There is no doubt in our mind that proper color management is key to better prints from your digital files. For good color management you need profiles for all your devices you use:

• Camera Profiles (this is often covered by today's raw converters)
• Monitor Profiles
• Printer Profiles (see also our profiling service)

Because your monitor is the device that you use to judge and correct your images there is no way to get predictable prints without a good monitor calibration. Please don't make the mistake and think that the Adobe Gamma tool is good enough for this purpose.

We reviewed last year Eye-One Match by GretagMacbeth and found it very good. But the monitor only solution of Eye-One Match costed over $600 and this was too expensive for the broad market (especially as the Spyder were available in the $300 range).

Now GretagMacbeth targets this market with the brand new Eye-One Display at $250.

In about 5 minutes the software is installed from the CD. Also register the software and get an updated version (if needed) from www.i1color.com. Once the software is installed you can plug in the Eye-One Display device.

Note: GretagMacbeth bought recently the company Sequel that produces similar devices for Monaco (now X-Rite) and the Sony Artisan Monitor (our reference).

Select White point and Gamma (6500K and 2.2 for PC)

You then place the Eye-One Display on the monitor (CRT with the built-in suction cups and for LCDs with a counter weight) and the software measures the monitor.

Finally you can save the profile and it is registered as a system profile:

We profiled an Iiyama Vision Master 450 CRT and our Sony notebook NV170. The CRT profile showed good neutrals.

The Sony notebook had a very slight reddish cast. We had this experience with Sony LCDs before and would never use use them for critical color work. They are fine for first previews on the road.

We think with Eye-One Display at $250 there is no excuse anymore not to profile your monitor. If you buy Eye-One Display today you can even get a $200 discount towards the new Eye-One Photo (about $1500) that sports the full Eye-One spectrophotometer to profile also your RGB printers.

Get your monitor profiled, now!