Eye One Display 2--worse after proflling

[diglloyd]

Originally Posted by AndrewCassino

Look under Edit/General Options -- It is there!

But watch out - feed Canon DPP a LUT-based display profile and it will unceremoniously CRASH!

Indeed, the preferences were set to "Small (Matrix)" and there is a "Large (LUT)" option. I'll try that.

What about the "According to ICC specification version 2" vs "According to ICC specification version 4"?

[AndrewRodney]

Build a LUT based profile. Use Native Gamma and White Point to reduce banding. To check banding, you need to assign the display profile to the doc you're inspecting to properly see if it's causing undo banding (typical on all LCDs). V2 profiles are fine for now.

http://www.ppmag.com/reviews/200412_rodneycm.pdf

[Alan_Ackoff]

I've had no problem with Canon DPP and LUT based display profiles. Works fine.

Lloyd, I'm glad to see that the Eye One allows you an LUT option. You should see an improvement. Good luck. Let us know how that works out for you.

Alan

[diglloyd]

Originally Posted by AndrewRodney

Build a LUT based profile. Use Native Gamma and White Point to reduce banding. To check banding, you need to assign the display profile to the doc you're inspecting to properly see if it's causing undo banding (typical on all LCDs). V2 profiles are fine for now.

http://www.ppmag.com/reviews/200412_rodneycm.pdf

Thank you Andrew (and hello after a number of years!).

I made a V4 profile with native gamma and native white point. I also tried native gamma and D65 (slightly different but results are similar in character).

At RGB 6 I can just barely distinguish the black square, and at RGB 7 it's clearly visible. I have trouble detecting any color change over any of the gray steps, so that seems good.

With the gradient, it looks like a smooth black to white gradient, though I see "stepping"--the distinction between each of the 256 steps. There is also some "banding"--slightly discontinuous stepping every 5 RGB values or so. There is also slight discoloration in the values from magenta to green.

The banding and discoloration diminish significantly with the "dumb" (manual) calibration (the one not using the EyeOne Display 2 made with the Apple Display Calibrator Assistant. The "dumb" calibration does sacrifice 1 additional level to black (7 vs 6).

My conclusion at this point is that the hardware is a waste of time and money.

[Alan_Ackoff]

Perhaps your hardware is to blame. Suggest you first test another Eye-One. See if your results improve. Then get access to a premium quality bundle such as Monaco Optix XR-Pro and try again. If your results are still unsatisfactory, next you can try replacing your graphics card and run your tests again.

As things stand now your results are inconclusive. If your "dumb" calibration is doing a better job than your hardware/software bundle, I suspect you have a hardware defect either in your profiling hardware or your graphics card.

Although it seems unlikely that it's your LCD display that's another thing to check. Try another display. I've had two defective 30 inch Apple displays. For me, the third one was the charm.

When you get it working right, ICC profile based color management is pretty darn cool. So don't give up. If your are patient and methodical you'll find the problem sooner or later.

[diglloyd]

Originally Posted by Alan_Ackoff

Perhaps your hardware is to blame. Suggest you first test another Eye-One. See if your results improve. Then get access to a premium quality bundle such as Monaco Optix XR-Pro and try again. If your results are still unsatisfactory, next you can try replacing your graphics card and run your tests again.

Thank you Alan, but I've calibrated 3 machines with it now, with similar results. I had the same problem with the previous Eye One. This new one passes diagnostics just fine and there is no evidence that it is bad.

I don't think there's a hardware problem other than the basic limitations of 8-bit, and too much marketing hype.

[AndrewRodney]

Are you assigning the display profile to the gradient for testing? That's necessary IF you want to evaluate only the quality of the profile. If not, you're getting (as necessary) a conversion from the working space to the display profile space. However, when you assign the profile to the document, you're seeing the results of just the display profile to evaluate if its based on the best possible settings. We'd never assign display profiles to our actual images of course, that removes the Display Using Monitor Compensation architecture of Photoshop but doesn’t provide a means of vewing just the effect of the display profile.

Note that you can't turn off color management in Photoshop, some profile (hand made, machine made) is being used. On an LCD, I don't know I'd expect to see a totally smooth, totally neutral gradient. But you should get pretty close if you've got a good system and profile. I'd agree this IS a limitation of 8-bit CCFL LCD's.