Dual Monitor Cal/Profiling

[pixel wrangler]

I was at a client's today, and they added a second 23" ACD to a G5 workstation, for tool palettes, etc. Probably about 18 months difference in the screens' ages.

Of course they didn't look anything alike, so I had a go at calibrating/profiling them. Used a DTP-94 puck and Monaco Optix XR (Pro I think.) In the expert mode I chose native white point and tried 0.20 for the black luminance, 120 for the white, and 2.2 gamma. After I was done they were closer, but still noticeably different. The older of the two monitors seemed to have a slight magenta cast to it. The newer one was more neutral, but seemed a tiny bit flatter (which will probably be OK, and actually probably give better screen to print matches.)

I guess the question is, how close can I expect two monitors made at different times, with a big difference in operating hours, to look compared to each other? Should I try to recalibrate, and if so should I try to change any of the parameters (particularly the black level, or gamma?) When is close really close enough?

On a related topic, I was re-reading a section of "Real World Color Management" (in chapter nine, about evaluating monitor calibration profiles) and I came across the passage about problems like banding bring caused setting the black point too low, or using a gamma setting too far from the monitor's native setting. Does anyone know the ideal black point and native gamma of a 23" Cinema Display? I ask this because I wonder if making a slight tweak of either black or gamma to the older of the two monitors might bring it closer to the newer one.

Sorry this turned into such a ramble    Thanks in advance for your input.

ron

[Schewe]

In the grand scheme of things, there's really only going to be _ONE_ display in a multi-display setup that will truly be accurate...what I do with my 3 display setup is to accurately profile my main display using native gamma and D-65 as the white point. For LCDs I go for a 145 cd/m2. Then I save that out as a display target that us used to calibrate and profile for the other two displays. I only use the main display for super critical color–the other display usually has palettes or other non-critical thing on them.

Using this process I can get all three displays pretty accurately matching, but it'll never really be absolutely "perfect". Not sure your display software can do that...I use ProfileMaker.

[pixel wrangler]

Hi Jeff, thanks for your timely reply! I'm beginning to think that I'm a little overly concerned about the difference between the two monitors in question.

But I'm intrigued by one of your comments. You say that you "accurately profile your main display..."

For those of us who are color management neophytes, what do you typically do beyond setting up your cal/profile hardware/software package of choice to the specs you want, and then letting it do its thing?

I think this is where I was going in my first post RE: making slight tweaks to the black point and native gamma, to see if that would render a better profile. Would I even see a difference between let's say .18 and .20 for a black point, or 2.2 and 2.1 for gamma? What kind of tests could be run to determine if things were getting worse or better?

I use an Eizo CE210W at home, along with the Eizo's Color Navigator cal/pro software, and seem to get pretty good results. But I'm not as familiar with how to get the best from the ACD's and the Monaco software.

Thanks again.