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.
As many of you already know, the Signature Group editor in Workbench can import a variety of imposition signatures. However, we have encountered some files which contain impositions that are not as accurate as the numeric precision which is used in the file. This inaccuracy varies and and can often result in imported signature pages not grouping into grids, or grouped pages that are unable to be paired.
To compensate for that, the ability to round numeric values has been added to the importing of signatures. The precision in this rounding varies depending on how you import your signatures.
Note: Blackmagic stores all dimensions and positions in inches. So rounding precision is in reference to values in inches.
Importing with Selective Import Off
When Selective Import is off, dimensions and positions in the signatures are rounded to 4 decimal places before and after an attempt to group pages into grids.
Importing with Selective Import On
When Selective Import is on, the Signature Import Filter dialog is presented to let you decide which signatures you would like to import, with the option to perform a number of operations on them when importing. The Inclusive check box you see here deals with the rounding precision when importing.
When Inclusive is on, values are rounded to 3 decimal places before and after grouping.
When Inclusive is off, no rounding is performed at all.
Rounding can work for or against us, and Inclusive is certainly no guarantee that the pages will group and pair. Excessive rounding can actually result in pages not grouping or grouped pages not pairing when, for example, the inherent inaccuracy of the file is magnified, rather than reduced, by the rounding.
If pages are not grouping or pairing when importing, try the different options outlined above. If nothing seems to help, here’s a check list to go through. First, I would set the display unit of the Serendipity Client to points to increase the precision displayed. Also bear in mind that the Signature Editor only displays values to 4 decimal places.
Page Grouping Check List
- For pages to be grouped in a row, they have to have the same y position.
- For pages to be grouped in a column, they have to have the same x position.
- For pages to be grouped at all, they have to have the same dimensions.
Page Pairing Check List
- For pages in a grid to be paired vertically, there must be an even number of rows.
- For pages in a grid to be paired horizontally, there must be an even number of columns.
- For pages in a grid to be paired, head directions of adjacent pages (pages to be paired) have to be the same.
- For pages in a grid to be paired, every second row gap (pair vertically) or column gap (pair horizontally) must have the same dimension. In strict pairing (by using the Pair Pages button instead of the Pair Vertically or Pair Horizontally button) there must be no gap between pages you want to pair.
We will be looking into more intelligent methods for inaccuracy compensation for future versions of the Serendipity Client, but for now at least you know what goes on behind the scene.
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.