Calibrating Eizo ColorEdge Monitors
Eizo screens offer extensive calibration options, and we provide these notes as a guide to achieving a good calibration with an Eizo screen for general photographic editing. These notes are by no means exhaustive, and should only be considered a starting point for good results.
The chief difference between an Eizo Flexscan line monitor and an Eizo ColorEdge monitor is in how you calibrate the monitors.
While both lines of monitor have hardware controls for white point, gamma and brightness that use the inbuilt hardware to make adjustments with much higher quality than typical monitors, it is only with the ColorEdge monitors that you can calibrate directly with the LUT in the back of the monitor.
If you're interested, you can read more about the different types of monitor calibration.
Calibrating an Eizo ColorEdge Monitor
Before starting please make sure you have plugged in the USB cable that came with your monitor!
The goal is to simulate paper ...
These notes are about getting your Eizo set up to be a good proofing environment for photographic editing and prints. It is not a guide to getting the 'prettiest' or most colourful response out of your screen. If you also do video work, or simply watch movies on your Eizo, you may well want to create multiple set ups for your screen.
Using ColorNavigator
To calibrate an Eizo CE or CG monitor with ColorNavigator is very easy. If you have an Eye One display or Spyder calibrator, note that you do not need to use the included Eye One Match or Spyder software at all - ColorNavigator will do a direct hardware calibration. If you have another type of calibrator, you should first check if it is compatible with ColorNavigator.
First, if on a PC, you should check your startup folder to make sure no other LUT loaders / calibration utilities are running (eg Adobe Gamma or the Logo Calibration Loader). If they are, remove these from the startup folder and reboot your PX.
Next, make sure you have connected the monitor via the supplied USB cable, and that you are using a DVI connection, not an analogue VGA connection (no point running a monitor this good with a 15 year old connection standard!). It's well worth replacing your video card if you do not have a DVI output on your current card. Even a basic $50 video card with DVI from any computer store will be more than sufficient for Photoshop usage.
Now, install Color Navigator. Perhaps check www.eizo.com.au first to make sure you have the latest version.
Next, select your monitor calibration device when it prompts you.
You should have now reached the intial set up screen - set it up as below:
Hit next to continue, and now you need to define the settings you will use in your calibration. Here we have used 120cd/m2 for the brightness, 6500 Kelvin for the whitepoint, and 2.2 for the gamma - which are the standard settings most appropriate for photographic use:
Hit next to continue, and you will be taken to this screen:
Attach the calibrator as per the instructions, and hit proceed to continue to the calibration process. The screen will go black and a variety of colour patches and brightness targets will be shown on the screen. ColorNavigator will automatically control the monitor functions for you, so you can just sit back and relax. When the process has finished (after about 5 minutes), you will get a results screen:
You're monitor is now calibrated, you can go forth and edit your images with the confidence of highly accurate colour!
Of course ColorNavigator can do many other things, such as emulation of other monitors, and calibration validation but you'll need to explore the manual and the software to discover those adventures!