Hening,
My name is Michael
I appreciate your warm response.
Laszlo is the guy whom's link I came across....But i am about to contact him regarding the main discussion found here which I just started today. Thought there may be lots of others out there with a similar problem to you.
I hope this solves your problem.
Best
M
Guys,
Thanks for posting and reading my article! First of all, if you have a hardware calibrated monitor, then the landscape looks more friendly (so to say...)
There are several things that needs attention (I will try to summarize them).
My current setup: an EIZO CG241W, a Mac with OSX 10.6.3 on the first port, and a 64-bit Win7 box on the second. For calibration I'm using an Eye-One Pro spectro.
For a long time I was using CN on both machines (note that only the last, or last 2 versions of CN support Win7 at all). Now I'm using basICColor display as CN did a really bad job with 80cd/D50/L* calibrations - basICColor is better with less color seepage in the darker tones (compared to CN).
Profiles generated for hardware and software calibrated displays differ in one important piece: a non-standard, Apple-invented extension to ICC profile format: the VGCT (video card gamma table) tag. It is a 8-bit table that is loaded into the video card's gamma table every time the OS starts up (or in case of Win7 when a user logs on). When you turn off your machine the LUT is gone. You have to reload it next startup. That's the point where Vista was a complete disaster, and what my article describes in connection with Win7.
So software calibrated display means VCGT in the profile and some code that loads VCGT into the video card at startup.
Hardware calibrated display means no VCGT, no reloading, etc. In this case the calibration data is stored in the monitor itself, with higher precision. They commonly use 10 or 12 bit gamma tables instead of the 8 bit table of VCGT. In case EIZOs they are also sticky - calibration remains in the monitor even if you turn the power off and then back on. EIZO CG series even holds two separate gamma tables for both of its ports.
There is no LUT loading involved when using a hw calibrated monitor, the profile in this case is just that: a standard ICC profile that describes color reproduction characteristics of the display. These profiles are only portable between OSes if they are connected to the same port (ie. a bootcamp Win7 and Mac OS installation on the same machine are OK, but you cannot move the profile between two machines).
If you have a software calibrated display and change the profiles on Mac - it will change the calibration data. Win7 will need a profile reload after the change. But with hardware calibrated displays it just changes the profiles, and will not reload the calibration. To reload it you'll need CN (or other calibration software).
The desktop of a Win7 installation is NOT color managed! Photo Viewer IS. Internet Explorer is NOT... So depending on which app you are using to view an image it could be way off...
Sooooooo. The setup I'm using successfully and recommend is the following:
- Leave all Win7 color management settings at their defaults (that means "Use Windows display calibration" => OFF).
- Install the latest EIZO ColorNavigator. I'm turning off all the unnecessary additional utilities, just using CN to create the calibration and transfer it into the monitor.
- If you have both a Mac and a Bootcamp installation designate one of them as the "calibrating OS". Install CN only on that OS, and DO NOT install CN on the other one. Calibrate the monitor in the calibrating OS, then copy and transfer the resulting profile to the other OS. Set it as the default profile.
- You'll have to copy the profile every time you recalibrate the "calibrating OS".
Hope this helps. I've added a screenshot of my color management settings page.