Monaco Optix xr Pro

[william_rubin]

I just bought the Monaco Optix xr Pro and now I'm wondering if it was a waste of money.

I'm sure it's not bc a lot of you here said monitor calibration hardware is the only way to

go for serious digital photographers...something I'm striving to become.

 

The question is, shouldn't I see some sort of difference on my screen? Some way to know

that their is improvement with color? My understanding is that even before

calibrating with a lab's printer profiles (something I haven't figured out yet), I will benefit

from calibrating my monitor. I don't see any difference. Is there something I'm missing?

 

Thanks in advance!

[jimsimmons]

It would be surprising to calibrate your monitor and have it appear exactly as it did before. I would mean that either you were incredibly lucky that the setup of you monitor out of the box and the ambient lighting in your workspace were a perfect match. Or that you've not followed the calibration directions correctly and that the calibration has not locked into place.

 

When you created the monitor profile, did you save it by name? And when you go into Display>Settings>Advanced...>Color Management (Windows XP), is that the name of the monitor profile that is displayed and selected? If not, then you're not running your new profile, and you'd only be seeing the old generic profile.

 

Not sure if I've helped...

[tom_swanson]

Make sure you aren't running adobe gamma.

 

Other than that it is always possible your monitor was pretty accurate out of the box.

[william_rubin]

Thanks for your quick replies.

 

Jim - I checked and am running the monitor profile that I set. I'm going to go through

and calibrate again to see if I did it wrong. Certainly possible.

 

Tom - How do I know if I'm running adobe gamma? How do I turn it off?

 

Thanks again.

[drake_barton2]

The way I understand it, there is two benfits. The first is to calibrate your monitor to the best of it's ability. Set the white point and black points, adjust indiviual RGB colors if possible. Then you profile the monitors as the puck reads the color your monitor displays and compares that against the values it expects. When you look at an image in a color managed environment such as in photoshop the colors you see will be adjusted for the individual quirks of the monitor. When I soft proof now after calibration I am no longer suprised by what is in the final print.

I didn't notice a huge difference in my monitors normal appearance but my printing pleasure has improved alot.

 

My take.

Drake

[alan_chan4]

I have purchased Eye-One Display 2 and has mixed feeling too. My NEC FP1350 has greatly improved grey now, but I wouldn't say my colour lab prints are much closer to what I see on monitor after calibration. I was able to get excellent prints before calibration (using Adobe Gamma back then), but now I have a little difficulty on determining the correct brightness for printing. On my old PC which runs 98SE, I can see no visible difference at all after calibration. Still trying to figure what went wrong, or did it? Maybe I should buy the cheaper Spyder2 in the first place. The i1 Display 2 leaves me a little unsatisfied with its limited software.

[Mike_R1664876643]

I would be kind of surprised too if the monitor looked exactly the same before & after calibrating. Using the Spydervision 2 I've seen a noticeable difference in my screen and have to say based on the prints I'm getting now and just the overall look of the screen, it's much more accurate than it was before. I'm fairly frugal and really hesitated to spend money to calibrate my monitor, but now am very glad I did. I'm not sure how the Monaco softare work, but the Colorvision does show you the screen before & after calibration.

[karl_knize]

I'm a Mac user and I can go into my system preferences>displays>color and by selecting other profiles, such as generic RGB I'll see a huge difference between those and my Optix Pro profile. Don't know about PC's, but I'm assuming you can do the same.

[joel_blacher]

I have profiled my monitor using Monaco Optix and the screen seems very bright. My monitor is a Sony and I profiled it two times (once using the "use native..." setting and once setting the temp to 65. There is a setting for 5500 and for 9300; in between it gives double digit numbers, so I'm assuming 65 stands for 6500...perhaps incorrectly. I have the ceiling light on in the room, which is not overly bright. The monitor seems to be very bright to me (60% on the brightness control).

[tom_swanson]

If you're running a Windows box run msconfig. Look for adobe gamma in the startup. Might not have anything to do with your problem but adobe installs it by default and it can fight with other software.

[victor_moss]

William,

 

If you are using Windows XP and were already using a profile from before (say created by Adobe Gamma), then right click anywhere on the desktop/wallpaper and go to Properties>Settings>Advanced>Color Management. Then with an image open in a software that uses the monitor profile (e.g. Photoshop or any decent raw converter) double click on the older profile. You should be able to see the image displayed using the older profile. If the calibration went right, you should see a change, even if your original profile was ballpark correct. Let us know what happens.

 

Joel,

 

I too calibrate with Monaco Optics XR Pro and have a Sony with very similar settings. I have a single button control of color temperature and was able to set the monitor white point to around 6500K using the software calibration procedure. Upon calibrating my brightness setting was also high (in fact even higher than yours). I am not entirely sure whether that was correct. My guess was that it was trying for a base luminance for the black point which is much brighter than �black�. I think the eye adjust to it in any case, and the end result is that we see a more consistent difference in the lower zones. However, I am not entirely sure. It would be nice if some experts on this forum can clarify that. Maybe that should be a different post.

 

-Victor

[joel_blacher]

Here's another question...perhaps a "stupid" one...should I be set for high color or true color?

[william_rubin]

I appreciate all of the feedback so far. I hope you're all still with me bc I sure need the

help. I use Mac OSX, btw.

 

I now see a color difference on my monitor when I go to System Preferences-color-display

profile and toggle between sRGB and my Monaco profile. I set my Monaco profile at 6500k

and Gamma 2.2, which is what my lab wants, but itﾒs different than the sRGB color space

and my lab says to use the sRGB color space??

 

ALSOﾅIﾒm confused by Color Sync Utility on the Mac. Under default profiles I changed

RGB default to my new Monaco profile (bc my lab wants sRGB?), CMYK and GRAY default I

left at Generic. Color Sync names the default color space profiles ﾖ hm?

 

Then there are the Color Settings in PSCS, which control working spacesﾅ Whatﾒs the

difference between color space profiles, display profiles and working space profiles?

 

What should everything be set to if my lab says they want sRGB color space, 6500k and

Gamma 2.2??

 

Thanks a lot for your help!

[alan_chan4]

>Here's another question...perhaps a "stupid" one...should I be set for high color or true color?

 

True color.

 

> What?s the difference between color space profiles, display profiles and working space profiles?

 

The Monaco software will create a monitor profile which will be loaded everytime the OS started. This profile was meant to be the monitor profile only. Within Photoshop, you should not use this profile as working space, but instead, use AdobeRGB or sRGB depends on your preference. I use sRGB because I use lab printing and sRGB works best. Almost everyone agree 6500k Gamma 2.2 is the standard so just stay with it.

[william_rubin]

Thanks Alan-

 

So I set my monitor profile (display profile under system preferences) to my new monaco

profile, right?

 

In Photoshop, under color settings-working spaces (Is that the same as color spaces?), I

should use sRGB because that's what

my lab wants, right? The only option is sRGBIEC61966-2.1. What is that and is that the

one to use?

 

In Color Sync, under default profiles it says "Use this panel to specify default profiles for

each color space to be used when a doc does not contain embedded profiles." I should

use sRGB bc that's what my lab wants as a color space right? I have a few options though

that I don't understand. sRGB profile, sRGB 4.0.0.3000, sRGBIEC61966-2.1 and there's

still my Monaco profile to choose from.

[alan_chan4]

>So I set my monitor profile (display profile under system preferences) to my new monaco profile, right?

 

Yes, but the Monaco software should do that automatically. Just make sure you remove Adobe Gamma and reboot the OS before calibration.

 

>In Photoshop, under color settings-working spaces (Is that the same as color spaces?),

 

The colour space chosen inside Photoshop is the "working" space (sRGB in this case), the file generated by Monaca software describes the "monitor" space which is different from the working space inside Photoshop. They are 2 different things and not interchangeable.

 

>I should use sRGB because that's what my lab wants, right?

 

Yes.

 

>The only option is sRGBIEC61966-2.1. What is that and is that the one to use?

 

Yes, this is the space most labs recommend and all pictures should be converted to this space (for lab printing) if you are using AdobeRGB or other working space in Photoshop. However, you may use sRGB as the default working space in Photoshop to keep the work flow simple (means no further conversion).

 

>In Color Sync, under default profiles it says "Use this panel to specify default profiles for each color space to be used when a doc does not contain embedded profiles."

 

I am not familiar with Mac, but I believe it tells Photoshop what to do if the picture files do not have embedded profile which records what space the files are based on (sRGB or AdobeRGB etc). Usually picture files w/o embedded profiles are most likely to be based on sRGB.

 

>I should use sRGB bc that's what my lab wants as a color space right? I have a few options though that I don't understand. sRGB profile, sRGB 4.0.0.3000, sRGBIEC61966-2.1 and there's still my Monaco profile to choose from.

 

As long as you are using sRGBIEC61966-2.1 as the default working space in Photoshop, you can just forget conversion or embedded profile when saving the pictures for final printing, because the pictures have been altered based on the sRGB space already. These files will look the same on any properly calibrated system with sRGB as working space. For lab printing, it's best not to embedded any profile (records what colour space the picture file is based on) with the pictures when saving. I usually save the pictures in highest jpeg setting (12) without embedded profile for lab printing. This has been recommended by my local lab.

 

 

 

This website contains tons of useful info you should find useful.

 

http://drycreekphoto.com/index.html

[william_rubin]

Thanks for your time. You helped a lot.