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Home >> Photography >> Digital Photography Monaco
EZ Color and Optix XR A
few years back there were a handful of companies specializing
in color management products and suites. X-Rite,
Today,
I’ve been fortunate to have been able to review GretagMacbeth and ColorVision suites in the past, leaving only X-Rite/Monaco as an unknown quantity. Thanks to their kind assistance, I was able to obtain some X-Rite/Monaco products for review and comparison to products used in the past. X-Rite is a US-based company listed for trading on the NASDAQ exchange. While photographers and graphic artists will know the company best for their monitor, printer, scanner, and camera calibration and profiling products, color goes far beyond photography. Color management is in use in such diverse fields as the automotive, dental, medical, and industrial sectors, to name a few. Color is also a very complex topic to understand when digging below the usual RGB surface with plenty of math and science behind the theories. While a basic understanding of color is certainly beneficial to photographers, what’s more important for us is consistency and reliability of color in our workflow. Cruising the Internet forums populated by new photographers will often dredge up the typical complaint of why someone’s print does not match what they see on the monitor. Or, does a new photographer really need to spend money on a dedicated colorimeter instead of just getting by on visual aids like Adobe Gamma. It amazes me that a new photographer may have spent a few thousand dollars to buy a decent D-SLR with lenses, as well as going all out for Adobe Photoshop CS2, only to waver on spending a little bit more on proper color management. Now, if you’re a regular reader of this website then I should just be preaching to the converted. You should all be aware that I’m big into having some form of color management, even if it’s at the very basic level of just calibrating and profiling the monitor. Do just that one step and you’ve got a fighting chance to attain the goal of WYSIWYG – what you see is what you get so far as what you see and edit on the monitor to what you end up with in the print. Better yet, if you’re doing your own printing, or are in a closed-loop environment where you can control all aspects of the image editing and printing stages then getting a good printer/paper profiling package is highly recommended. To that end X-Rite sent me two such packages to cover both aspects of color management and this first review is of their Optix XR colorimeter packaged with Monaco's EZ Color software. Cruising
through the ‘net forums again, but this time in checking out responses
to questions asked about which monitor calibration package to
go with, you see the three brands of ColorVision, GretagMacbeth,
and Monaco come up all the time. The responses are usually supportive
of the personal choice the responder made, but occasionally, you
find a response from a person that has used more than one monitor
calibration package and can actually offer more detailed commentary.
However, I’ve found that the
On the surface, this package is primarily a monitor calibration and profiling kit. There’s the familiar looking colorimeter that looks like a small computer mouse along with a little suction cup and counterweight accessories; this is the Optix XR.
The Optix XR has a foam ring on the underside that goes around the radius of the colorimeter to protect your LCD. Where the cord is attached is the top of the colorimeter and the sensor itself that reads all the measurements from the monitor is situated at the bottom half of the colorimeter. Reading the instructions (a handy thing to do) indicates that the captive USB cord should be looped through the counterweight and that this is all that you’d normally need for both CRT and LCD measurements. The suction cup is meant for use with CRTs that have hoods getting in the way of the counterweight. I found the counterweight to be somewhat awkward when using the Optix XR with my Sony E540 CRT monitor because the USB cord is somewhat short compared to the more generous length provided with the ColorVision Spyder2PRO colorimeter. I ended up using the suction cup to keep the Optix XR stable enough to measure the readings.
While the Optix XR is pretty straightforward and just like most other colorimeters in what it ultimately has to do, the software provided is a little bit more capable than other comparable packages. The Monaco EZ Color software is capable of profiling monitors, cameras, printers and scanners. Indeed, the EZ Color and Optix XR package even comes with an IT8 target for use in profiling scanners, which is pretty slick and handy, but I rarely use a flatbed scanner other than for documents and it may be sometime before I buy another good scanner to replace the Epson 1200 I gave away (I use an all-in-one Epson CX4800 for scanning). My use of the EZ Color and Optix XR was for calibrating and profiling my monitors, leaving the printer profiling process to the much more expensive Pulse ColorElite System. The EZ Color printer profiling process requires a scanner to scan printed color targets, but after experiencing what good, dedicated printer profiling suites can do, I’m not convinced that a scanner-based printer profiling system will be accurate enough to warrant further review. Using
After plugging in the Optix XR, Windows XP automatically detected it and the usual XP driver installation wizard popped up. After following the wizard to completion to install the drivers, I fired up Monaco EZ Color. Monaco EZ Color is a step-by-step wizard-like interface that guides you through the entire process. It’s quite simple and to be honest, all good monitor calibration and profiling packages follow through the same basic steps, just in their own slightly different way. However, there are some nice features with Monaco EZ Color.
First is the calibration for white point, which adjusts the RGB guns of the monitor to be equal, based on three bar graphs that provide a visual indicator of when you’ve hit the right setting. Equal in calibration doesn’t necessarily mean equal in RGB output and depending on how old and the quality of your CRT, you may find quite a large variation in RGB output. For
my Sony E540, the red gun outputs the most, typically in the high
80 percentile range, while the green output is somewhere in the
70 percent range, with blue way down in the 20percent outoput
range. There figures are consistent for both the
Afterwards, contrast and brightness are adjusted. The instructions indicate that if Monaco EZ Color has any difficulty with measuring brightness an “Examine Brightness Target” window will come up to provide a visual guide, but my monitor presented no difficulties and the monitor was measured properly from 0 to 100 percent. After measuring contrast and brightness, the Optix XR measures a series of color patches (35) before finally finishing by creating a new profile that you name, which will then be set as the default monitor profile and saved to the correct Windows folder. Every measurement taken by the Optix XR is followed by an audible beep if you have your speakers turned on. Measurement by the Optix XR are also quite fast and the time that it takes the Monaco software and OptiX XR to measure and process all the RGB and grey color patches is about how long it takes the ColorVision Spyder2PRO to measure just one color. Does speed make haste and will it compare favorably to the slower and more measured (no pun intended) pace of the ColorVision package? The screen shots that follow were taken from the LCD profiling process to give a you a flavour of how the Monaco EZ Color software flows. The CRT process is obviously a bit different and more involved with RGB calibration.
Compared to ColorVision Spyder2PRO
I
went through the ColorVision calibration and profiling process
to create a new profile for comparison. This had the potential
of being an invalid way to compare the profiles, because if the
monitor has been adjusted already to be ideal under Monaco EZ
Color, the monitor may be adjusted again via the ColorVision process
and thus negating the
Thankfully, I found that the Monaco EZ Color settings were also right for the ColorVision process. So much so that the RGB output readings were nearly identical when that process came up in the ColorVision procedure. There was only a very slight difference in actual whitepoint measurement, but the key target figures were identical for both. This tells me that both colorimeters are quite accurate and that the hardware capabilities of both packages are quite good, but software also plays a role too to create the final profile. After
creating new ColorVision profiles and moving the
In all honesty, I wasn’t expecting anything major between the two profiles, but there was in fact a clear difference between the two profiles when switching back and forth and the better looking profile was the one created with Monaco EZ Color and the Optix XR. The
The second baby has a very light and fair complexion and shows up the magenta cast in the ColorVision profile. The black girl's complexion really comes out richly with the Monaco profile and the fourth baby really helps to nail the differences between my CRT and LCD with the LCD being too washed out and losing all the subtle flesh tone that the CRT reveals, and more importantly, matching the print. However, visual comparison is not the final arbiter and I needed to print out the PDI test image through the Epson R2400 to make sure my eyes were telling me the truth. Ironically, I printed the PDI image on Epson Premium Glossy paper using a custom profile created by ColorVision’s PrintFIX PRO, a very good and very cost effective printer and paper profiling suite that I’ll be comparing to the X-Rite Pulse ColorElite System in due course. The
print comparison revealed that my eyes were not playing tricks
on me and that the
For
CRT profiling, the Monaco EZ Color and Optix XR is most deserving
of the high praise it consistently receives by its users. As seen
below using the Microsoft Color applet to compare the
The
LCD profiling was another matter though and I found the
The only setting that can be adjusted with an LCD is the backlight intensity with all other settings recommended to be left at factory defaults. This does make LCD profile comparison much easier and less fraught with potentially poor methodology, as with CRTs, because now you can compare what both profiling packages are doing using the exact same settings. What
I found is that the
Below is a comparison of the Monaco and ColorVision profile and we can see that the Monaco profile has a little bit more along the north/south axis, but the east/west axis is not as large as the ColorVision profile. I wouldn't put too much into this comparison though as the only real difference in quality I saw between the two profiles was in brightness. No color casts or other differences were seen.
I don’t have extensive experience with quality LCD monitors, although I used dual Dell LCDs at work and I use my Toshiba notebook extensively at home, but neither is likely to be considered very high-quality. Same goes for my older model 17-inch Samsung, which while quite sharp and very easy on the eyes after a long editing session, not good enough for critical color and editing work, as my Sony CRT is, which is why I use it as my secondary, palettes monitor where critical color is not necessary. Sooner
or later though, my Sony is going to reach an end to its useful
life for photographic editing. With both the
While I don’t doubt that there some current LCDs that are quite good for critical photo editing (the Apple Cinema Screens and Eizo’s are always highly touted) it is still true that high-quality LCDs still cost quite a bit more than a CRT of comparable color fidelity. It’s been noted that very highly regarded CRTs like the discontinued Lacie Electron Blue are snapped up on ebay whenever they come available and back in the earliest days of discontinuance, any retailer with new old stock could potentially witness a feeding frenzy of buying as word got around. Anyway,
I digress; I find myself in an interesting quandary about my own
monitor profiling and calibration. I much prefer the
Conclusion Given that my most critical work is done with the CRT, it’s a no brainer for me to arrange to purchase the review sample and continue to use it for my CRT profiling. Thus, highly recommended for CRT calibration and profiling, but qualified for LCD profiling, as my own LCD is not the last word in quality and the Monaco EZ Color with Optix XR may do better yet with a different LCD. May 28, 2006 - Color Management Shoot Out - ColorVision, GretagMacbeth, and X-Rite/Monaco products compared with my rankings. |
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Correspondence & About this website Copyright © 1998-2008 Edwin Leong |
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Using
the Optix XR and counterweight was an easier process with my Samsung
LCD because it's closer to my computer. Just as with the ColorVision
kit, I tilted the LCD monitor back slightly to allow gravity to
assist in giving the colorimeter a good seat for measurements,
but looking more closely at how the Optix sits, I could see that
tilting wasn’t required.
First
thing is to install the software, which is pretty basic. Next
thing is to plug in the Optix XR into a free USB port. The instruction
manual recommends a USB port direct to the computer instead of
through a hub, but if you need to use a USB hub, make sure that
it is powered. I used a free port direct to the computer.
Using
a neutral grey background on the Windows desktop indicated a very
subtle difference between the two profiles, but nothing I could
really grasp into useful information about what those differences
were. I used the PDI test image seen here to provide a more useful
visual indicator of what the differences were between the two
profiles.
