articles/Digital/colourMunkidisplay-page8
by Art Suwansang Published 01/06/2012
Overall the experience represents the worst nightmare scenario of all - we made something near perfect then jiggered it up (by re-setting) and then the software started acting up and we cannot recover the situation - pah! For the record, after resetting the errors went out to 30 Lab ΔE units on the single time we managed to make the i1 Display work correctly. It is interesting that the allowable maximum in the X-Rite software provides for errors up to 50 Lab ΔE, that might be OK for a PowerPoint sales presentation but does not sound like a photographer's limit to us!
When things had settled down we had two profiles, a laptop screen profile using i1 Display with a very small error and a working projector display from the GretagMacbeth (which we could not audit but was very good visually). The two were also very similar to each other.
On both the laptop screen and the projected image it was possible to differentiate down to 20 RGB points (in the shadows) and up to 252 RGB points (in the highlights), the latter, in particular, is always a bone of contention with projected images. As it stands though, the I1 Display is not fit for purpose on projectors, Windows 7 and our Dell laptop - frustratingly we have no idea if this is specific to this combination of kit or even due to a corrupt Windows' driver, for example. Rant ends!
The Gamut Measurements
As well as generating a figure for the accuracy of reproduction from a projector we can also measure the gamut volumes and shapes. The shape of the gamut shows projectors as weak in the cyan and red parts of the spectrum but strong on yellows and magentas. The gamut boundaries are shown in black for a Mitsubishi projector, blue for a Canon LCoS and pink for the Epson 1810. This weakness in reds is something that all critical users of projectors will have noticed.
OK, who blabbed?
Somebody let the cat out and blabbed to Microsoft that McNamee was about to bad-mouth them! The revenge was swift and terrible but waited until just before his starting a whole-day seminar before trashing bunch of library files and rendering the laptop inoperative. This does not seem to be related to the issues with projector profiling but merely part of Microsoft's great plan to convert as many people as possible to the Mac before they (Mac, have you heard the rumour?) decide to discontinue making desk machines.
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