Calibrate and Profile vs Profile Only

General Color & Graphics Monitor Calibration & Soft Proofing
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I have the Monaco Optix 2.0.3. When I begin my monitor profiling process, the first screen after the Welcome to MonacoOPTIX… screen, there is a choice to Calibrate and Profile, or Profile Only. I couldnt fine anything in the manual that answered my question. What is the difference between Calibrate and Profile, and Profile Only?

Tonight I used the “Profile Only” for the first time, and many steps were eliminated. When should one use Calibrate and Profile, and when should one use Profile Only and why?

I must say I am using an old monitor that Monaco says it can not calibrate black points, and I must calibrate manually. Im thinking of replacing this monitor with a Lacie, but this monitor still looks very good to me, and with the exception of some prints I made yesterday, prints from my Epson 2200 look very close to what I see on my monitor. I printed a couple of portraits yesterday, and skin tones were excellent on the monitor, but yellow in print. Not good at all. I re-calibrated the monitor tonight, and compared the same prints again, but the monitor is still the same, so probably not a monitor problem, but I still wonder about my Calibrate and Profile, or Profile Only question.

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At 8:05 PM -0800 1/3/05, wingspar wrote:

I have the Monaco Optix 2.0.3. When I begin my monitor profiling process, the first screen after the Welcome to MonacoOPTIX… screen, there is a choice to Calibrate and Profile, or Profile Only. I couldnt fine anything in the manual that answered my question. What is the difference between Calibrate and Profile, and Profile Only?

This is a good question and one that comes up fairly frequently.

Calibration is where the instrument and software work to bring your display system (composed of the monitor AND the display) into the “specs” that you specify. So when you tell the software “white point: D65” and “gamma: 2.2” then it will help you adjust the monitor and then fine-tune using the graphics card to get the monitor into this behavior.

Then, once all the calibration is complete, it will build a profile for the monitor and save it on your hard drive. The calibration curves from your graphics card are loaded into the profile so they can be pulled out later when you restart your system and bring your monitor back to this “calibrated” state.

So, when the software skips the calibration step and simply rebuilds the profile it skips this very important step. Frankly I don’t know why you would want to skip calibration and build a profile except in the specific case where the display system was calibrated using some other tool. I could see where you would want to only re-calibrate and continue using an existing profile but profiles take so little effort to build once all the calibration measurements have been taken that it might as well build a new one while it is at it…

make sense?

I’ve written two articles regarding profiling and screen to print matching in our ColorNews newsletter: Issues 1 and 2. You can read them here for more information:

http://www.chromix.com/colornews/

I must say I am using an old monitor that Monaco says it can not calibrate black points, and I must calibrate manually. Im thinking of replacing this monitor with a Lacie, but this monitor still looks very good to me, and with the exception of some prints I made yesterday, prints from my Epson 2200 look very close to what I see on my monitor. I printed a couple of portraits yesterday, and skin tones were excellent on the monitor, but yellow in print. Not good at all. I re-calibrated the monitor tonight, and compared the same prints again, but the monitor is still the same, so probably not a monitor problem, but I still wonder about my Calibrate and Profile, or Profile Only question.

Take a good look at the white point of your display vs the white of your paper in your lighting. Read Issue 2 of ColorNews about screen to print matching. It might just be the white of your lighting and can be solved by either changing your lighting or the white point to which you calibrate your display.

Regards,

Steve

o Steve Upton CHROMiX www.chromix.com
o (hueman) 866.CHROMiX

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Thanks for the reply. Good info. I’ll have to digest. On another note, I never got the email notification of your reply to this post. I just happened to think about looking in.

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At 8:53 PM -0800 1/4/05, wingspar wrote:

Thanks for the reply. Good info. I’ll have to digest. On another note, I never got the email notification of your reply to this post. I just happened to think about looking in.

I looked at the list of subscribed people for the Monitor Forum and you are not on it…

So, sign into the ColorForums site and click “email subscriptions” at the top of the page and you should ba able to join the forum subscription.

Regards,

Steve

o Steve Upton CHROMiX www.chromix.com
o (hueman) 866.CHROMiX

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I just did that, but I checked that option under User Profile when I first signed up. Normally, that is all that is necessary. I’ll see if this works.