate screen.
It seems that when I use the “normal” method, Properties->Advanced->Colour Management->Add, the profile that is active is whichever monitor I set last. If I do the 2405 last, it is the profile for BOTH screens; If I do the 2005 last, it now becomes the profile for both screens.
I’ve had a little more luck with the new Microsoft Colour Control Panel applet but I’m still not sure that each screen is using different profiles. It says in the Colour Control Panel applet that they have different profiles but when I’m doing some editing, there are noticable colour/saturation/etc. differences between the 2 screens, even when set to the exact same brightness levels, 169cd/m2.
Does anybody know how to fix this problem? BTW, I’m using an nVidia GeForce 7800GTX on WinXP SP2 & am using PM505b with an EyeOne Pro spectro to make the profiles.
XP does not support two profiles for dual headed cards. 2000 does. There are three solutions to this problem. 1. Some video card manufacturers have provided the ability to store two profiles with their card drivers. This is by no means universal but the latest ATI drivers definately do. 2. The simplest solution is two video cards which then load two places in the registry for profiles. 3. The Microsoft Color Control panel is supposed to solve this problem. I have not tested it but I have heard reports of success. The best way to test the theory is to make two profiles with substantially different settings so you can easily tell them apart. Once you confirm it works build two good profiles.
Since it appears to be an AGP card you would need to install the XP Color Applet and replace the Xrite’s startup loader with the Applet’s wincolor.exe /L LUT loader (see README file of the Applet).
You will be able to calibrate and profile the monitors separately.
Only one profile will be used by colormanaged apps for gamut conversion.
You need to pay extra attention in the Color Applet to which profile is assigned to which monitor. In case of AGP cards (that are recognized as a single card by XP) calibration software often associate profiles with a wrong monitor.
Obviously you need to select “Dualview” option in Nvidia driver settings that lets Windows see 2 separate monitors…
Do you know how PCI Express cards handle dual monitor calibration? I’m building a new PC and I’m having trouble picking the right video card. I want to run dual CRT monitors and most cards with DVI and VGA outputs will support this with a DVI to VGA converter for the second monitor. However, I don’t know if this will allow me to calibrate each monitor or not.
I’d rather not buy two video cards if I don’t have to, so any advice would be much appreciated.
This is not an easy question to answer with the information you provided. For example what OS will you be running? What window manager will you be running? And so on.
If you are running Windows XP then with the color control panel applet (this is a back port from Vista) you will be able to correctly handle dual monitors in almost every case at least with recent video cards and drivers. I know that this is working correctly on my dual head setup with an nVidia LE6600 card on WinXP. But at least as of a few months ago the color control panel applet would not install on a WinnXP 64 machine and I don’t know if Microsoft has fixed this yet.
On Unix and Linux using the utilities from ArgyllCMS you will be able to do this as long as you avoid using the video card drivers custom dual monitor extensions such as nVidia’s TwinView. In other words only use X.Orgs native Xinerama since TwinView and MergeFB (ATI) do not correctly implement the XFree86-VidModeExtension and attempts to load two LUTS will fail. I learned this the hardway on my dual head Linux setup and I had to revert from TwinView to native Xinerama to get this working.
I don’t know anything about the Mac. But the author of ArgyllCMS reports that his LUT loader does work there as well.
im using XP sp2 on laptop. (ATI mobile radeon 9600) and I have connected an external NEC spectraview 1980 LCD via VGA.
The calibration works fine for the NEC. Profile is loaded, LUT loader is working fine after bootup.
If i look at the image in Ptshp CS2(or other) and leave it open (or not) and go to sleep mode and back, the image (profile) changes.(dark areas turn greenish…)
The only possible default profile for Color applet to use is my calibration for the NEC.
I dont care for the laptop display, since only tools are on that one.
If I do the 2005 last, it now becomes the profile for both screens.
but I’m still not sure that each screen is using different profiles. It says in the Colour Control Panel applet that they have different profiles but when I’m doing some editing, there are noticable colour/saturation/etc. differences between the 2 screens, even when set to the exact same brightness levels, 169cd/m2.