Monaco EZ Colour useful?

[Ari]

I received a CD with my v750 of the Monaco EZ Colour calibration software.
A week earlier, I calibrated my monitor (basic Dell) with a friend's Lacie BlueEye.
My question is twofold:
First, is this software good at calibrating scanner, printer, etc?
Or is this another trick to make me think my various components will magically start talking to each other, and finally behave?
And:
Should I leave my monitor calibrated as is, with the LaCie software, and proceed with the other calibrations, or should I use Monaco for all calibrations, including the monitor?

Thanks in advance.

[tgtaylor]

My feeling is that the scanner, monitor, and printer should all be on the same page. Using two different products to calibrate your system may not balance with one another: The monitor may be on the LaCie page and the scanner and printer on the Monaco page.

Monaco is a dated product (it was absorbed a few years back by X-rite) but it works provided that you correctly profile your system. The software alone version has a monitor profiling application but it really shines when you use the optional Optix colormeter that was available. To profile the scanner and printer with Monaco you need the Monaco reflective and transparency IT8's that shipped with it.

Thomas

[Ivan J. Eberle]

With the IT8, you are calibrating both the scanner and a specific printer. It worked well for me to create better profiles than early ones that shipped with an Epson R1800 printer-- better even than subsequent canned Epson profiles.

[Ari]

My feeling is that the scanner, monitor, and printer should all be on the same page. Using two different products to calibrate your system may not balance with one another: The monitor may be on the LaCie page and the scanner and printer on the Monaco page.

Monaco is a dated product (it was absorbed a few years back by X-rite) but it works provided that you correctly profile your system. The software alone version has a monitor profiling application but it really shines when you use the optional Optix colormeter that was available. To profile the scanner and printer with Monaco you need the Monaco reflective and transparency IT8's that shipped with it.

Thomas


With the IT8, you are calibrating both the scanner and a specific printer. It worked well for me to create better profiles than early ones that shipped with an Epson R1800 printer-- better even than subsequent canned Epson profiles.

Thanks, Thomas and Ivan; I do have the IT8s, but I don't have the Optix colormeter.

[pherold]

I would recommend against using this for printer profiles. When you think about it, if you use the scanner to measure a profiling target, you'll be making a printer profile that is limited by the scanner itself. Also, even if you get the colors in the profile somewhat accurate, most people find that the shadows block up, and you don't get much detail in the shadows, compared to normal printer profiles.

[SW Rick]

The complete package (with Optix XR Pro Colorimeter) for sale in the Classifieds, I bought from Chromix :)

I thought it did a good job- too late schmart?

[pherold]

Oh, the Optix device (DTP94) is an excellent device. It's still being made, years after X-Rite officially discontinued it, because it is so good - and 3rd party software makers still demand it. Internal temperature compensation, noise reduction circuitry to measure blacks very accurately - it's a very good instrument, does a great job on normal, sRGB-type displays. It is not designed for these newer wide-gamut AdobeRGB-type displays, so it's questionable there. The Monaco EZ color does fine for monitor profiling and scanner profiling. I just wouldn't expect too much from the printer-profiling-via-scanner module.

[D. Bryant]

I just wouldn't expect too much from the printer-profiling-via-scanner module.

FWIW, I've made some pretty decent printer profiles with Monaco EZ Color. Try and see what you think after you calibrate your monitor. You have nothing to loose.

[tgtaylor]

Here's a print that I just made from a "printer-profiling -via -scanner module. Print matches the monitor view and actual transparency almost perfectly.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7044/6827227376_bb26488f95_z.jpg

I'm sure glad that I bought all this stuff back then!

Thomas

[IanG]

I would recommend against using this for printer profiles. When you think about it, if you use the scanner to measure a profiling target, you'll be making a printer profile that is limited by the scanner itself. Also, even if you get the colors in the profile somewhat accurate, most people find that the shadows block up, and you don't get much detail in the shadows, compared to normal printer profiles.

What,even if the scanner's already profiled to the Monaco IT-8 targets ?

Ian

[pherold]

If you want to work within the scanner's working gamut then that's okay. It's just useful to know that if you have your images in AdobeRGB working space, a typical scanner profile will constrain your colors to the scanner gamut, and you will lose some ability to reproduce the AdobeRGB colors in all their glory. It's obviously even worse if you work in ProPhotoRGB. If you're "scanner-centric" and never use the scanner-based printer profile to print saturated reds and greens from a digital camera, then you might very well get good results.

Here's something that Bruce Fraser said years ago:
But a scanner isn't a colorimeter, let alone a spectrophotometer. Most scanners have filter sets that are really turned to photographic dyes. That's what they were designed to scan. And the more different what you're scanning is from photographic dyes, the likelier it is that the scanner is going to see something quite a bit different than you do. Scanner metamerism is a big issue, where the scanner sees a different color from the human eye.

This reminds me of a color management myth that Steve Upton wrote awhile ago. There are Input centric people, output centric, and display-centric people. I supposed there are also scanner-centric people. It all depends on what you're wanting to do and what you're comfortable with.

http://www.colorwiki.com/wiki/Color_Management_Myths_26-28#Myth_27:_Why_would_anyone_ever_want_to_choose_a_working_space_that_is_larger_than_you_can_print.3F