Digital BW, The Print

Gary,

Are you using your printing profiles in your custom soft proof and do you change them for each printer, ink and paper combination?

Best,
Martin

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "photog0946" <photog0946@...> wrote:
>
> HELLO GROUP,
>    I've just been reading a couple of the posts concerning calibration hardware and that spurred me on to start this thread on a subject that has been a thorn in my side for the past few years. Let me first fill in a bit of information. I've been using a couple of LaCie displays for about 4 years. The main display has been showing rather obvious signs of old age for a few months and would occasionally collapse to a thin bright horizontal line in the middle of the screen.  Obviously time for a new display. After a lot of research and questions, both on this forum and others, I decided to go with the NEC LCD2690. This display came highly recommended by people such as John Paul Caponigro, Jeff Schewe, Mac Holbert, Jay Maisel etc, so it seemed that I couldn't go wrong with that decision. More $$$ than I had anticipated, but time to pay the piper and get on with it. 
> 
>    Now I come to the crux of this query. I have been calibrating my displays with ColorEyes Display Pro and the Spyder2 Pro hardware. With the NEC LCD2690 I decided to step up to the Spyder3 Pro, due to the larger sensor and better capabilities for LCD Displays. I find the ColorEyes Software to be very comprehensive and full featured, and the documentation is excellent. Every calibration is fully validated and verified and I sometimes send the information to the ColorEyes site for the techs to check for my own satisfaction as well. However, no matter how well the calibration is, I have NEVER experienced a match between the display and the output. I'm using 2 SP7600 printers with the Atkinson profiles, so I really don't believe that's the source of the problem.  I also use "soft proofing" extensively.  With the NEC Display my calibration targets are as follows: White Point=D65, Luminance=120cd/m2, Gamma=L* and Black Point=Absolute. I am considering using Black Point=Relative/Minimum. After calibrating and verifying I have been using a little app for the Mac called Gamma Control to build a profile of sorts that exists outside of the OS and doesn't interfere at all with the Display LUT. Gamma Control allows me to tweak the display in a manner that approximates the output much more closely than the calibrated display. I usually build two of these "profiles", one for MK and one for PK printing. Now of course I do realize that a properly calibrated display is essential for many reasons, but print matching has never been one of them in my experience. I don't believe it should be necessary to invoke such apps as Gamma Control in order to pull a calibrated display closer to the output. 
> 
>    I'm sure some on this forum will be willing to throw their hat into the ring on this subject with a great deal of expertise, so PLEASE do so. Your suggestions and comments will be greatly appreciated by me and perhaps others as well. If you have any further questions concerning my calibration procedures, please forward them.
> 
> Thank you all in advance.
> Gary
>