Eye-one monitor calibration and dark prints

General Color & Graphics Monitor Calibration & Soft Proofing
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Hi,

I use eye-one display 2, REV-A. My system is Win 7, 64bit. The monitor is EIZO FlaxScan S1910. Match3 version is 3.6.2.

When I perform monitor calibration. Match3 tries to locate the eye-one, but fails. I get the message: ‘Eye-1 position detection failed. Continue anyway?’ I say ‘yes’, it continues using the entire screen. Does it affect the performance in any way?

The first measurement is ‘Contrast’. I see only a white screen. No gray or black are displayed, so how can it measure contrast? The indicator is in the middle of the green area, as if the contrast is OK, but is it? The monitor has no contrast control, so I cannot change and check it.

As I continue, I get several ‘position detection failure’ warnings, but it continues to the end, seemingly OK. Performing a ‘Monitor Validation’ check, I get dE2000 values of about 0.5 - 0.6.

My question is whether that behavior of Match3 is normal, and if I can expect to get reliable profiles?

The reason for my doubts is the fact that I get consistently dark prints form my printer. I know that one reason for dark prints is a monitor set too bright. I have set the monitor to 80 cd/m2 (your recommendation is 120).

My printer is an EPSON R2880, EPSON matte paper and EPSON inks. I get the same results if I use the generic profile from EPSON ‘SPR2880 Ultra Premium Presentation Matte’ or a custom profile made by InkjetArt. Prints come out the same if I print from Photoshop or from QImage.

Can you please lead me to my error, because obviously I do something wrong!

Thanks,
Moshe

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If the software cannot detect the i1Display, then there is something wrong and the performance will be affected as you suspect. The i1Diagnostic program we talked about in the other post would tell you if your i1 is working or not.

If your monitor does not have adjustment for contrast, you can skip that step.

Delta E variations of .5 to .6 are very good. We would typically expect higher numbers - somewhere in the 1’s and 2’s especially with darker colors. So the numbers you are getting are very good.

Dark prints are most often attributed to a display that is too light. 80 is not normally considered a luminance level that is too bright - but then there is no magic number. A lot depends on your illumination of your prints and your ambient light. Here’s another article that you might find useful. Check out the “white paper test”:

colorwiki.com/wiki/Printer_t … Paper_Test

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Thanks Patrick,

Moshe