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Author Topic: Calibration of the NEC PA series ( spectraview II+? colormunki ori 1Display )  (Read 5279 times)

lpr

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Hi,
I own a NEC PA241 screen which I have not yet bought calibration tools for. I'm really new to this and it's really confusing to me. Now I understand that in oder to get the hardware calibration I need to be using Spectraview II and not any other software right?  So that's settle .
Then for color meter,  the SpectraSensor Pro is made for my screen BUT I can't use it to calibrate other screens if need be ? Is that right?  So that leaves me with the i1Display Pro  and the colormunki display  ( I was told by NEC not to go near the spyders ) .  It seems that both these color meters are identical in hardware and just the software differs.  Now if I will be using Spectraview II then that's not really an issue is it?  But then I read elsewhere that the color munki does not support any other software than it's own so that means no spectraview II which would mean the only option is the i1Display Pro .

Is all this right?
or can the color munki also work with spectraview II?

any confirmation or info would be very welcome thanks!
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howardm

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Be specific when talking about ColorMunki's because there are multiple versions of differing technologies and capabilities and prices.

Spectraview supports the ColorMunki Photo (the original spectrometer black thing).  It doesn't support the newer 'Display' which is really just a i1Display Pro.  The issue is that XRite has not released the programming interface details of that unit to 3rd partiies such that NEC cannot support it.  XRite has released the details for the i1Display Pro (the computer sees these as different units) so that is supported.

The most flexible solution you can have is the retail i1Display Pro and then add the Spectraview software on top of that.  That's a resident of the USA.  If you're elsewhere, then it's a different story.


FYI:  I see there is now vversion 1.1.10 of SV software as of a day or so ago but it still doesn't support the CM Display

shewhorn

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If you don't have any other monitors to calibrate and profile, then you can get NEC's Spectrasensor Pro which is an i1Display Pro and costs about $200. If you have other displays to calibrate and profile, the i1Display Pro for $239 would be the way to go.
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lpr

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Thanks guys!
that's what I thought.
Hoooo the complexities of modern Marketing, you buy the same object but it does different things...

I do indeed live in Europe, I own the european version of the PA241 so officially I do not have access to spectravew II  but I called NEC France and a really nice guy told me indeed that it would work if I could get my hands on the software . I travel to the states and Canada often so that will be fine.  Unless there is some crazy localization feature included in the software that tracks your position on the globe and only lets you calibrates your screen if you are physically in the States?  I would not even be surprised, but that would not really be fare to people who moved and brought their equipment with them would it?



LAST QUESTION THOUGH!

What happens if I calibrate my screen with the 1Display Pro and spectraview II ( so hardware )  and then wanna run the 1Display pro software just to see it in action or to use the cool tools it has like the uniformity of the screen function , or the color checker card?
Can I create profiles for my screen with both software and then compare them and pick one?
Or are they going to mess with each others settings?

Thanks again!
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howardm

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Spectraview software writes it's 'profile' directly to the screen hardware, not as a profile/file of changes to be applied to the video card LUTs.

However, what Spectraview also does (and I think it's optional) is that it can write a default completely null/linear profile so that color managed apps have *something* to work with but as I said, it's a linear 1:1 mapping. 

the I1 software knows nothing of the screen hardware and writes all its output to a profile.  So, you can use i1 software as long as you do not have it create a profile for the screen (although, if Spectraview did its job well, the i1 should see an extremely good and low dE screen so it's profile will be d@mn close to linear too) that overwrites the null profile created by Spectraview.

Tim Lookingbill

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Spectraview software writes it's 'profile' directly to the screen hardware, not as a profile/file of changes to be applied to the video card LUTs.

However, what Spectraview also does (and I think it's optional) is that it can write a default completely null/linear profile so that color managed apps have *something* to work with but as I said, it's a linear 1:1 mapping. 

the I1 software knows nothing of the screen hardware and writes all its output to a profile.  So, you can use i1 software as long as you do not have it create a profile for the screen (although, if Spectraview did its job well, the i1 should see an extremely good and low dE screen so it's profile will be d@mn close to linear too) that overwrites the null profile created by Spectraview.

Just for clarity, Howard, color managed apps must have the mathematical matrix portion of the profile written to the video card or somewhere in the OS for those apps to reference for previewing tagged images, right?

It's the LUT portion of the profile that gets downloaded to the display hardware. I wouldn't think the matrix portion would get downloaded into the hardware as well unless color managed apps can communicate directly to the display's hardware.

For instance if all that was created was the LUT portion embedded in the display hardware then whatever profile is loaded in the system that is chosen in the OS's display/graphics interface (could be sRGB as default) which in that case color managed apps would reference those matrices which would be inaccurate.

I'm not familiar with how NEC builds and stores its ICC display profiles but thought that issue should be made clear.

There are two parts to an ICC display profile, the LUTs that force neutral gray throughout the entire 255RGB tonal scale and the math based matrices for color managed apps to reference for rendering proper color tables that control hue/saturation appearance of tagged images.
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lennypierramos

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Hi again,
So I finally did a calibration with Spectraview II and the I1Display , at first look, it seems to have worked well.
One thing that I notice though is that the screen calibration seems to change a little each time I reload the said calibration inside of spectraview... weird.  Like it will be set to X calibration and if I reload the same X calibration one time it's a bit brighter , one time a bit darker etc....  I did 3 calibrations in a row as I wanted to test the program since I had never used it, they seem to all have given me slightly different results , maybe that's nothing to worry about?

 Another weird thing is that ( and I know that once I have calibrated with spectraview I am not supposed to load a different ICC profile in colorsync but I wanted to try anyway ) if I change the ICC profile to something else and then come back to the profile newly created by spectraview , it doesnt go back to what it's supposed to , the image goes back to something really wrong and I have to go back in spectraview to reload the calibration for it to look normal again....

As I understood it, Spectraview calibrates the screen's hardware itself and not the graphic card so in theory it should create a neutral color profile for colorsync, one that does nothing to compensate within the grapic card?  So why does it not read it as neutral?

Finally, just for fun I tested the screen's uniformity with the Iprofiler software that came with the I1display ( I didnt create a profile for the screen with it, just used the testing features ) .  I wonder if someone here can tel me if there results are acceptable.

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lennypierramos

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These are the uniformity results!
Thanks!
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