Serendipity Blackmagic 3.5.04 has been released. Highlights of this version include:
- Support for Canon ipf500/600/700 printers
- Calcheck patches can now be created in CMYK as well as Lab
- Linearisations can be reverted to a previous item from the history list
- Touch console is now resolution independent
- Adobe Illustrator CS3 separated postscript is now supported
- Faster Scitex Brisque polling
- Improved Vista 64 support
The release notes contain more information on what has been changed. For more information visit the Serendipity Blackmagic product page
Recently, I have been inundated with questions about achieving the best performance / colour accuracy with EIZO ColorEdge monitors and our software. After many experiments, here is the procedure I have come up.
1. First use the ColorNavigator software from EIZO to calibrate the monitor hardware. I use the following settings for both Windows and Mac OS X: Gamut: Native, White Point: D50, Gamma: 1.8, Black: minimum and Brightness: 100 cd/m2
2. After the EIZO application has finished and saved the calibration, I use our Monitorcalibrator application to create an ICC profile that I use as the monitor profile in our software only.
Using this procedure I have been able to get both the 24 and 30 inch monitors to pass all printing standards I have tried including ISO 12647-2, Fogra 39 and Web2proof.
Please post your questions as comments for the benefit of others.
Here is a screen shot showing my settings in ColorNavigator.
Serendipity Blackmagic and Megarip have always included a monitor calibration app to ensure colour accurate softproofing. The one step that was missing was verification of the state of the monitor calibration. Currently in development is a new app called Calcheck which addresses this issue. The concept is very simple. Users use the workbench to create a Calcheck chart from either an icc profile or by manually entering Lab values for patches that describe the process they are trying to proof. Generally one would pick a profile for their printing press and then the Calcheck generator would create a patch set which uniformly covers the target gamut. Below is a screen shot of the workbench app showing some patches I generated for ISO 12647-7. 
As you can see from the image above, each patch can have its own Δe tolerance which is used to decide whether a particular patch passes or fails. Patches can also be labeled as cyan, magenta, yellow, black or paper so that they can be identified as such in any generated report. By default, the generator sets the cyan, magenta, yellow, black and paper Δe tolerances to 3.0 and all other patches to 6.0. The maximum allowed average is automatically set to 3.0 and the maximum Δe is set to 6.0. You can even pick which Δe formula is used for determine tolerances. Currently supported formulas are Δe, CIE 94 and CIE 2000. Once the monitor has been calibrated, this chart can be use to check the calibration. I recently chose 3 monitors that we have here at our Sydney office and proceeded to check how well they proof the ISO 12647-7 printing process. ISO 12647-7 is a printing colourspace which makes it quite hard for monitors to achieve as there are some areas which are outside a monitor’s gamut. The 3 monitors chosen were, in alphabetical order, an Apple 30 inch display, an EIZO ColorEdge CG241W and a Sony SDM X73. The Sony is not really meant for proofing as it is just a simple 17 inch desktop display, however it was included so comparisons can be properly made. Results for ISO 12647-7
| Monitor |
Δe C |
Δe M |
Δe Y |
Δe K |
Δe Paper |
Δe Max |
Δe Avg |
Std dev |
Pass |
| Apple 30 inch |
23.28 |
3.31 |
4.92 |
1.02 |
0.52 |
23.28 |
4.52 |
5.31 |
No |
| EIZO ColorEdge CG241W |
2.19 |
3.05 |
2.27 |
1.30 |
1.17 |
3.10 |
1.60 |
0.79 |
Yes |
| Sony SDM X73 |
29.76 |
10.09 |
10.26 |
0.89 |
0.70 |
29.76 |
6.76 |
6.46 |
No |
Below are screenshots of the 3 monitors in the Calcheck app after having checked the monitor against the ISO 12647-7 patch set. Image below is the Calcheck results for the Apple 30 inch display. 
Image below is the Calcheck results for the EIZO ColorEdge CG241W 
Image below is the Calcheck results for the Sony SDM X73 17 inch LCD. 
As I mentioned earlier, ISO 12647-7 is quite touch to reproduce so for the sake of completeness I decided to generate some patches for the ISO newsprint standard and test the Apple and EIZO displays. Newsprint has a much smaller gamut so it should be easier to pass a Calcheck. Results for ISO newsprint
| Monitor |
Δe C |
Δe M |
Δe Y |
Δe K |
Δe Paper |
Δe Max |
Δe Avg |
Std dev |
Pass |
| Apple 30 inch |
3.46 |
1.58 |
3.55 |
0.88 |
0.37 |
3.73 |
1.71 |
0.98 |
Yes |
| EIZO ColorEdge CG241W |
0.76 |
3.20 |
0.85 |
1.08 |
0.61 |
3.20 |
1.27 |
0.78 |
Yes |
Below are screenshots of the 2 monitors in the Calcheck app after having checked the monitor against the ISO newsprint patch set. Image below is the Calcheck results for the Apple 30 inch display. 
Image below is the Calcheck results for the EIZO ColorEdge CG241W 
These tests are in no way conclusive as we only tested one of each monitor which is not a statistically significant sample. Once the feature is released we will be able to collect more data and provide more accurate results. The Calcheck feature will be included in version 3.5 of Serendipity Blackmagic and version 4.5 of Serendipity Megarip. Expect them to be available sometime towards the end of October 2007. Note: clicking on any of the images in this post will provide you with a higher resolution version of that image.
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