My goal: to have a color-calibrated workflow for developing camera files, editing them on a 3-monitor set-up with Aperture & Photoshop, and printing them in-house, using my existing hardware.
The best solution is to use new hardware: get two matching external monitors. Can't do that this week.
My current hardware:
- 15" late-2013 rMBP (500 GB SSD; 16 GB RAM {sweet machine, imho})
- NEC LCD 2490 WUXi2
- NEC PA 271W
- ColorMunki Photo spectrophotometer
- Epson 3880 (I also rent an Epson 9900 by the hour)
Software:
- OS 10.9.3 (most up-to-date version of Mavericks)
- Aperture 3.5.1 (most up-to-date)
- Photoshop CC (most up-to-date)
- SpectraView II 1.1.17 (most up-to-date)
The problem:
- the PA271 is greenish compared to the laptop LCD and to the LCD2490. This is when calibrated with SpectraView II to either "Native Gamut" or limited to sRGB. Middle-grey Kelvin as measured by SpectraView II with the ColorMunki is c. 6675 on the LCD2490 and c. 6475 on the PA271. The difference in color is across the entire desktop shown by the monitors; IOW, it is not limited to a window or to the windows of a program.
The solution:
- NEC technical support, which has spent more than a couple of hours with me on this, suggests sticking with sRGB (otherwise the LCD2490 and the PA271 will never operate in the same color space), calibrating the PA271 and then using SpectraView II's "Visual Match" to adjust the calibration to match the a printed standard print & screen evaluation image, extracting the new white point from the now-calibrated PA271, and using that WP as the target WP for the LCD2490.
Questions:
- Does that make sense?
- Is there a better method?
- Why aren't the two NEC monitors showing the same "color" when calibrated to the same target with SpectraView II and the ColorMunki?
- Is there any way to change the default monitor (and thus color space) in Mavericks?
- Does it make any difference whether "Displays have separate Spaces" or not?
- Are there practical considerations associated with working in sRGB?
Of possible interest:
- I want to use a 3-monitor set-up because Aperture under Mavericks can now show the contents of a container on one screen, the selected Images on a second screen, and the "Primary Selection" (a single Image) on the third screen. I find this works very well for processing lots of Images.
- I purchased the monitors years apart for use in two different workplaces. I have consolidated my work, and am trying to get everything to work well, together.
Thanks.