Perfect Colours for Creative Minds (3)

By Hermann Groeneveld / SilvergrainClassics

Factory Calibration and Continuous Recalibration Allow Permanent Colour Accuracy

The professional photographer’s demand for the finest colour and contrast nuances in his digitised images and films cannot be met with rudimentary monitor settings. Unlike software calibration, an ICC profile of a hardware-calibrated monitor only stores information about the properties or the set specifications of the monitor. In the first step, they enable the operating system and the image processing programmes to send the correct control commands to the graphics card in the first place. This enables the monitor to generate and display the desired colour from these colour values.

Perfect nuances and tonal value gradients are only achieved through elaborate factory calibration by EIZO. This applies to every single monitor that leaves the factory. This calibration ensures that colours and grey tones always correspond exactly to the correct brightness value of the set gamma curve, regardless of their intensity. An essential, regular recalibration fulfils the purpose of tracking the ageing of the monitor. If corrections are required, these are made directly in the colour engine of the monitor itself in a loss-free hardware calibration. This ensures that an image on an EIZO monitor will look exactly the same in five years’ time as it does today.

Measuring and Calibrating as an Integral Part of the Entire Creative Process

As early as 2010, EIZO once again scored with a technological first worldwide: while the colourimeter still had to be purchased separately for CS monitors, the monitors from the CG family have since been equipped with a built-in calibration sensor. This has made calibration even more user-friendly and faster. And if desired by the user, it can also be automated. Measuring and calibrating becomes part of the entire creative process without having to interrupt it. This particularly meets the need for daily fine-tuning to adapt to changing ambient light in the working environment. For this purpose, different calibration targets are created during process preparation, which can be switched between at lightning speed. The ColorEdge CG2700X is currently EIZO’s flagship in the 27-inch premium class. Also with 4K UHD resolution at 3840 x 2160 pixels. Its extremely short warm-up phase guarantees fast operational readiness with full colour stability after just two to three minutes. To protect against stray light, the monitor is equipped with a removable light protection panel. The monitor comes with numerous customisable profiles ex works. Including pre-installed gamma curves, which guarantee the correct display of HDR (High Dynamic Range) data. A special True Black filter ensures deep black values. This makes the CG2700X (as well as all other devices in the CG family) suitable for post-production for TV and cinema. The price is around 2,800 euros.

To be continued

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