Calibration headache...

[tevo]

How would one calibrate a MacBook pro monitor?

 

[MLeeK]

I will. I am headed to bed now, but I'll get a screen shot and post. Get back to me when you can. I have been dealing with this for several days now, so its not going to kill me to wait a couple more!

 

[Josh66]

OK - There is a newer version than what I have installed of dispcalGUI out now, so I'm going to update that to the newest version now. Here is a screenshot of my screen (before updating) though. Hopefully yours looks similar:

The buttons at the bottom are greyed out because I didn't have a calibration device plugged in at the time.

How would one calibrate a MacBook pro monitor?

Same as anything else - get a calibration device, install the software that came with it (or something like dispcalGUI), then run it.

 

[Josh66]

WTF ... the new version doesn't measure the ambient light level...

OK, anyway...

I'm not going to calibrate right now (I was going to recalibrate and write a little step-by-step guide of what I was doing) because it's dark right now and I do most of my editing in the day.

But, from what I can remember, it's actually pretty easy anyway. For the most part, you can leave everything on the defaults. On the screenshot I posted, it says it's going to sample 48 color patches - but it does 16 (I think) iterations of that (to average out any variances), so it's actually going to take at least 768 samples. Yeah, it takes a while, lol.

Basically, you're going to want to put the Calibration Quality slider and the Profile Quality slider to the max. There are a lot of options on the Profile Type menu, and honestly, I don't really know what the difference is. I left if on the default. It's been working fine for me.
Now press the Calibrate & Profile button (bottom, center).

Next a little terminal window will pop up with a list of commands you can do. I think you want the last or second to last option (going from memory). There's two or three options that just check stuff, one that starts creating the profile, and one (the one you want) that checks everything then starts the profiling (it basically combines all of the options).

Now another window will pop up showing you where to put the calibration device on your monitor (you can drag this window anywhere you want - like a corner or something so you can work on other stuff while it's doing it's thing).
On that window, there should be a button to start the calibration. Start that, then find something to do for the next hour...

When that gets done, it will spend a few minutes turning all that data it collected into an ICC profile. (I think a little graph even comes up showing you the gamut that your monitor can display.)

Now there will be a box/window asking you what you want to do with this new ICC profile. Of course, you'll want to select the option that installs it system wide.

If you're really bored, you can create multiple profiles using different profile types and try to see what the difference is. However many profiles you create, you can pick which one to use with the little drop-down menu at the top.

 

[Josh66]

See, I recalibrate often.

I have never actually tried it, but there is an option to just update the calibration. I assume that is faster than the first full calibration.

Setting the sliders to medium will probably also cut a lot of time off the calibration, but I'm not sure how big of a hit the quality is actually going to take. It may or may not be significant ... I don't know.

 

[MLeeK]

Sorry... I had a full day and then took a couple of hours to go to the casino-and lose my money.

I am uploading my screen shots that I have questions on now... I'll be back!

 

[Josh66]

No rush - I'll be here till I'm too drunk to type. :lmao:

Don't worry, I'll be too drunk to type before I'm too drunk to think, so I can still help.

 

[MLeeK]

Ok... first one... I keep this on "L" because everything else looks jacked?

Second-Yeah, what to do?

Third-I assume goes along with whatever you chose in the second image?

AND... can anyone explain to me what all of that sh1t does?
Not that I NEED to know, but I like to know what the hell I am doing and why...

 

[Josh66]

1 - I never check any of those boxes... I assume it's asking which color space you want though. I left it blank and my prints match my monitor...

2 - I leave it on Single curve + Matrix.

3 - This is the test chart file - the file with the color patches that it's going to test (I think). Again, I leave that on the default.


In your screen shots # 1 & 2, it's set to sample 238 color patches, times how ever many iterations it's going to do. In screen shot #3 it's set to 19 color patches.


I would just run it with everything at the defaults (make it match my screen shot if it doesn't automatically pick the defaults for you). If that isn't good enough (from my experience, it will be) then play around with the other stuff.

 

[Josh66]

Did you ever get it to work?