New Macs and HP monitors

[Prepper]

Hi, my company just switched from all PC (for 22 years!) to all Macs in our design, media and prepress (my) departments and with these came 30" HP monitors. We tried color calibrating the new monitors with our Spyder 3 Elite colorimeter but the resulting color doesn't match our old Eizos running on the PCs very well, not awful, but not close enough for "critical color" either. Anyway, I found a disc that came with the monitors and tried to install the drivers but the disc wouldn't work on the Mac so went to HP website and they only list drivers and ICM files for Windows OS and nothing for the Mac.

How should we go about this or is it even possible? The only front panel control on this monitor is brightness, supports no on-screen menu.

We have Mac OS Leopard running quad-core Xeon processors 3ghz, 8gig ram and the HP monitor is LP 3065c.

Any ideas or help appreciated,
Thanks,
Terry

[Shawn]

Hi Terry

First of all I would ignore the HP drivers disk. You won't need drivers on the Mac, and you can create better color profiles with your Spyder than the canned profiles they offer. I have a feeling that the issue has more to do with the monitor than the platform it's running on (Mac vs PC). I did a quick check on the HP LP 3065c and it looks like it's running on a reasonably good LCD panel (S-IPS) rather than some of the cheaper panels out there (TN) so it can display 8 bit color and probably has a reasonable color gamut.

The real problem is comparing a general purpose LCD display to the high end proofing Eizo. (You didn't mention if they were CRT or LCD I'm going to assume that they are CRTs). With the current technology, CRT based displays can display better color than LCD. Native LCD color gamut just isn't as good. This is slowly changing, but you end up having to pay a lot more for some of the wider gamut LCDs. Check out Eizo's website for some very good (but pricy) LCD options...

You'll find that you don't get any front panel controls on some LCDs. Since the signal is all digital this isn't as important as on analog monitors. The computer will take care of those settings in software when you make the monitor profile.

The best solution I can come up with would be to use the Eizo's on your color critical workstations (if you have the room and they are still in reasonably good shape). We mostly use Apple Cinema Displays for LCDs on our workstations here, but our main color retouching station is still on a CRT and our color specialist isn't going to switch anytime soon. The Mac Pro has two outputs and ships with a DVI to VGA converter so just I'd hook one up and see what that gives you for color with the Spyder. If you have the room for a dual monitor setup the operator can use the LCD for general stuff and the Eizo for color correction.

Good Luck
Shawn

[Prepper]

Thanks for the info Shawn.

The Eizos we have are 24" LCDs and have been very good for color, only problem we've had is mine is a little lighter on the left side than the right, need to check with them since its still under warranty. The HP is a good, if not great monitor, just want to make sure it can be profiled as well as the Eizos before someone asks me for my Eizo.

Anyway, I was really more concerned about the color management setup on the Mac as opposed to Windows, but it should be pretty straightforward, just profile with the Spyder and that's as good as it gets for this monitor? Its just a little off compared to the Eizo, however, the Eizo does have 10-bit hardware calibration built in.

Thanks again,
Terry Walker