Known Participant

Question

imac too bright for Eye-One Display 2 calibration device!

Forum|Forum|16 years ago
April 1, 2009
29 replies
45390 views

I've spent the past 6 hours trying to resolve this issue, but 2 hours on the phone with tech support from apple and x-rite, along with hours of searching forums and troubleshooting; I've yet to find a solution.

Here's the problem. I'm trying to calibrate my 24" imac (intel based, non glossy screen). I purchased the "Eye-One Display 2" monitor calibration device from X-Rite. After reading the horrible manual on the cd, and watching some youtube videos, I calibrated using the recommended settings. I set the temp to 6500, the gamma to 2.2, and the luminance to 120.

The problem i'm having is that the mac brightness setting, even set at it's lowest possible setting, is still way over the recommended 110-120 luminance setting. I think 148 is the lowest the imac will go. Because of this, I am not able to properly calibrate my imac. I call up x-rite tech support and they tell me they have never seen anything like this. He told me he knew macs displayed bright, but in 2 years he never witnessed this problem?! Seems odd to me.

I've checked forums, I've spent hours on the phone with these tech guys, and they don't know how to reduce the brightness setting any further. There is so much contradictory info out there, it's hard to know what to do to be honest. Some say to use the native white balance, some say to use different settings.

For the brightness issue, the only option I can think of is to use a program like "Shades" or "Brightness Control" to fix the problem. The creators of these programs even mention on their sites to not use them along with any calibration processes. I tried it anyway, and it did help reduce the luminance setting, but it changed the other settings in return.

If anyone knows a work around for this problem, please let me know. It pisses me off that x-rite even says this device is ok to use on intel macs, if this issue exists. And it irritates me that apple makes their computers so damn bright just so they can show them off in their showrooms. The whole reason I bought my mac was because everyone in the forums rave how they are the best for graphic design and audio. What a waste of a day i'm having here.

Oh yeah..my screen also appears to have a slight reddish tint to it?

This topic has been closed for replies.

T

throughthelens1125

Participant

This is an old thread but I thought Id chime in since there hasn't been a post in a bit and the Adobe forum comes up near the top of the Google search for this issue.

The 24" iMac is notorious ( at least in my own professional experience) for being too bright even at the lowest luminance setting..145 is about as low as it will go. I have held out on upgrading from my 20" iMac at home until I hear some good feedback on the new 27" iMac, in regards to calibration at least. In the studio I am using an Eizo Color Edge, so there really is no comparison to be made there. The 20" has no problem for me in going all the way to 0, if I wanted it to. Understandably, most people want the bigger monitor, with the added HD, RAM, GPU, and processor upgrades.

Anyways, I am a professional Photographer, teach privately and do a lot of tech work for Artist and Art Photographers that are bringing some or all of their process into the digital age. Many are using the 24" iMac, and after repeated attempts to get a satisfactory calibration with the EyeOne and Spider, I switched to the X-rite's Color Munki. The C.M. does a much better job and from my understanding of what is going on with on screen prompts, it will force the monitor into the luminance setting you have chosen, if you cannot achieve it manually, by tweaking the graphics card. That may be wrong, but I recommend to my clients that they use a luminance setting of 80-90, since they show their work printed and 80 has always worked best for me in matching print density to what I am viewing on screen. Also I do a lot of assignment work for magazines and had a number of density problems with my images printed on 4 color presses using the recommended 120 Luminance.

To recap for people that are skimming through- Color Munki by X-rite works well, for me, calibrating the 24" iMac and getting it's luminance down to at least 90. I use 80 at home, in the studio, and for my clients, because I have found this to be the best monitor luminance for accurate inkjet print density without numerous curves adjustments between test prints. Obviously if you are primarily showing "on screen", or sending work out to be custom printed you may prefer or need to use 110-130 for the luminance.

Yes it sucks that Apple failed to make these computers/ monitors ( as great as they are!) adjustable enough for professional use. Id like some RGB controls for the new ones as well ( I figure that would be relatively easy with LED displays), but that may be asking a lot.

Hope that helps!

K

keketz

Participant

I have 24" alu glossy imac + i1 calibrator. For me best solution was downloading additional software (i1 was not sufficient): Coloreyes ofers 10 day fully functional demo ... that is enough time to make your own profile (LCD displays are not so prone to changes as CRTs are). Coloreyes lets you make a custom profile with desired luminance level (i1 does not). I have made a few for me with different luminance levels and white points ... If someone is interested in these profiles ... let me know.

Hope that helps ...

link:

www.integrated-color.com/cedpro/coloreyesdisplay.html

I

Imagineer78

Participant

Heelo Keketz

Thank you for your message.

Brightness control and color calibration are actually two separate issues. Brigthness is usually controlled by adjsuting the brightness of the backlight on an LCD display and since this function is display dependent, it is usually done outside the color calibartion process, The problem with the 24" iMac is that the native brightness control does not have enough range. Using a i1 photospectrometer I measured the default(maximum) brightness of the iMac display at around 400 nits. Using the display brightness slider under System Preferences I was able to get the brightness down to about 200 nits. This level is still well above the 120 nits recommended for photo editing work and Apple Care did not have a solution.. So you are right, some third party software is needed to further adjust the brightness. After testing several free software packages I found DarkAdapted to be suitable.

Color calibration is done by remapping the input/output tables for the display and is normally independent of brightness control.. However, in principle, the maximum brightness could also be done via color calibration, but this would adversely affect the number of colors and the dynamic range of the display. Color calibration changes the output mapping tables for the display to improve color accuracy. For example, the default values at level 100 might be 100, 100, 100 for the R,G,B colors but with color calibration the values might look like 100, 90, 80 which would reduce the contributions of the green and blue components. A color calibaror may be able to reduce the display brightness by remapping the levl 100 outputs to 50, 45, 40, but this means that one would not be using the full color range available (e.g. effectively reducing the color range from say 8 bits per color to 7 bits per color).and so for most calibration devices this is not done.

Most color calibration devices do not attempt to adjust brightness and do the calibration(color mapping) with whatever the user has set the brightness level at. I have three calibration devices: a high-end i1 photospectrometer (not the same as the i1 display colorimter), a DTP 94 colorimter based system (Monaco) and a Spyder colorimeter based system) and they expect the user to manually adjust the brightness.. I have been in digital photogaphy for more than 10 years.and professionally do reasearch in digital image processing.

In any case, this problem of high display brightness is becoming a serious problem as most displays are used in high ambient light environments (offices and homes), not photo editing rooms and also consumers tend to associate quality with high brightness. This problem is compunded by the perceived need for high brightness in HDTV sets, which carries over to computer displays. Frankly, I am surprised that companies like Apple do not expicitly recognize the needs of photographers

V

VR*

Participant

I beg to differ on two points

- Coloreyes does address the brightness problem - to lowered my brigtness of 130 +, not as much as one would like but much more than any other solution that I know of that does not have other complications.

- sharing profiles probably will not help as the variance between monitors is often significant.

The people at coloreyes have been most helpful in responding to my questions and provided much help.

A

Anonymous

Recently I attended an Epson event for the roll out of their new line of large format printers. I will not name names but one of the speakers was a Mac Guru that I am sure you all know from his many interviews and web postings. One of the first issues he talked about was color management and monitor calibration. He stated that Mac monitors by their nature were all way too bright and in fact they could not be toned down with any of the monitor controls. His fix was to take a large sheet of neutral density filter and tape it to the front of his screen. After the laughter in the audience died down he looked at us and said "You think I am Kidding?". Sometimes even the Guru's throw in the towel and stick on a Band-Aid.

M

Marshall70

Participating Frequently

I have my iMac calibrated with an eye one, and using shades and Dark adapted, I have my colour and brightness under control.

We design a lot of posters for wide format, and brochures, business card, etc for offset print. We have never had an issue with the colour coming out wrong, as what we seen on our screens is what is been printed. For work which we use transparencies, we always do a press check.

But as I said we use iMac 24" screens and we don't have an issue with colour or brightness, our design work is always printed to what we see.

A

alexgodlex

Participating Frequently

Just to say you're not stuck for ever with your imac as you can plug a second monitor to it : its my actual setup; an imac 20 + an Eizo.

M

Marshall70

Participating Frequently

There is an easy fix for this.

You are correct the settings on an iMac are to bright, we also use an eyeone to Calibrate all our iMacs in our design studio.

The way to correct it is to download a program called shades, here is the link http://www.charcoaldesign.co.uk/shades

This program is great, and will reduce your brightness to the correct level, so you can calibrate your iMac with the eyeone display.

Kind regards

Andre

Ramón G Castañeda

Inspiring

Andre,

"Shades" was already mentioned in the Original Post from the very beginning.

I clicked on your link and found this cautionary note on the Shades page:

Note: Shades may interfere with colour calibration software, and should not be used if colour accuracy is critical.

Ooooops!

M

Marshall70

Participating Frequently

Shade is fine to use don't worry about the note.

We actually had a Colour Calibration expert come out to our studio to calibrate our iMacs and Printers. This is what he recommended for our iMacs we have never had a printer jobs go wrong with colour managerment.

Even when we outsource our print jobs the same colours as what is on our screen, we have some large cliental so our colour management must be correct, and shades does the job perfect with the mac.

Kind Regards

Andre

A

Anonymous

I've been struggling with this "prints too dark" issue since last Oct. when we bought our new 24" glossy iMac. Since then I've not been able to print marketable photos at home the way they came out with the old Sony Trinitron monitor and pc. The past 6 months have been spent choosing a new computer (was iMac a mistake?), then realizing the tremendous learning curve ahead for LR2 and PSCS4, not to mention this HUGE printing problem!

I'll describe my working conditions and setup first. I'm working in the basement of a raised ranch with a north window behind the monitor (covered with dark cloth), a fluorescent shop light over my desk to the left of the monitor, and a drafting lamp with a daylight bulb above the computer desk on the right side. I calibrate and print with these same lights, usually in mid-afternoon or early evening.

Here is the process I follow using an Eye One Display 2. I set the brightness on the monitor at its lowest point, then started the calibration using these target settings: 5500K, 2.2 gamma, 120 cd/m2. Using the Advanced Mode, I skip the Contrast measurement and go to the Luminance adjustment. The final result is Color Temp 5500K, 2.2 gamma, 179 cd/m2 luminance. The luminance is still too bright, but won't go any lower.

Before we bought the iMac, Lightroom 2 and PSCS4, I used PS Elements 5 to print on the Epson R1800 printer which resulted in very accurate prints after some fiddling with the settings. Now I've read so many differing versions of the best way to calibrate and print, I'm very confused and frustrated.

The only prints I've made are jpegs which were edited in Elements, saved as psd's, and printed in CS4.

Please help me with a workflow plan from calibration right through to printing on the Epson R1800. What is the best target setting for calibration: 5500K or 6500K? What settings should be used in Photoshop CS4 to print? What settings are correct on the printer?

Also, concerning the monitor brightness: I downloaded DarkAdapted Pro software to help dim the imac below 120 cd/m2. At what stage in the process is this software used to dim the monitor? During calibration? Before? or after?

Ramón G Castañeda

Inspiring

You went down from a Sony Artisan to a darned iMac screen??

If so, I'd say you're ready for therapy.

Never mind, I misread Sony Trinitron as Sony Artisan. Sorry.

_

_derek_Kimball_Author

Known Participant

Great advice. I will look into all of it :)

L

Lou Dina

Known Participant

Derek,

Let us know what settings you end up with on your monitor for white point and luminance. Just curious to see what works for you. Be sure you compare your monitor to prints using Accurate Custom Printer profiles, viewed preferably with 5000K lighting. If you don't have 5000K lights, look at your print under filtered daylight in the middle of a clear day (not direct sunlight).

Ramón G Castañeda

Inspiring

Derek,

There's no such thing as "my side" when it comes to the Pantone swatches. I take no position on the issue whatsoever because it's irrelevant when you're dealing only with photographs.

_

_g_ballard_

Participating Frequently

PS
>>I'm assuming a good reference image is one that offers a good variety of hues and contrasts.

I like the Photodisc PDI image because of the various skin tones (the monitor and printer have to be pretty good to get them all right a lot of people can tell naturally if skin tones look right or if they correctly saturated.

Second, the desaturated gray bar should be completely neutral and distinct steps between each level.

I've used the PDI image on countless Photoshop monitors along with desaturating the PDI image in Photoshop (Command+Shift+U) and checking for neutrality it is very useful for quickly evaluating a Photoshop monitor.

Also, just as valuable is printing the PDI target to see how well it prints (and how well it matches the monitor) it also can help confirm or troubleshoot a color-managed printing workflow (for the same reasons).

+++++++

While my simple PROOFING ANALOGY doesn't address the pitfalls of relying on a bad monitor to evaluate and adjust digital color, it does make two important facts about Photoshop and professional color-managed printing workflows:

1) The printer can PROOF (print) the source file faithfully regardless of how right or wrong the monitor is set up, and

2) The monitor can PROOF (display) the source file faithfully regardless of how right or wrong the printer is set up.

Getting a known good file (like the Adobe RGB Photodisc reference image) into Photoshop allows me to evaluate the monitor alongside the print to help me identify where the problem is occurring...

_

_derek_Kimball_Author

Known Participant

Both of your responses make a lot of sense. I guess it just comes down to trial and error, considering everyones environment will be different. Reading the other posts and your feedback here, has helped a bunch. Thanks

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