Datacolor User to User Support Group.

Greetings, everyone. I'm new to the group, and fairly new to
colour management, so I'm hoping this isn't a FAQ, and that
the resident experts can help me.

I've had a GretagMacbeth i1Display2 for a while now. and it's
gone largely unused. The primary reason for this is that I've
struggled to get the software to do what I want (at least at
the time); I'm wondering whether I'd have more luck with a
Spyder.

I have a set-up with two monitors - one a high-resolution LCD
(T221) with a relatively limited gamut, and one a relatively cheap
and nasty (Iiyama) CRT with a better dynamic range. I'm using XP,
and (for lack of need to have upgraded) the original version of
Adobe CS - mostly Photoshop, with a bit of InDesign thrown in.
My output is currently an elderly Epson Photo printer, of a
vintage from the last millennium, and this may eventually get
an upgrade. I don't do anything commercial with any of this;
it's all for personal photo printing and the occasional club
magazine.

The first thing I should say is that I pretty much couldn't
care less about how the screen looks in non-colour managed
applications (if I want to watch video and care about the cinema
experience, I'll use my TV). All I care about is whether I can
get a document to look right on screen (compared with what the
software thinks the colours are), and getting printed output
in the right ball-park (so far achieved, poorly, solely through
Epson's default drivers).

Regarding the LCD, I would like to set it to an appropriate
brightness (the only control I have), and then produce a profile
for it. Where I fell down with the i1Photo was that the Gretag
software insisted on trying to calibrate the screen first - and
by "calibrate", they meant "mangle the graphics card LUTs". This
is perfectly sensible behaviour for a CRT, driven from 10-bit
LUTs on the graphics card, where sensibly-spaced samples are
useful. For a DVI connection with 8 bits per channel on the
screen and 8 bits in the display, anything other than a 1:1
mapping can do nothing but harm.

So, question number one: Can I use a Spyder to produce a
Photoshop-friendly profile without touching the graphics card
LUTs? Gretag described this as an "advanced feature" when I
last spoke to them, but it seems a logically obvious thing to
want to do (use a colour-managed application with an LCD? how
dare I...)

Secondly, as mentioned, I used two monitors, with different
gamuts. This leads me to two scenarios:

a) The file I'm processing is fully contained within the smaller
gamut of the LCD. In this case, it would be useful for the CRT
and the LCD to match (i.e. the CRT should, as much as possible
for in-channel mapping, be calibrated using the graphics card
LUTs - because I don't want to keep fiddling with it manually -
to match the LCD, and I should be able to use the profile from
the LCD). Or...

b) The file I'm processing needs the expanded gamut of the CRT,
and I should use the CRT's profile with it calibrated to use
as large a gamut as possible (which at least means that the
limits of the RGB LUTs should be at full range, no matter what
this says for the intervening values and the native white point).
It would be nice to be able to apply some profile which would
keep the LCD correct except for the clipped colours, but I
appreciate that XP's CMS doesn't support doing that, so under
these circumstances I'm going to have to accept that the LCD
won't be "right".

I'm assuming that I'd have to switch between the scenarios
manually - I'm not expecting a Photoshop plug-in to automate
the process!

Question two: any chance of this being easy/possible to set up?

Any help would be welcome. My photos have looked a bit off
for far too long.

Thanks in advance, and I hope my questions make a basic kind
of sense,

-- 
Fluppeteer