Damien's Resources

On a lot of screens, those sliders default to 100, and are hidden in another submenu. But you won’t have any trouble finding them.

So, go ahead and adjust your screen’s settings as guided by the arrows.

Every screen has its idiosyncracies, which you’ll need to figure out for yourself. Here are a few tips:

• Usually start by adjusting the colour which is the furthest from its target.
• If your screen’s sliders are at their maximum settings by default, obviously the only way is down. So if one of the arrows is pointing upwards, don’t scratch your head in despair. Just move the other two colours downwards, and eventually the other one will come upwards to meet them.
• Take the time to "massage" the sliders. If, for example, two of the yellow bars are telling you to come downwards, don’t just concentrate on one while the other one goes even higher. Move one a little, then the other a little, and so on, until both have reached their goal.
• Sometimes you’ll have one yellow bar at its goal, then while you’re moving another one, the first one will go out of line again. Don’t worry, just keep massaging. You’ll get them all there eventually.
• Green is the boss. It provides the most control over the other two colours. So, if green is on one side of the goal line (eg high) while red and blue are on the other side of the goal line (eg low), you might happily find that adjusting the green also adjusts the other two quite nicely.
• On some screens, Blue is a feeble passenger. If you try to adjust your blue, and those lines don’t move at all, leave it on its default setting and concentrate on the other two. I don’t know the reason for this, but it’s very common, especially on cheaper screens.
• In most cases, one of your screen’s sliders should remain at its default setting. If you have to adjust all three, you’ve done something wrong. Put them all back to the default settings, and try again. (In fact, on good screens, two of them might remain at default, and only one require adjustment.)
• Important: When chasing the targets, it shouldn’t be necessary to move the sliders further than about ten percent of each other. If you have to move them wildly to get a result, I strongly recommend buying a new screen. For example, R100/G97/B91 would be acceptable; but R100/G86/B63 would be a serious cause for concern.

At the end of all that, hopefully you’ll end up with three green ticks:

Press Next to continue.

The brightness adjustment step

Now it comes to the brightness step. You already know how this works, so adjust as necessary to hit the target:

NOTE: It’s rare, but if you can’t achieve a low enough luminance, you’ll need to press "Previous" to return to the White Point adjustment, and lower each of the Red, Green and Blue sliders by about twenty percent, then tweak them to hit the target again, THEN continue to this Brightness step again, and see if you can get low enough. If not, go back, drop them another twenty percent, and so on.

Press Next to continue.

The colour readings

For a few minutes, the device will read a range of colours. Don’t forget to wriggle your mouse every minute or so, just to be safe:

Once the i1 has taken all its measurements it will return to the Instructions Page, at which point you can remove the device from the screen and turn its cover back into place, then press Next …

… and Next again:

Part 5: Save the profile

Name it

Name the profile by its targets if you wish …

… and set the reminder:

Create and save profile

Hit the button to save the profile:

Part 6: Lights up

Turn your lights back on, or open the blinds, or whatever.

Part 7: Evaluate the profile

Now you can see your results:

In the above screenshot, you can see that my achieved white point and luminance values were slightly below their targets, but easily acceptable.

Then you can check your 2D graph:

The LG screen I calibrated for this demonstration is a cheapie, so the lines are a bit wayward. I hope yours will be a bit straighter and closer.

Special note

If you’re having some trouble with your calibration, and you plan to post a question in the forum to seek my help, I encourage you to take screen captures of the two results screens I’ve just shown you above, because I might ask to see them.

Part 8: The comparison

Now that the calibration is finished, it’s time to check the results, by comparing some prints. If you get an acceptable match, then your work is done. If not, read on.

Part 9: Troubleshooting

Brightness

If you find that your screen is brighter than your prints, then run the calibration process again, with a lower White Luminance target. For example, if you calibrated to 100 the first time, and you think it’s a little too bright, calibrate to 90 next time. Of course, if the difference is strong, then you’d choose 80 instead.

Conversely, if your screen is darker than your prints, then recalibrate to a higher luminance target. This is pretty rare, though.

Note: If you find that you need a target lower than 80, or higher than 120, I urge you to make a frank assessment of the light in which you work, and decide if it’s truly suitable for imaging.

Colour: Too warm or too cool

The most common problem with calibration is along the warm/cool axis. Luckily, this is the easier problem to fix.

First, be brutally honest with yourself – is your room lighting ok? The MOST common cause of calibration issues is not the screen or the calibrator, it’s the light in your room. A lot of light bulbs in a lot of homes/offices are too yellow.

If the room light is not the problem, start the calibration again, and when you get to this part …

… choose a different target. If your screen is too warm, try D75. If your screen is too cool, try D55.

If you want even more precise control, choose "Daylight Temperature" then adjust the slider to your exact desired setting.

Keep trying different settings, and see which works best. Be patient, this could take a while.

Colour: Too pink or too green

This problem is less common, and it’s darn fiddly to overcome. For some reason, all the standard calibration settings only concentrate on the warm/cool axis. When you examine the presets, you’ll see they all follow a straight line between warm and cool:

To take control over a green or pink problem with your screen, you have to manually choose specific target co-ordinates.

You probably haven’t paid much attention before now, but each calibration target has its own X and Y co-ordinates:

Write down the co-ordinates of the White Point preset that has (so far) got you the closest to a satisfactory print match. For me, it’s D65, so I’ll jot those down:

Then choose "xy…" from the menu:

And you’ll see it gives you precise control over the co-ordinates:

It’s time for you to tweak the numbers (then recalibrate to check the results).

WARNING: I’ve found that a little goes a long way. Don’t make big adjustments, or your calibration will be outrageous!!! Generally 0.005 or 0.01 at a time is enough.

In my case, I needed my screen to be a little pinker, so I lowered the Y value and raised the X value slightly.

Whatever values you choose to try, make sure you write them down!

Go ahead and run the whole calibration process again with your new targets. Then compare to prints and see how you went. It’s very likely that you’ll need to do this a few times before you get it right. When you’re finally happy, make sure you write down your X and Y values somewhere permanent! You’ll need them again next month.

How did it go?

I’m crossing my fingers for you. I hope that all of the above tweaking will get you a satisfactory result. But if not … well, it really might be time to cough up for a better screen. You’ll find some info here.

Still no good? Contact X-Rite

They’re the experts, after all. Give them a call and see if they have any wisdom.

Part 10: Regular recalibration

After one month has passed, you’ll get the reminder to recalibrate.

When you launch the software, it will check for updates, and notify you if there’s a newer version of the software available.

Then, go ahead and run the calibration process as normal, from Step 2. I assure you that subsequent recalibrations will be faster and easier than the first time.

If you have a question about this article, please feel free to post it in Ask Damien.