Link or advice to setup new Eizo monitor

[brntoki]

I'll do that later tonight and report back. Thanks a bunch! I appreciate your help.

[brntoki]

Yeah, it's the black patch. Nothing to worry about since you have black point at minimum. With the default settings, this will attempt to maximize contrast (deepest possible black) at the expense of accuracy.

Skip the presets and create a new target. Check "set the target black level" and lift it a little bit - 0.3 or 0.4 is a realistic starting point. Minimum black is fine for watching movies, but not really useful for proofing prints.

Then in the next step you have three options for "priority". Check "Gray Balance" here. With this setting, gray balance is maintained at the white point temperature all the way down to black:

Hmm. No difference with gray balance priority and a .3 black point target. Strangely however, my contrast actually increased, so maybe I should raise that black point to .4 and try again.

[brntoki]

And at .4, I get a contrast of 258:1, and maximum dE of 4.18. Still seems higher than it should be.

[digitaldog]

And at .4, I get a contrast of 258:1, and maximum dE of 4.18. Still seems higher than it should be.

These reports are not very useful, don't agonize over them. More a feel good button. IF you got really high values all over, it would indicate an issue like the puck fell off, light leak, screen saver came on etc. With the kinds of reports you are seeing now, it's silly to even worry about them. If you want a real evaluation, get BableColor's PatchTool and build a target that really tests difficult colors (dark satruated ones for example). These canned reports don't use enough colors in areas of color space that provide much of a useful test. They are useful for trending (comparing multiple reports over time). Otherwise move on.

[brntoki]

These reports are not very useful, don't agonize over them. More a feel good button. IF you got really high values all over, it would indicate an issue like the puck fell off, light leak, screen saver came on etc. With the kinds of reports you are seeing now, it's silly to even worry about them. If you want a real evaluation, get BableColor's PatchTool and build a target that really tests difficult colors (dark satruated ones for example). These canned reports don't use enough colors in areas of color space that provide much of a useful test. They are useful for trending (comparing multiple reports over time). Otherwise move on.

Sounds like good advice. I'm not in an ideal setting to really get into print matching at the moment anyway; just moved. Really nice to be able to set different targets and switch them on the fly, though, so playing with different settings has been instructive and somewhat useful.

[brntoki]

Hmm. Ya know, on second thought, I don't know if it's such a good idea to let this go. Why shouldn't I expect better results from this line of monitor??? Is the Eizo branded Spyder 4 not working correctly? Is the monitor not behaving properly? It may be the case, and I'd rather let Eizo know sooner rather than later.

How can I continue to verify? Maybe I'll run a check with Argyll/Dispcal. Will it read my sensor as a Spyder 4? I'll give it a shot in the next day or two, but if someone has any other advice, I'd love to hear it; to include why I really may have no need to pursue this, as was mentioned, but with a little more information to put my mind at rest.

[digitaldog]

You were told what tool to use if you really want a sound evaluation.
http://www.babelcolor.com/main_level/Tutorials.htm#Printer_and_Monitor_proofing

[Stefan Ohlsson]

You were told what tool to use if you really want a sound evaluation.
http://www.babelcolor.com/main_level/Tutorials.htm#Printer_and_Monitor_proofing

Another tool to do the same thing is http://www.ugra.ch/ugra-display-analysis-and-certification-tool-2.phtml. But I would go for the Babelcolor solution, as Udact is only for evaluating monitors and you can do so much more with the Patch Tool. But I do believe that you will have problems getting an OK evaluation, as that monitor can't show the most saturated colours correctly.

[brntoki]

You were told what tool to use if you really want a sound evaluation.
http://www.babelcolor.com/main_level/Tutorials.htm#Printer_and_Monitor_proofing

I apologize, Andrew. I first intended to do as you said and drop this, and when I decided to come back to it had forgotten your suggestion. As well, I read your suggestion as, "If you really want to see how far your monitor is off . . . do this", so I think I pretty much disregarded it as a suggestion that may show my monitor was behaving better than I thought, which is what I was hoping for. It sounded like you were saying, "Don't worry! It's much worse than you think!", which, of course, made me worry 

If you don't mind, could you tell me why I see suggestions, seemingly everywhere I look, that say things like, "If you see anything above a delta E of 2.5, something is wrong . . ."? I mean, looking at the average and white point deviation gives me peace, generally, but my max sometimes peaking over 5 was a shock to me, honestly.

[brntoki]

Another tool to do the same thing is http://www.ugra.ch/ugra-display-analysis-and-certification-tool-2.phtml. But I would go for the Babelcolor solution, as Udact is only for evaluating monitors and you can do so much more with the Patch Tool. But I do believe that you will have problems getting an OK evaluation, as that monitor can't show the most saturated colours correctly.

Thank you, Stefan. Could you please elaborate on your statement, "that monitor can't show the most saturated colours correctly."? I have done a little searching of reviews of the CS230, but haven't found much of substance.

[Stefan Ohlsson]

Thank you, Stefan. Could you please elaborate on your statement, "that monitor can't show the most saturated colours correctly."? I have done a little searching of reviews of the CS230, but haven't found much of substance.

The gamut of a CS230 has about the same size that sRGB has. sRGB has a much smaller gamut than the most saturated colours that a printer can produce, which means that when you view an image with saturated colours on that monitor, they will look a bit less saturated.

[brntoki]

The gamut of a CS230 has about the same size that sRGB has. sRGB has a much smaller gamut than the most saturated colours that a printer can produce, which means that when you view an image with saturated colours on that monitor, they will look a bit less saturated.

OK. I thought that might be what you were getting at. Nonetheless, I'm trying to figure out if there is something slightly off with this monitor as I'm getting fairly high deviations in the dark colors. To my knowledge, that shouldn't be happening with this monitor. If there is a problem I should bring up with Eizo, I'd like to know it.

[D Fosse]

It's already established that the high delta E is the black patch, RGB 0,0,0. So you need to figure out what the true native black point of the monitor is, and whether the monitor reaches that black point at the "nominal" chromaticity. If the panel can't reach your target, you'll get high delta E's.

The native black point may be higher than you think. And you don't need the full advertised contrast range except maybe for watching movies. I just upped my black point from 0.4 to 0.5, on both the CG246 and the CX240, because it matches printed output much better.

So try playing around with different black point targets until you hit the sweet spot. I'm sure your unit is fine.

[brntoki]

It's already established that the high delta E is the black patch, RGB 0,0,0. So you need to figure out what the true native black point of the monitor is, and whether the monitor reaches that black point at the "nominal" chromaticity. If the panel can't reach your target, you'll get high delta E's.

The native black point may be higher than you think. And you don't need the full advertised contrast range except maybe for watching movies. I just upped my black point from 0.4 to 0.5, on both the CG246 and the CX240, because it matches printed output much better.

So try playing around with different black point targets until you hit the sweet spot. I'm sure your unit is fine.

Hi again, and thanks for your continued efforts to help me out. I did calibrate to .3 and then .4, and things improved to a max dE of 4.18 @ .4. I may in fact do .5 also, especially since I am, for now, exclusively printing on matte papers anyway. To note, my dEs for patches 16,16,16 and 32,32,32 are 4.13 and 2.94 respectively according to CIE2000. Dark, but not crazy dark. That is with "Gray balance" priority checked.

[D Fosse]

Well, I can see Andrew's point (this isn't something to put too much energy into) - but I can also see your point (the values simply shouldn't be that high). I usually don't bother with validation myself, but the one run I did on the CX gave delta E's of 0.24 max, 0.06 average and 0.03 white.

The actual calibration and profiling processes don't display all that many patches. So the validation puts up a whole lot of patches not previously measured, and then compares measured against predicted. As such, I think it qualifies as a valid procedure for checking the accuracy of the whole process and the numbers do have a real meaning.

If there are any real inaccuracies here, they're likely to be in the sensor rather than the panel itself. The Spyders do have a bad reputation, but my impression is that the Eizo-branded units are delivered to tighter specifications. I have compared a stock Spyder3 against an Eizo EX-1, in ColorNavigator, and then compared both against an i1 Display 3.  The EX-1 and the i1D3 were for all practical purposes identical, while the stock Spyder3 gave different results which were clearly off.

That said, black rendering is not the strong side of IPS panels. Unless specific measures are taken, the characteristic off-angle "IPS white glow" can be very pronounced. The Spyder sensor, with its shallow construction, may be vulnerable to this. The i1D3 has a lens construction giving a longer, more directional light path, so it should be more immune.

I had an NEC P232 that had this white glow to such a degree that I always wondered whether it would affect black point reading, even with an i1D3. Great monitor otherwise, but blacks weren't really reliable. The Eizos I have now both have some sort of polarizing film so that black remains black from all angles.

[brntoki]

Out of respect for those who have chimed in here with useful advice, I want to let you all know that after further reading and thinking, I'm gonna take Andrew's advice after all. The colors that are shifted are not gonna be noticed in the "real world." For some reason the colors that should be neutral from 0,0,0 through 64,64,64 don't validate well; they're just not neutral no matter what I do. But with the average deviation being well below what is noticeable by eye and the white being off by .03, this is just not worth it.

So, thanks to everyone who put in their $.02. It was helpful.

[brntoki]

Well, I did my first print since getting the Eizo and calibrating and discussing the results here with you all (been very busy). I am stunned at how incredibly well the print matched the screen straight away, and the small discrepancies I did notice were "fixed" by soft proofing (I knew I had some out of gamut colors and just printed anyway without soft proofing first: wasn't thinking/trusted the conversion to make things right). If I had soft proofed, I would have changed intent to perceptual, but the print was fine for its purposes anyway.

A special note of thanks to D Fosse for the suggestion of not setting my black point to as low as normally recommended. I'm sure I would have been disappointed if I had. Couldn't be more pleased at the results, or how easily they were attained.

Thanks to all who chimed in and to Lula in general.

[D Fosse]

You're welcome.

The importance of black point/contrast range is underrated. It affects your whole perception of what you see, so it's important to have a good match from screen to output.

And this is where ColorNavigator (and Spectraview II) shines, because changing targets for intended output is so easy. Here I have four different targets for different scenarios. The most important difference is the black point, aside from the sRGB emulation for whenever I need to use non-color managed software: