Product Reviews

The EZcolor with Eye-One Display 2 is the latest display calibration and profiling device from Gretag Macbeth. It is relatively simple, consisting of a colorimeter device for measuring your screen's performance, an IT8 reflective target, and software that ties it all together. A white cover fitted to the Eye-One device when you first unpack it is used for measuring ambient light, and a counterbalance keeps it in position on flat-panel displays. This modest collection has everything you need to create profiles for your workflow - from your camera and scanner to your screen and printer.

The EZcolor software creates ICC profiles that describe the deviations or deficiencies of the measured device. With that information, your ColorSync-based workflow knows exactly how to handle colour to compensate for those weaknesses. It doesn't change the image data itself, but for displays it adjusts the data that's drawn on the screen.

Monaco ColorWorks is also included. This checks and applies device profiles to images, performs basic lightness, contrast, saturation and colour balance adjustments and performs on-screen soft-proofing or printed proofs. Use

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this to ensure everything is ready for accurate output.

Making a display profile with EZcolor and the Eye-One Display 2 device uses the standard process of measuring colour swatches automatically and producing a profile from the results. This is as easy with laptop displays as with desktop CRT or LCD screens. You're still at the mercies of viewing angles and the effect that has on colour, but you have a well-profiled start.

It is worth remembering that when you profile a digital camera you're profiling the entire lighting setup. This is fine for studio work, but it won't be of much use in different lighting conditions. Scanner profiling is pretty straightforward: scan the supplied IT8 reflective target and point the EZcolor application at the file. It knows what values the scan should contain, and builds a profile by comparing that with the actual scanned result.

Building a printer profile requires having a profiled scanner, as you scan the printed chart to check the printer's capabilities. You can profile the scanner as you scan in the printer test by scanning both your printer's output and the supplied reflective IT8 target. You can edit the printer profiles from this process afterwards using EZcolor in case you want to fine-tune the output.

This isn't the cheapest monitor profiling device we've seen but it's certainly not the most expensive, and it does more than just profile displays.

Knowing and compensating for any slight weaknesses in a device's colour handling is the key to a successful colour-managed workflow - and that's the key to successful design and production for print and the web. The EZcolor with Eye-One Display 2 isn't the only option out there, but it is one that you can rely on.