A STAND-OUT AMONG CALIBRATION TOOLS

Color management and calibration are part and parcel of every editor’s arsenal of tools to assure the best output possible. Calibration can be a lengthy, time-consuming process, yet a necessary one for any professional. This can become a nightmare if you’re a graphics artist or video editor working in multiple color profiles at one time or multiple color profiles throughout the day. This challenge becomes amplified once you add in projectors, cameras, scanners, graphic tools, etc.

There are numerous calibration tools out there; I’ve used or tested many of them. However, there’s one on the market now, the i1 Display2 from X-Rite, which offers a very unique toolset. More importantly, it includes training on how to calibrate a variety of hardware devices and save the resulting profiles.

(Note: For those of you remembering the product as GretagMacbeth’s Eye-One Display 2, you’re right. GretagMacbeth, the product’s developer, merged last year with X-Rite and the product is now being billed as the “all new i1 Display2,” selling under the X-Rite name.)

Getting Started
Installing the i1 tools was simple. I put the disc in the drive, plugged in the USB connector to a port and it installed. The software required a restart of the PC system, but once it was up and running again, the software auto-launched and asked what I’d like to calibrate. I chose an LCD monitor to start with.

I was then offered two options to choose from: Easy and Advanced. I originally selected the Advanced for my first monitor. The software posed several questions, and then created a color profile based on a combination of measurements and answers provided by the user. It took a few minutes to do the final measurement, but it was well worth the wait. I was very surprised to find that the color profile my monitor had been using was several degrees (Kelvin) from what it claimed it was.

I then chose to calibrate the same monitor again after swapping out the color profiles and ran the “Easy” mode. This mode requires absolutely no input from the user, other than asking if the monitor is LCD, CRT or a laptop. Once I selected one of these three options, it was all automated from there. It took a few minutes longer than the Advanced mode took, but the color profiles worked out exactly the same, so the Advanced Mode would be used by a person with display requirements that might be slightly different than standard, or for the geek like me that prefers to experiment with settings.

During the installation process, I learned about a color profile I had previously been unaware of-Spectral Data. I’m very familiar with RGB and CMYK color profiles, but Spectral Data is an international profile that’s a baseline from which printer, projector, scanner, print professionals and others are working from. It offers a broader range of available colors.

I very much appreciate that the software is set up to remind me to calibrate either when I reboot, or when it’s been longer than a user-defined period of time since the last calibration.

For the video pro, this calibration system is useful as it’s fast, easy and accurate with a one-click requirement. It allows for the ambient light in a room to be taken into consideration, and part of the calibration process, which is a critical component of any color corrective process being undertaken.

The suite of tools also includes diagnostics and problem-solving tools. One minor irritation is that in order to understand most of the additional tools requires a visit to the X-Rite Web site (which, at this time, is still located at gretagmacbeth.com). I’m not sure why the company didn’t simply package these instructions on the i1’s install disc. And, this brings up another issue-the tool is called “Eye-One.” However, in my Start/Programs menu, it’s called “GretagMacBeth.” Given the number of applications I’ve installed, and that I wasn’t looking for the name of “GretagMacBeth,” I originally thought the install had failed.

The Flash tutorials are great, and well-produced. It’s a minor inconvenience that the only place to get them is from the company’s Web site.

Overall, this is one of the most interesting and desirable tools I’ve come across in a long time. It’s inexpensive, portable and exceptionally useful. Plus, you can easily order the product directly from the manufacturer online, or from one of its resellers, such as Safe Harbor Computers.