multi-monitor calibration

ivar

I'm looking for a monitor calibration device that supports calibrating multiple monitors. I'm having a really hard time finding them, since even some of the manufacturers websites don't mention whether they are or are not suitable for multiple monitors.

Who has a calibrator that he/she uses to calibrate a multi-monitor system, which one is it, and are you happy with it? :ear

Newsy

ivar wrote:

I'm looking for a monitor calibration device that supports calibrating multiple monitors. I'm having a really hard time finding them, since even some of the manufacturers websites don't mention whether they are or are not suitable for multiple monitors.

Who has a calibrator that he/she uses to calibrate a multi-monitor system, which one is it, and are you happy with it?

I could be wrong but as I understand it, you don't need a calibrator specifically for multiple monitors. The Colorvision Spyder3 Elite or Xrite i1D2 or Xrite ColorMunki should do fine.

With PC's the biggest issue with multiple monitors is ensuring you have a LUT (Look Up Table) available for each monitor so that when you calibrate the monitor, there is somewhere for the "adjustments" to be written to.

You can achieve this in three ways.

The most common way is to have two graphics cards installed in the PC, each with their own LUT, connected to a monitor that does not have an internal LUT. Therefore you calibrate the monitor but the data values are held in the graphics cards and are managed by the OS. Vista and Win7 can manage this nicely. WinXP has an applet available from Microsoft that allows you to manage the multiple color spaces. This is the least expensive way to manage multiple color spaces as quality image editing monitors without internal LUT's run about $600 USD and the graphics cards can be had for $100 USD or less.

or...

Run one video graphics card with a single LUT and with multiple outputs, say one VGA and two DVI's and connect two monitors off the DVI's where each monitor has its' own internal programmable LUT. In this case the video card only has one LUT as is typical so both monitor see the identical video signal. This can be expensive due that monitors with programmable LUT's are up around $1500 or more for a 24 inch. These monitors generally are provided with their own calibration system and software so that the LUT in the monitor can be accessed and have data written to it. I'm not 100% sure but I don't think standard calibration software from the likes of Colorvision (Spyder) or Xrite (i1D2, ColorMunki) can write to the LUT's of product from NEC, Eizo, or Lacie. You can use their pucks in some cases but you must use the NEC, Eizo, or Lacie software. $$$$. The graphics card is again under $100 USD in all likelihood.

or...

Acquire a graphics card with multiple LUT's - i.e. if there are 2 DVI ports, each would have it's own LUT. Each monitor can be a midline model at around $600. The graphics cards with multiple LUT's are more expensive running up to $400 USD or more from what I've very infrequently seen. I'm not sure about the details of managing the various monitors & their individual color spaces via the OS.


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ivar

Thanks Newsy. I guess I could have mentioned that I'm using a mac

Newsy wrote:

I could be wrong but as I understand it, you don't need a calibrator specifically for multiple monitors. The Colorvision Spyder3 Elite or Xrite i1D2 or Xrite ColorMunki should do fine.

Definitely not all calibrators have the software to correct and match two screens. I had the huey (one of the good ones), which worked great actually, but only on one screen. I could not get the software to calibrate my second screen, and it would apply the correction from the first to both screens.

After a bit of browsing around, I found this: http://spyder.datacolor.com/learn_videos_studiomatch.php which showed me that at least the spyder could do that, so I got that one

davem1979

New ATI 5000 series graphics card and 3 LUTs
Hi,

I just spoke with ATI GPU support, and they told me that the new 5000 series cards have 3 DACs with 3 LUTs, so they should load 3 separate ICC profiles for each monitor attached. He mentioned that the older generation ATI cards supported Dual LUTs, and now the new generation cards are moving forward with that in mind.

Can anyone here confirm that these new graphics cards are actually supporting 3 LUTs?

It would be wonderful to finally have an inexpensive single card graphics solution supporting 3 LUTs for calibrating up to 3 monitors...

Thanks,
David

dogwood

I use the xrite i1 on multiple monitors to calibrate them separately with not problems. But that's on a PC using Nvidia software that supports multiple monitors set up separately from each other.

davem1979

Hi Pete,

I just got some relatively new information below from Nvidia about support for loading two ICC Profiles to two monitors with one graphics card. It seems that although Nvidia cards have only one LUT per GPU, not only in Windows XP with the Microsoft Color Control Panel Applet, but in Windows Vista and Windows 7, there is now the ability to assign an ICC profile to each monitor. Did you get two monitors with separate ICC profiles working on a single Nvidia GPU in Windows Vista/7 or just in Windows XP using the Color Control Panel Applet?

http://nvidia.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/nvidia.cfg/php/enduser/popup_adp.php?p_sid=rd1MFZVi&p_lva=&p_li=&p_faqid=77&p_created=1097595892&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MiwyJnBfcHJvZHM9MCZwX2NhdHM9MCZwX3B2PSZwX2N2PSZwX3NlYXJjaF90eXBlPWFuc3dlcnMuc2VhcmNoX25sJnBfcGFnZT0xJnBfc2VhcmNoX3RleHQ9aWNj

http://nvidia.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/nvidia.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=2092&p_created=1188166751&p_sid=rd1MFZVi&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MiwyJnBfcHJvZHM9MCZwX2NhdHM9MCZwX3B2PSZwX2N2PSZwX3NlYXJjaF90eXBlPWFuc3dlcnMuc2VhcmNoX25sJnBfcGFnZT0xJnBfc2VhcmNoX3RleHQ9aWNj&p_li=&p_topview=1

dogwood

davem1979 wrote:

Did you get two monitors with separate ICC profiles working on a single Nvidia GPU in Windows Vista/7 or just in Windows XP using the Color Control Panel Applet?

I'm running XP x64 and the Nvidia control panel that opens for my graphics card lets me set up multiple monitors with their own profiles. The i1 calibration screen works/runs separately on each monitor and calibrates them separately. I know that's not a technical explanation but all I need to know is it does work for me

My graphics card is a GeForce GTX 260 if that makes a difference.