calibrating a second monitor off a laptop

[annesophieheist]

I am just about the purchase a new monitor and an x-rite xtreme ( i own an epson 3800 and do lots of prints for wedding jobs) which so far ( please dont hang me) I have done on my mac book pro which was poorly calibrated with the spyder.
Since I dont have the money to put down for a tower from Mac as well I will run my monitor off my laptop. But I am not sure if my whole smart idea of getting a nice screen and calibrate and profile it even works if it is set up to be a second monitor from a laptop. I would keep the laptops monitor for my palettes.
Does any of you guys know if this would work properly with the combination of a mac laptop , ( let's say) a second calibrated and profiled screen and the x-rite xtreme ? If its not going to work I would wait to have enough money to purchase the tower at the same time.
thank you very much in advance for all the replies.
anne-sophie

[Mark D Segal]

I am just about the purchase a new monitor and an x-rite xtreme ( i own an epson 3800 and do lots of prints for wedding jobs) which so far ( please dont hang me) I have done on my mac book pro which was poorly calibrated with the spyder.
Since I dont have the money to put down for a tower from Mac as well I will run my monitor off my laptop. But I am not sure if my whole smart idea of getting a nice screen and calibrate and profile it even works if it is set up to be a second monitor from a laptop. I would keep the laptops monitor for my palettes.
Does any of you guys know if this would work properly with the combination of a mac laptop , ( let's say) a second calibrated and profiled screen and the x-rite xtreme ? If its not going to work I would wait to have enough money to purchase the tower at the same time.
thank you very much in advance for all the replies.
anne-sophie

I believe that as long as the video card on your Mac Book Pro supports calibrating and profiling two displays (I suspect is probably does, but I'm not sure because I don't use that laptop) what you propose to do should be workable - provided you have a calibration/profiling package which supports calibrating/profiling two displays. ColorEyes Display is one such package, but there are others. I don't know which version of Spyder you have, but if it is one of the earlier ones, a small investment in a better colorimeter would be worthwhile. ColorEyes Display, for example, can be bought as a package with an Optix DPT-94 and this combination works very well as long as your video card is supported. The suppliers' websitemay tell you whether your video card is supported (for example, www.integrated-color.com).

[Czornyj]

Anne mentioned something about X-Rite XTreme - package with i1pro spectro and i1match porfiling software. This software supports dual monitor calibration, and it should work with MBPro.

[annesophieheist]

Anne mentioned something about X-Rite XTreme - package with i1pro spectro and i1match porfiling software. This software supports dual monitor calibration, and it should work with MBPro.

thanks to both of you

[annesophieheist]

Anne mentioned something about X-Rite XTreme - package with i1pro spectro and i1match porfiling software. This software supports dual monitor calibration, and it should work with MBPro.

Dear Czornyi,


finally I have received my monitor and x-rite ( i decided to go for the NEC 2690 Wuxi2). I tried to calibrate and profile my monitor last night but saw that the endresult looked much more contrasty compared to the generic RGB profile. It made blacks also go very dark and loose a lot of their detail.
I talked to another friend who told me that when he tried to calibrate and profile his mac cinema display off his MBPro laptop he had similar results but when he did it from his minimac he got much better results.

Would you by any chance know if there is any way I can achieve better results?

best
Anne-Sophie

[Ben08]

Anne-Sophie, I use a Mac Book Pro and Apple 20" Cinema Display. Profiling works fine (Eye One Match, with Eye One Display colorimeter) and the Mac Book handles separate profiles for the Cinema and laptop displays simultaneously allowing me to set the correct profile for each display. Comparing to the generic profiles may be misleading. The generic Cinema Display profiles I have seen, for example,  look like they are 1.8 gamma (much less contrast, way more shadow detail than you can print) rather than the 2.2 gamma most often recommended. --Ben

[neil snape]

I've profiled off my MBP both ways, 1 with monitor mirroring on, and 2 with the second display set to the menu bar montior and then profile.

Monitor mirroring is the safest bet. i1Match does profile two separate monitors but sometimes the set up get's lost looking for when the monitor is plugged in and in what set up.
I use both i1 Match and ColorEyes to profile, both do multiple monitors.
The latest I did was for a travel trip with my HP Dreamworks monitor to edit for magazine. It was quite good, and can assure you it's doable.