I am in the market for a new screen, one that offers a wide gamut, better brightness uniformity, and a hardware LUT. The NEC PA271W 27' screen is currently the front runner, with a couple from Eizo coming in a close second and third. The newer Eizo screens seem to come with a built-in calibration device, and self-calibrate. They cost an unholy fortune, though, so that convenience will probably not find its way onto my desk.
With the i1Display Pro colorimeter, the measure is made in quantity (luminance) and quality (color temperature) for more accuracy when correcting the ICC profile. If you have a compact fluorescent lighting in your room, this measure is not recommended, because the correction is really bad.
The NEC PA series also has a hardware LUT, and seems to make use of SpecraView II software to do calibration. I have not been able to find any solid information about which calibration devices work with it...it seems SpectraView supports a variety, but I have been unable to find a list of explicitly supported colorimeters and spectrophotometers. I own a DataColor Spyder3 Elite, which has the ability to program LUTs with its own software. It seems you can't use third-party software with the PA series, only SpectraView. I would love to know whether NEC's PA series or SpectraView II support that specific colorimeter, so I can avoid buying another.
jrista♦jrista
2 Answers
First, yours won't work well. From the NEC FAQ:
Why are the Spyder color sensors not recommended for use with wide color gamut displays such as the LCD2690WUXi, LCD2690WUXi2, LCD3090WQXi, P221W, PA241W, PA271W and PA301W models?
Our evaluation of these devices has determined that the accuracy of measurements when used with wide color gamut displays could lead to large color errors. Therefore we do not recommend using this device on wide color gamut displays.
Other than that, support depends on the operating system:
For Linux its:
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For Windows its:
For Mac:
So, yours is supported but should not be used on a wide-gamut display. I use NEC's software and device and it works very well. I save money by only buying it once to calibrate all 3 NEC displays here, so it comes to $100 per monitor :)
ItaiItai
I had also the same problem and tried following sensors:Spyder 4: spectraview profiler detectet also for calibration the Spyder 4 and did the job with an inconsistent result and with a high difference of Delta values. And, some times the calibration failed.i1 Display pro:After that I used a i1 Diplay pro and get the best and constant results for Deltas, because the standard NEC Tool is i1 Display pro.
ColorMunki Photo: I tried also the calibration with ColorMunki Pro. The calibration results are also good, but the Deltas are some times higher than i1 Display pro.
I used always SpectraView Profiler 5 with above mentioned sensors.
BR,Ramin
RaminRamin
Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged display-calibrationwide-gamut or ask your own question.Purchased this Colorimeter (not to be confused with a Spectrometer or Spectrophotometer, which are more advanced beasts of a similar kind) to color-match the screens of my various devices when editing my raw photos and videos. This hardware is considered to be the best, and for the premium that's expected.However, it misses the mark by far, because it's handicapped by software. For the past few days, I've literally calibrated my monitors more than 30 times. The software allows you to customize the number of test swatches being used to calibrate the monitor, to increase the color accuracy, and I used the largest set (462 colors) for all but the first three calibration attempts. Let me say first, in some cases there's a problem with installing X-Rite's i1Profiler calibration software on Windows 10 machines. Some configurations will result in a missing DLL file that prevents the program from loading at all. -- After many hours of troubleshooting I was able to finally get the missing DLL into the system. To do so, I had to install the latest version of their i1Profiler software, then install the 3+ year old version of their X-Rite Device Services software (v2.4.0, released: 10/7/2015). I do not recommend doing that. Although it worked, there are potential problems with using a system software that was created before the operating system was refined / secured. If you intend on calibrating your monitors and uninstalling it after, then it might be okay to use that method to get it to work. Keep in mind that the older version of the system software will be missing features and refinement / optimizations of the newer version, so your milage may vary. -- Once the program was able to load, it worked very well in Windows. I was able to get the three monitor gaming setup of the Windows machine to display with consistent results across all of them. There was a very slight, almost imperceivable difference, that my friend and I noticed while making an image wide enough that it covered all three 27' inch screens ... but we chalked that up to the fact that the monitors aren't the same age. Two were purchased at the same time, but two years after the first one, and all three are at least 4 years old. All things considered, the results were pretty impressive. Under MacOS it's a different story. Specifically the TouchBar MacBook Pro, which I wasn't able to get anywhere near the three PC monitors. I researched it extensively, intimately learning much more about monitor calibration. Going further and further down the rabbit hole as my calibration methods became more complex. I followed X-Rite's recommended 'Linear Profile' MacOS approach, because unfortunately it's a well-documented problem (so they are very much aware of it, yet still haven't fixed the issue hence 'unfortunately'). I tried calibrating for different monitor technologies, no dice. The picture ended up being significantly more orange than the Windows displays. It's telling, when the company that makes the product has a page titled 'Technology Type For Apple Displays' which says, 'The next update to i1Profiler will add a new Technology Type for 2016 and later MacBook Pros so current i1Display Pro users should stay with the 'White LED' Technology Type.' Ummm, it's now 2019. 3 years have passed and they still haven't added the correct display technology, and still ask users to use a generic monitor technology. That is unacceptable for a piece of hardware at this price-level. It speaks volumes for their customer support, and the customer complaints in their Amazon product reviews reflect exactly that. Had I noticed those reviews before purchasing it, I might have given it a second thought. However, all is not lost. There is a way to get excellent results on any display, but not using i1Profiler. Instead, use DisplayCAL. It's a very-well designed piece of Open Source software, so it's the result of many community contributions far beyond what the X-Rite team developed. Due to the wide array of user configurations, the software makes few assumptions. Whereas X-Rite knows what their hardware does and so they program with assumptions that everything is working well, DisplayCAL doesn't know and instead tests everything. It calibrates / tests the calibrator extensively before even calibrating the monitor. You can choose the level of complexity of calibrator testing, as well as the level of complexity of monitor testing. i1Profiler maxed out at 462 color test swatches for my purposes, but with DisplayCAL I was running 4,954 color tests per calibration, and testing the calibrator for an hour before each monitor calibration. Admittedly that was beyond excessive for my needs, but I wanted to be sure / was curious, and so it took 2 to 3 hours for each calibration that I did. Trying multiple configurations, my laptop literally calibrated for 3 days straight, while I slept and did other things. Through that process I have learned that DisplayCAL's 12 minute default calibration produces very similar results as their 4,954 color calibration. Yes, there is a discernible difference if you apply the different color profiles to the monitor and look for the changes, but for most people's needs a 12 minute calibration is more than enough, and is noticeably different from the default macOS and Windows display profile calibrations. So if you can do without i1Profiler, it's possible to get excellent results across any monitor. If you need i1Profiler and are using Windows, an iMac, a Mac with an external display, or a MacBook with an older than 2016 display technology ... you will probably get great results, because all of those things are supported. In that case, I only recommend that you do not use the ambient light measurement when creating your calibration profiles. That will skew the results significantly, and should only be used if you are in an environment where the lighting never changes (and thus the lighting consistently skews the color of the monitor). If you are in an environment where the lighting varies throughout your day, disable the ambient light measurement while calibrating. Then, enable the ambient light adjustments 'after' creating your color profile. It'll create a profile that doesn't factor in the color of the current light, but still allow you to dynamically adjust the brightness of the display based on the brightness of your environment; which is what most would need / want. However, if you are like me, expecting to color match your 2016 or later MBP with your iOS Devices, so that your mobile (iPad/iPhone) color workflow also matches your desktop ... that currently is impossible. X-Rite's calibration app on iOS is called ColorTrue, and it absolutely will not match a 2016+ MBP display's results. It's possible that Datacolor's Spyder Colorimeters might work better, but I haven't tested them. The X-Rite spectrophotometers (not colorimeters) would definitely work better. But X-Rite's cheapest spectrophotometers, the i1Studio Photo (EOSTUDIO, $489 on Amazon), the older ColorMunki Photo (CMUNPH, $499 on Amazon), or the more precise i1Basic Pro 2 (EO2BAS, $1,589 on Amazon) are a decent increase on investment in color accuracy. Ultimately, if you have a 2016 or later MacBook and want to use the iOS software, this hardware is a waste of time until X-Rite updates their monitor technology types. In all other cases, I can actually recommend this device. -- For me, personally this device is unusable, my MBP is my primary work machine and is the sole reason I purchased this colorimeter. So, I'll be going elsewhere. Probably the i1Studio Photo or i1Pro 2 if I can justify the cost. Comments are closed.
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