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What's up with Eizo ColorNavigator 7?

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
September 28, 2019
7 replies
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As a long time user of Colornavigator 6, which I always thought was a truly brilliant piece of software, I just built a new machine at work (I'm an art museum photographer) and decided this was a good time to upgrade to version 7. I have a CG246/CX240 pair at work, and a CG2730 at home. Both on Win 10 pro systems.

I had it installed for precisely two days before I gave up, uninstalled it and reinstalled 6. Colornavigator 7 is easily the most unintuitive if not counter-intuitive calibrator I have ever used. What were they thinking? I had to RTFM not once, but three times before I discovered that it was, in fact, still possible to create your own calibration targets. You'd be forgiven for concluding it's no longer possible, so deeply is it buried inside nonsensical, ill-labeled submenus. This used to be right up front - as it should be, it's a core function and the reason you're using a calibrator in the first place.

I only had the CG246 hooked up for this. I managed to make one target and ran the profiling successfully for that. This went into the CAL2 slot. Why 2? Why not 1? And why, for god's sake, are there only three? I need four or five, for different offset processes on coated/uncoated paper, glossy/matte, web output, in-house inkjet and so on.

Anyway, I then tried to make a second target. No way. CAL1 and CAL3 were now greyed out and inaccessible. One custom target was allowed, that was it. Only the long list of pretty useless "standard" targets were now available, standard meaning you can't edit them.

What am I missing here? This is supposed to be the world's most sophisticated calibration software, for some of the finest displays on the market. I can't believe they have dumbed it down to this extent. Any CN7 users out there who can tell me where I went wrong?

Correct answer johnrellis

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I had to upgrade to Colornavigator 7 to upgrade to Mac OS 10.15 (Colornavigator 6 isn't 64-bit). I too found CN 7 mystifying and the documentation impenetrable, but then I found this tutorial:

https://imagescience.com.au/knowledge/how-to-calibrate-an-eizo-coloredge-monitor-using-colornavigator

Once I worked through the tutorial (avoiding my normal temptation to say, yeah yeah I get this, and skim too quickly), it all made sense. The CN 7 developers clearly aren't the world's best UI designers, but I'm no longer mystified, and I was able to create 5 calibration targets and have them show up in the menu.

The key for me was understanding what it meant by "mode" -- each "mode" is one of ten named slots in the on-screen menu and in the drop-down of the menu bar:

You can edit any existing mode (slot) and change its assigned calibration target and name. Note that out of the box, modes CAL1 and CAL3 were disabled -- you have to right-click each and do Enable, then you can change that mode. (A disabled mode won't appear in the drop-down menu or the on-screen menu.)

Here's what the main screen looked like after defining 5 calibration targets and corresponding modes:

The other thing that stumped me was how to get validation measurements of the calibration of your target. When I upgraded to CN 7, it imported my existing target, and I could easily run a calibration, but it didn't display any measurements. Turns out the validation mesurements are only done for "advanced" targets (which appear in the UI as ADV). So simply by editing a target and making it advanced, then after calibration, I was presented with an option to validate, just as in CN 6.

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D Fosse

Author

Community Expert

Thank you John, you may well have made my life a lot simpler with this post 🙂 Knowing it's possible is a great help. I assume I have to update at some point.

The key is very likely what you wrote here: "avoiding my normal temptation to say, yeah yeah I get this, and skim too quickly"

🙂

S

SRPcashie

Inspiring

Are there instructions somewhere 'for dummies' to calibrate using CN7 on a CS2740 Monitor??? I hook a Calibrite Display Pro HL up to it... I'd appreciate any help..

johnrellis

Legend

Did you see this tutorial, linked above?

https://imagescience.com.au/knowledge/how-to-calibrate-an-eizo-coloredge-monitor-using-colornavigator

It's five years old...

johnrellisCorrect answer

Legend

[This post contains embedded images that don't appear in email. View the post in your Web browser to see the images.]

I had to upgrade to Colornavigator 7 to upgrade to Mac OS 10.15 (Colornavigator 6 isn't 64-bit). I too found CN 7 mystifying and the documentation impenetrable, but then I found this tutorial:

https://imagescience.com.au/knowledge/how-to-calibrate-an-eizo-coloredge-monitor-using-colornavigator

Once I worked through the tutorial (avoiding my normal temptation to say, yeah yeah I get this, and skim too quickly), it all made sense. The CN 7 developers clearly aren't the world's best UI designers, but I'm no longer mystified, and I was able to create 5 calibration targets and have them show up in the menu.

The key for me was understanding what it meant by "mode" -- each "mode" is one of ten named slots in the on-screen menu and in the drop-down of the menu bar:

You can edit any existing mode (slot) and change its assigned calibration target and name. Note that out of the box, modes CAL1 and CAL3 were disabled -- you have to right-click each and do Enable, then you can change that mode. (A disabled mode won't appear in the drop-down menu or the on-screen menu.)

Here's what the main screen looked like after defining 5 calibration targets and corresponding modes:

The other thing that stumped me was how to get validation measurements of the calibration of your target. When I upgraded to CN 7, it imported my existing target, and I could easily run a calibration, but it didn't display any measurements. Turns out the validation mesurements are only done for "advanced" targets (which appear in the UI as ADV). So simply by editing a target and making it advanced, then after calibration, I was presented with an option to validate, just as in CN 6.

[Use the blue reply button under the first post to ensure replies sort properly.]

D Fosse

Author

Community Expert

OK, thanks for checking.

At the moment I'm entirely happy using ColorNavigator 6. But if that stops working for some reason in the future, it's good to know there are alternatives to CN7.

NB, colourmanagement

Community Expert

Hi DFosse, yes basICColor display does allow access to the internal LUT, so providing "hardware calibration"

Not just brightness? Can I set the black point to 0.6 in BasICColor and have it executed in monitor LUT? Sorry, it's not that I don't believe you, I just want to make sure. If it does that, I'll certainly keep BasICColor in mind for the future.

AFAIK yes, the Eizo SDK allows basICColor full access to the LUT, you can certainly set the "hardware" black point (we'd need to ask the programmers about that being part of the hardware LUT) - I prefer Black luminance = "Min Neutral" (which allows black "colour" to match the targetted white point). But, yes, you can set a luminance level for black if that’s your preferred approach

I can send you the manual if you let me have an email address or email via my site https://www.colourmanagement.net/contact/

extract: " Hardware calibrateable LCD monitors work with signal processing of 10 or more bits per channel (e.g. 10 bits = 1024 steps).

If one channel should be reduced to 50% there will be enough remaining data to describe the 256 steps of the color signal sent to the monitor. This means that there is differentiation between all the colors, they do not get clogged up.

This alone does not make a monitor hardware calibrate- able. The monitor needs to be able to communicate with the calibration software. Besides the white point (color temperature) and luminance, some hardware calibrateable monitors allow for controlling gradation curves so that no correction needs to be done in 8 bits on the video card (e.g. the NEC SpectraView series)."

So I imagine all that aplies to Eizo in the same way as it does to NEC.

The Eizo models I'm using now are a CG246 at work (using the integrated sensor), with a CX240 as secondary unit. This is exactly the same panel as the CG246, but with fewer extra features at somewhat reduced price. Both are about five years old by now.

CG 246, yes, hardware calibration is supported

At home I use a CG2730. It does have an integrated calibration sensor, but for this I prefer to use an i1 Display Pro.

CG 2730, yes, hardware calibration is supported

basICColor display 6 is well into beta and wil be released soon I hope

thanks HIH,

neil barstow, colourmanagement

D Fosse

Author

Community Expert

"yes it does"

Not just brightness? Can I set the black point to 0.6 in BasICColor and have it executed in monitor LUT? Sorry, it's not that I don't believe you, I just want to make sure. If it does that, I'll certainly keep BasICColor in mind for the future.

"what Eizo is it?"

The Eizo models I'm using now are a CG246 at work (using the integrated sensor), with a CX240 as secondary unit. This is exactly the same panel as the CG246, but with fewer extra features at somewhat reduced price. Both are about five years old by now.

At home I use a CG2730. It does have an integrated calibration sensor, but for this I prefer to use an i1 Display Pro.

D Fosse

Author

Community Expert

Thanks for listening, I'm mostly venting 🙂 But I still hope for someone to come along and tell me I'm wrong. I really hope I'm wrong on this.

I did use BasICColor for a while with an NEC unit, some years ago. It's good software, to be sure. But does BasICColor access the internal LUT with Eizos, and for all adjustments? That's the crucial point. ColorNavigator isn't just a calibrator - it's a complete control panel for all aspects of the monitor's behavior. It just happens to write a profile at the end.

Luckily CN6 still works flawlessly under Win10, but for how long? I dread the day I have to upgrade. What bothers me is the way they now bend over backwards to emphasize how "simple" it all is. Simple is the new buzzword. They seem terrified at the possibility they might scare someone away. But it seems they have made it so simple that it becomes useless for the core Eizo customer who actually wants return on investment. If I wanted simple, I'd get a Dell.

Here's the start screen in CN6. How much "simpler" can it get? All the targets listed right there, and "create a new target" right underneath. Do that, and it comes up on the list with the others. That's what I want.

NB, colourmanagement

Community Expert

Hi Dfosse, "I did use BasICColor for a while with an NEC unit, some years ago. It's good software, to be sure. But does BasICColor access the internal LUT with Eizos, and for all adjustments?" yes it does, what Eizo is it? I'll check.

NB, colourmanagement

Community Expert

basICColor display 5 (14 day demo:

MAC: http://mylicense.biz/getProduct.asp?proId=180&downloadKey=w8hz-pe6q-2n2s WIN: http://mylicense.biz/getProduct.asp?proId=181&downloadKey=uxr7-3m2p-bzx3

NB, colourmanagement

Community Expert

DFosse,

I am not liking CN7 either. Sadly Victor, my close tech contact at Eizo has moved on before answering a bunch of questions I sent about how to get it to do the things I wanted.

I hope you get a handle on it. Its good that you were able to revert to V6.

TBH I've always much prefrerered basICColor display software on Eizo's displays its just easier and IMO gives a superior calibration. But you don't get the switchable calibrations you seem to want.

There is a free demo if you'd like to see it. I can provide a link.

Good luck

thanks

neil barstow, colourmanagement

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