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Submitted By: lightontheland

Location: Crossville, TN

Joined: Jun 2 2005

Posts:

Monitor Calibration

Posted: September 6, 2008 - 7:18am

I don't know if I'm seriously behind the curve on this, or if I've found something new, but:

I know the conventional wisdom: If you run two monitors on one graphics card, you can only calibrate one monitor. In fact, I've seen the same information on the Datacolor/Colorvision website. But wait, there's more......

I just added a second monitor to my digital darkroom, to improve my Photoshop workflow. Of course, I had to replace the graphics card to make this work. I chose a Diamond Stealth X1050 card (who dreams up these names?) with Radeon driver software. The card has two output connectors, one VGA and one DVI (requires a DVI to VGA adapter). After installation, I was surprised to find that my Windows Device Manager showed two separate drivers running, one for each monitor. I decided to try a test, and ran my usual Spyder2 Pro calibration on each monitor. There is now a different ICC profile loaded on the card for each monitor, and changes to one does not affect the other. Life is good!

This is not only a surprise but a relief. My expansion ports are maxed out and I have no room for a second graphics card.

So, is this really working, or am I delusional?

Submitted By: David B. Brooks

Joined: Apr 19 2011

Posts:

Re: Monitor Calibration

Posted: September 6, 2008 - 12:34pm

Bill,

Multiple monitor support was introduced with Windows 2000, and that was some time ago. That the capability has been increased and added to since is very likely considered how much the function is used in the financial business world alone.

You should be able to tell if both displays are affected by calibration and profiling at boot, as a calibrated display will just after boot up change subtly in appearance suddenly when the calibration executable file is launched as part of boot-up. If both displays show this change during the boot-up process both are being calibrated actively.

Also you can check that two different calibration executable files are in place by going to your Start Up Items folder and there should be two slightly different files that should be identified as having been made by DataColor Spyder.

Also in the Display Properties Advanced/Color Management there should be two display/monitors in the list box identifying each and their associated display profiles.

You can check that the correct profile is being applied to the correct display/monitor by temporarily deactivating one in the Start-Up Items folder and seeing when you re-boot if the calibration file that remains active is affecting the correct display/monitor by causing a change to the screen during the boot-up process.

BTW the calibration and profile file is NOT loaded on the card, the chips on a video card are ROM so you cannot really store a file on the card physically. When a display is calibrated there are two results with a Windows PC, a calibration executable file is loaded into Start Up Items and a profile file is saved in the System///Color folder - that's all.

Submitted By: lightontheland

Location: Crossville, TN

Joined: Jun 2 2005

Posts:

Re: Monitor Calibration

Posted: September 6, 2008 - 1:55pm

Thanks, David. Since I posted, I've noticed that each specific ICC profile loads simultaneously at startup. I'll check the other things you suggested later, but as far as I'm concerned it's confirmed.

Submitted By: David B. Brooks

Joined: Apr 19 2011

Posts:

Re: Monitor Calibration

Posted: September 6, 2008 - 3:28pm

Yes, with Windows from my experience it is worth checking and knowing, especially if the calibration files and profiles are
"associated" as they should be with their corresponding hardware. If they get crossed that would be worse than their not being calibrated and profiled.