Dual Monitors, calibrating color

[Daf]

Hi all,

 

I recently dumped my room-heating/clunky CRTs for 2 Samsung LCD monitors -

SyncMaster 940BX and SyncMaster 216BW - and am having a really hard time getting the color consistent on both...

 

I also recently bought an EVGA 7600GT which (unfortunately) has only 1 DVI. I will be correcting the mistake with the purchase of a 8800GTS very soon - will that help?

 

I would really appreciate some advice on calibrating the color/brightness/contrast so that both monitors are identical - and accurate.

 

I have run the Natural Color program that came with the monitors, but the 216BW keeps telling me that the options are "not available" - it's the one on the digital port. All of this is further complicated by the video card's color software I think ... when I'm done the monitors, despite following the wizards precisely, are radically different! grrrrr! I think that the card's software and the Natural Color may be butting heads or something...

 

Help! What is the best method? I'm not concerned with print as much with screen for the moment.

 

Thanks

Daf

[Quique]

I don't know if this has anything to do with it, but when I tried calibrating my two LCD monitors connected to my Geforce 6800GT (one through DVI-VGA adapter, one through VGA), the calibration program (using the Spyder 2 Pro device) noted that since both monitors are running off of the same graphics card, there could not be two independent monitor calibration settings. In other words, the calibration settings of the 1st monitor would be applied to both monitors.

 

So for me to have the monitors each with its own calibrated color profile, I would need two separate graphics cards. I'm unsure about higher end graphics card and their ability to have two separate color profiles.

[Jeff Mottle]

You either need two video cards (one per monitor) or you require a dual headed video card that supports two LUTs. (Look up tables). Most of the higher end monitor profiling applications support loading the profiles you make for dual monitors, assuming the above criteria has been met. However you can also use Microsoft's XP color applet to do this for you, as XP by default does not support dual LUTs (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/prophoto/colorcontrol.mspx)

[Jeff Mottle]

As an aside, when profiling and calibrating displays, set all video card color and color management settings to their default and don't touch them. Also delete and disable Adobe Gamma and never look at it again or allow it to affect your system. It's crap and will only make profiling and calibrating your display next to impossible. I would also uninstall any video card manufacture's application that does anything to affect color. It sounds like this Natural color thing you have might be doing that.

[Daf]

Thanks Quique and Jeff,

 

I'm downloading/installing the Windows Color Applet now and will give that a try.

 

Those of you running two monitors - is the strategy to get one monitor calibrated and using it as "the" reference for renders, etc...? Or are some of you actually running 2 video cards?

 

I've been shopping motherboards lately and have run across "SLI" boards. I assume that this is the best way to run the second card should you choose that route?

 

Thanks!

Daf

[pablo scapi]

Jeff:

 

Please, do you know if there is a version of the color control panel applet for windows xp 64 bit, because i can´t install this one you said, and can´t find the 64bit version either.

 

Thank you

[Jeff Mottle]

Jeff:

 

Please, do you know if there is a version of the color control panel applet for windows xp 64 bit, because i can´t install this one you said, and can´t find the 64bit version either.

 

Thank you

 

Unfortunately I don't know of a 64bit version. That version I indicated will not work on Mac Book Pro either, at least it would not on mine.

[pablo scapi]

Ouch!!

 

I was afraid of that, thank you anyway for your answer.