Profiling dual monitors

General Color & Graphics Monitor Calibration & Soft Proofing
1

Is this forum open for business? I can still smell paint.

The GMB info accompanying the Eye-One Display 2 suggests that if you are running two monitors, you have to choose one to be your colour-critical monitor. Further clarification from GMB states that provided the video card supports two sets of output signals (I am running a Radeon 9000 Pro Mac, with OS 10.3.6) both monitors can be profiled independently, BUT they suggest that soft proofing in Photoshop will only work properly on the main monitor.

Like an increasing number of people I imagine, I was hoping to use an LCD for my main work, with an older CRT on the side for soft proofing. Is it true that Photoshop (CS) will only read the profile of the main monitor, and calculate soft proofs accordingly? Images on the (secondary) CRT appear to change in response to different proof setups in Photoshop, but it is difficult to be sure whether these are based on the correct profiles.

2

On the Mac, multiple monitors are supported all the way around, meaning:

  • the system recognizes them and allows you to assign profiles to each one
  • the system will load calibration curves from each profile into each graphics card on startup
  • Photoshop will ask the OS for which profile to use for each display AND will correctly use each profile when displaying any image on that display.

So, if you split a window between two screens, Photoshop will display the image correctly on each screen. very cool

regards,

Steve

3

Will this hold true on a PC running Windows XP? I am having trouble specifying 2 .ICM profiles - one for each monitor.

Thanks,
jeremy

4

There is still debate about this working and I don’t have a good answer yet. I have heard it is possible if you have two separate cards…

regards,

Steve