Need Help - Bluish Profile, i1Studio, NEC 27-inch PA272W, Catalina

[uimike]

Hi all, I am starting to go nuts here - after years of being able to calibrate my monitors w/o issues.
Maybe someone can shed some light on this...
I acquired a Macbook Pro 16, and when trying to connect the puck (i1Display3) it was not recognized, so googling around I found I had to download and install a new device manager, which I did.

Studio now saw the puck, and I was able to start the calibration process (after factory-resetting the NEC, and setting profile type to GB LED)) but immediately ran into a problem - the measured light intensity was reported as waaaay way down (60) when the target was the standard 120. And manually adjusting the NEC brightness to well beyond the 240 luminance didn't cause the i1Studio needle to move much. So another reset, and this time turned off manual monitor adjustments in i1Studio. It did complete the profile, which was COMPLETELY BLUE!!

So a third NEC reset, then setting the display type to "Generic", created another profile - and BLUE!!

What is going on?

Witless in San Jose,

Mike

[uimike]

Addendum:   Downloaded Argyll's DisplayCAL. It detected the puck right away. I ran a trial 48 patches (and will go back to learn more about all settings), and it produceed a terrific profile. Dead-on match to the Macbook's retina.  It is a bit too bright for the prints, so I need to look at that next. I have no idea why i1Display would not work as expected...

Mike

[MichaelKoerner]

Hi Mike,

AFAIK the X-Rite software "i1Studio" only works with the devices "i1Studio" (the former Colormunki) or "i1Display Studio". The latter looks like the device you mentioned, the i1D3, but as X-Rite sells it to a lower price, I'm sure they built in some kind of restriction - and I can't imagine a different device manager would fix that.

The i1D3 can be used normally - and flawlessly - with the X-Rite software "i1Profiler". But since you already installed DisplayCAL and got good results  - stick to it :-)

Re "too bright for the prints": Have you watched Andrew Rodney on "Why are my prints too dark" already?

[uimike]

@fineartelier,

tx for the feedback!

Yep, I have both Studio and Profiler, and have done all the updates (at least all the ones mentioned in their site, sometimes hidden). I have just updated iProfiler, and ran it - and - a bluish profile again! Very bluish, I should say.

It used to all work OK, upgrading to the MBP 16 and Catalina seem to have broken everything - and I suppose (but I don't really know enough) that the colorimeter itself is not at fault - as DisplayCAL found it and generated a reasonable profile...

So yeah, will  continue with it!

What I need to do now is ramp up on LUTs x Matrices, and all the other aspects of cabilbration and profiling, so I can verify that I'm doing things right. So back to reading Rodney, Graeme, Bruce, as well as great people here.

As far as the "too bright for prints" - sure, I am aware of that - and I have read Rodney's piece.  What I was referring to is, for some reason, I am having a hard time bringing my NEC PA272 and the calibration/profiling software to agree on display luminance.  The NEC will say 240 cd/ft, Profiler will say it's somethng like 60... 

But tx for the suggestions!

Mike

[uimike]

Attching an image of one of the blue iStudio profiles

[uimike]

And now a "good" DisplayCAL one.

[MichaelKoerner]

Hi Mike,

sorry, I did not want to offend you - just wasn't sure about your status of experience :-)

By the way, my own status is "interested - but far away from expert". Just jumped in answering your question as none of the more experienced users did...

To mention it first:
a) I don't use i1Studio
b) I have no first hand experience with DisplayCAL
c) I own a NEC PA271q, so I am a little experienced with hardware calibration.

That said, here some ideas:

1) The PA272W is capable of hardware calibration, AFAIK. Please forgive me if I tell you something you already know, but i1Studio/i1Profiler can not address the monitor's LUT directly, so they write their "corrections" into the video card's LUT, thus giving away some of the monitor's potentials (regarding gamut, blackpoint etc.). Thus I would recommend using NEC's Spectraview II or BasICColor Display to address the monitor LUT directly - or at least use NECs MultiProfiler software to set the monitor to the desired values.

But assuming you have good reasons to use the profiling packages you use, I would at least recommend using MultiProfiler to check the status of your NEC after resetting (of course you could use the on-screen-display as well, but MultiProfiler provides better overview). Here I would check for gamut, blackpoint, whitepoint and luminance to be set to "native" before profiling with i1Studio/i1Display.

2) Given that your NEC is in the same status as it was when using your old machine, I would check whether you had access to a profile made before switching to the new MBP2016. It should work, at least better than the blueish one you got now. If not, consider a hardware / connectivity problem (you could test it by using a different connection type and/or additional USB connection).

3) AFAIK DisplayCAL is not able to address hardware LUTs directly. But apparently it does a better job handling the situation than i1Profiler/i1Studio.

I can imagine this is due to using a LUT: As I can see from the screenshots, DisplayCAL uses a 100/010/001, aka "empty", matrix. In my understanding that means that DisplayCAL's matrix does "nothing", the actual correction is done via the additional LUT (quite similar as it would be with a profile written by SPII/Display - it's LUT would yet be stored in the monitor, not the video card). If, for example due to connectivity problems, a non-linear, strange behavior would occur on the NEC, the LUT of DisplayCAL's profile could perhaps correct that (better) than i1Studio's profile with it's linear correction matrix. Just a guess.

4) Looking at the profiles you uploaded, I see that "Media white point, Illuminant-relative XYZ" in DispCal's profile is 5174K, in i1Studio 6500K. i1Studio's PCS-relative XYZ is 5001K. Quite a difference... but I lack of proper knowledge about it's implications :-/

PS: Concerning my PA2711 I finally came to the conclusion that MultiProfiler alone was sufficient for me - it relies on the monitor's internal calibration checks, but they produce very similar, if not better results than achieved with external software and - comparably cheap - pucks.

Hope something helps!

Best regards, Michael

[uimike]

fineartelier - oh, in no way i was offended!!!  - quite the contrary, I'm super glad for your feedback! - I am reading it carefully and processing the information, will post here soon.

tx!!

Mike

[uimike]

fineartelier, a big thank you for the guidance!   - I was not even aware of Multiprofiler, just downloaded it and am working through it. Also, you explanations are very clear, and I am understanding things much better. Regarding your #2, yes the previous profiles seem to work fine :-)

I will report after I go through Multiprofiler.

Many many thanks!

Mike (in San Jose, California)

[uimike]

OK, final (I think) report.

fineartelier's guidance was critical in my better undeerstanding of the entire process, and getting things fixed (with one very small issue left).
Thank You, fineartelier!

What I did:

Downloaded MultiProfiler, adjusted the display's luminance to 100 cd/m2
Result: display still bluish (less so than before)
Downloaded a current version of SpectraView II, reset to factory the display, calibrated and profiled, with D65 and 100 cd/m2, and voilà!  Looks correct!
Calibrated the MBP 16's retina AFTER turning TrueTone off (my bad, my bad...) and it looks very close to the NEC - with one very minor issue, which is Lightroom B&W split-toned photos look a bit different on both (ever so slightly warmer on the MBP) - but the color images are a real good match.

In the process, I read a lot of material, from a lot of sources, including the SpectraView guides, and realized how little I knew. Very humbling. There I was thinking that using the iProfiler was what I needed.

But fineartelier pointed me in the right direction.

Many thanks

Mike

[MichaelKoerner]

Happy it worked :-)

As you mentioned differences between MBP and NEC: I remember spending months and months until I found out that dialing in the same numbers into different profiling software (for instance D50, 100cd, Gamma 2.2 in SpectraviewII and i1Profiler) does NOT automatically result in perfect visual matches :-)

Perhaps you found that already, too. There are plenty of good tutorials out there about matching monitors, but just be aware that even measuring the whitepoint of one monitor with a puck when setting up the calibrating/profiling parameters for another monitor (in i1Profiler: Whitepoint > Measure > Second monitor) does not guarantee a perfect match in every situation (due to metameric effects and/or technical differences in monitors).

In my workflow, my NEC is calibrated/profiled for perfect softproof, so I have to tweak MBP's monitor to match as close as possible. As there is no visual aid for doing this in i1Profiler, I use a kind of "reverse engineering" in Spectraview/MultiProfiler:

• open a white fullscreen area on MBP and NEC (with Photoshop)
• If the white screens match, all is good. If not:
• change luminance in MBP. Still not good? Then:
• In SpectraviewII, notate actual x'y' white point values ("Edit Calibration Target Configuration dialog > Whitepoint > Edit")
• change x'y' values in Spectraview II to match MBP visually
• use a test image to proof/improve the visual match
• calculate x'y' differences from the notated starting points
• calculate corrected x'y' values (original values are shown on the bottom of chromaticity display). Use opposite direction: If the NEC needed x' +0,01, subtract x' -0,01 in i1Profiler)
• reprofile, using those new luminance/x'y' values at the x'y' section in white point dropdown list

Step 4 and 5 can also be done in MultiProfiler ("Picture Mode > Edit...")
Don't forget to switch back your NEC to the original values ;-)

Good luck!
Michael

[uimike]

Dear Michael, thank you for the detailed procedure!

So, I went through it, and  (what I did follows the "---")

   1   open a white fullscreen area on MBP and NEC (with Photoshop)   --- done
   2   If the white screens match, all is good. If not:  --- did not match, MBP looked a bit brighter and bluish, NEC looked a bit dimmer and yellowish
   3   change luminance in MBP. Still not good? Then:   --- used a lumidisc on my Sekonic L-308S, adjusted the MPB to 6.3 EV to match the NEC - the chroma still differed
   4   In SpectraviewII, notate actual u'v' white point values ("Edit Calibration Target Configuration dialog > Whitepoint > Edit")   --- these were 0.3127  0.3290
   5   change u'v' values in Spectraview II to match MBP visually    --- matched pretty fairly, and obtained  0.3140  0.3291
   6   use a test image to proof/improve the visual match   --- used a standard target (ramps, color patches, images, skin tones, greenery, etc.)
   7   calculate u'v' differences from the notated starting points and subtract those differences from u'v' values in i1Profiler  --- need to subtract 0.0013  0.0001
   8   and finally make a new profile for MBP using those values. --- here is where I stumbled. more below

I launched i1Profiler, but couldn't see where to perform the u'v' subtraction.  I ended up just creating a new profile for the MBP, which resulted in it getting closer but no cigar :-)
How do carry out step 8 in i1Profiler?

Cheers,

Mike

[MichaelKoerner]

Dear Michael, thank you for the detailed procedure!
I launched i1Profiler, but couldn't see where to perform the x'y' subtraction.  I ended up just creating a new profile for the MBP, which resulted in it getting closer but no cigar :-)
How do carry out step 8 in i1Profiler?

Hi Mike,
Two sorrys. First, for not mentioning that not-so-straightforward part. Second, for mixing up u'v' and x'y' - MultiProfiler and SpectraView both offer the latter.

So, here the missing part: When you set white point values for MBP's profile in i1Profiler, you can see the current x'y' values on the bottom of the chromaticity diagram. In the dropdown list where you set white point, you can use the x'y' option to set newly calculated white point.

By the way: Sometimes I use to forget switching back to the original values in SpectraView. Not so good And: Shifting NEC's white point to match the MBP can also be done in MultiProfiler ("Picture Mode > Edit...").

I edited my previous posts to correct this.

Cheers, Michael

[uimike]

Hi Michael,

Don't worry!  I am learning so much from you!
I went over the process, and used MultiProfiler to get the big White Point adjustment tool. This time, I made the dialog as large as possible in my display, and went on using adjusting the x,y unit by unit and watching how well the NEC white matched the retina display white.  One important thing: MultiProfiler told me the NEC had a white point adjusted for more than 6.5K - in fact, more like 6.7K. So it was looking a bit greener compared to the retina display. I don't know why that is, I had used SpectraView II to calibrate and profile to 6.5K...

Anyways, I adjusted the NEC using MP to be Adobe RGB, and now it was squarely 6.5K.

It's x,y at start were 0.313 and 0.329, and after matching the retina display, 0.310 and 0.324 (approximate).

So in i1Profiler (it took me a while - I realized I had to go through the advanced mode) I first set the WP to 6.5K, then changed to custom, and manually added 0.003 and 0.005 erspectively to the x,y values.

After resaving the profile, both monitors are much, much closer. I can't see a difference, unless I use Lightroom to display a large monochromatic, toned (slightly brown) image. When I do this, I can perhaps detect that the retina display is very, very marginally perhaps more magenta. But it is very subtle. The difference doesn't really bother me, as I will always take the NEC as source of truth (that is, the real source of proof is the hard print, right?).

I might go back and tweak, but it will be splitting hairs.

I learned SO much in the process, I am so grateful to you!

Cheers,

Mike

[MichaelKoerner]

I might go back and tweak, but it will be splitting hairs.

It always depends on the hair's thickness ;-)
Monitor matching. A never ending story.

I learned SO much in the process, I am so grateful to you!

Thank you too, helped me revealing my own workflow!
Cheers, Michael