Can individual monitors be calibrated on Win XP Pro ?

[Ken Lee]

I have a Windows XP Pro machine, whose single graphics card has 2 heads. This allows me to run 2 monitors at the same time. In my case, the monitors are of different ages, and are from different manufacturers - so they look different with regards to color balance, contrast, etc. That aside, XP supports them seamlessly.

My monitor calibration tool (Gretag Macbeth Eye-One, a few years old, but with the latest drivers), doesn't seem to allow me to profile each monitor independently. Whatever profile I create, is applied to both monitors.

<This differs from my Mac laptop, which supports separate profiles for its own monitor plus an optional attached monitor>

Question: Is there a way for me to calibrate each monitor separately ? If I were to purchase a second graphics card, would the OS (or the 4-year-old motherboard) support it ? Would a different calibration tool be the answer ? What is the limiting factor ? Does Vista support this properly ?

[Marko]

In a word: No.

The limiting factor is, well, Windows.

I don't know about Vista, but none of the previous versions of Windows supports separate monitor profiles, therefore a different calibration tool would be of no help.

I will refrain from suggesting (or even asking) the obvious. ;)

[tim atherton]

there is a way to do this. When I was working at the university here our tech support whiz managed to do it...

Had to download some extra stuff from microsoft etc

try a google search for variations on

"windows xp gretag macbeth dual monitors"

[tim atherton]

also this

http://www.xrite.com/product_overview.aspx?ID=685&Action=support&SupportID=3507

[Ken Lee]

I will give this a try. The Microsoft page seems encouraging.

[pherold]

Yes,
As the Xrite link above leads you to the Microsoft Color Control Panel Applet. This is a handy little free application that helps you do a lot of things with ICC profiles. You can use it to point specific profiles to specific monitors on your system, as long as you have graphics cards capable of storing changes to their look-up tables (LUTS).

Here's a direct link to it:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1e33dca0-7721-43ca-9174-7f8d429fbb9e

-Pat Herold
CHROMiX

[Ken Lee]

I gave it a try, and although I was able to install everything, and configure everything, it appears to me that only one profile is being used, on both monitors.

Since every graphics card has its own drivers and control panel, some additional tweaking may be necessary.

At the risk of sounding disrespectful, this reinforces my appreciation for Apple's "end-to-end" model, which enforces a certain level of hardware compliance. The time you save by not having to hack, is worth the money you spend to get it right the first time. Since one of their core target audiences has always been Graphics professionals, this level of color management is not just an after-thought.

Speaking of Chromix (http://www2.chromix.com/index.cxsa), they are top-shelf. They have made me the best profiles I've ever used ! :)