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Matching Two Monitors using Spyder2 and a single, dual port NVIDIA adapter

Matching Two Monitors using Spyder2 and a single, dual port NVIDIA adapter

2007-05-17 by bbass408

There have been many posts on the web about not being able to use the 
Microsoft Color Control Applet (WinColor) to assign the separate 
profiles created with the Spyder2 to individual monitors if you only 
have one graphics card.  At least with an NVIDIA card, this is a 
somewhat solvable problem.  If you use the "Dual View" mode in the 
nView settings in the NVDIA control panel, then both monitors on the 
single card will show up in WinColor.  
[This will not work with "Horizontal Span" or "Vertical Span" modes.]

It's worthwhile to read this excellent article first:
http://www.northlight-
images.co.uk/article_pages/dual_monitor_calibration.html

To assign the profiles using WinColor, "Install" the profiles for 
both monitors under the "Profiles" tab.
Click the "Devices" tab, select one monitor at a time.
For each monitor, "Add" the profile for that monitor, select it and 
click "Set As Default".

To automatically load the profiles at startup:
[Exceprted from the article on www.northlight-images.co.uk]
Create a shortcut to WinColor.exe and put it in the Startup folder of 
your start menu.  In the properties dialog for that shortcut, make 
sure you add the "/L" (autoload) argument to the "Target" property 
like this:
Target: "C:\Program Files\Pro Imaging Power Toys\Microsoft Color 
Control Panel Applet for Windows XP\WinColor.exe" /L

You can actually do this with only the Spyder2Express by running 
nView in "Clone" mode during the calibrations.  In this mode, the 
ColorVision app will show up on both montors.  Put the puck on the 
monitor you want to calibrate and go through the calibration wizard.  
Before calibrating the second monitor (which will overwrite the 
Spyder2Express.icm profile file) change the internal name of the 
profile using WinColor following instructions in the article on the 
northlight-images site referenced above.

This will get the monitors close to matching, but probably not 
perfect.  Other posts on this site might explain how to make that 
better and Spyder2Pro probably has features to facilitate that.

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