Positioning the Eye-One 2 colorimeter onto the display doesn't require any additional supports or add-ons. Depending upon the type of display that was chosen earlier Eye-One Match the remaining steps in profiling the display will differ slightly. The screenshot shown below shows  a typical step when calibrating a CRT type display

 

 

When you click the "Start" button Eye-One Match first goes into a routine whereby it establishes the actual position of the colorimeter. The UI then steps through a series of colour changes, which are measured by the Eye-One 2 device and compared to a reference file.

 

 

A "Quality Indicator" dialog is displayed on the screen indicating whether the contrast, brightness and colour balance is correctly. The user must adjust the display settings so that the quality indicator for each is centred. With previous versions of Eye-One Match the little triangle was prone to jumping around a lot, but version 3.6 seems to have eliminated the worst excesses of this.

 

 

The ability to carry out a quick Before and After check is a welcome addition to Eye-One Match, as is the ability to track the drift of your display as it ages.

 

 

On completion the user is invited to assign a name to the newly created display profile. I tend to retain the date component of the auto generated name and then insert a description of my display (e.g. Apple Cinema Display_6-05-06). You also have the option of having the software remind you that the display needs calibrated again after predefined periods.

Conclusion

I mentioned at the outset of this review that good calibration hardware and software is a prerequisite for consistent colour handling across a wide range of applications and hardware systems. Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements users who haven't yet made the switch to a hardware based solution are already finding that Adobe Gamma isn't really appropriate for calibrating LCD type displays. In fact, Adobe doesn't even include Adobe Gamma with the Mac version of either application and will almost certainly stop shipping it with the Windows version at some point in the near future (hint hint). Also, with the rapid decline in the availability of CRT type monitors, the use of LCD type displays will accelerate. Therefore, I think PC users should take cognisance of these facts and prepare themselves for the day that they too have to find an alternative to Adobe Gamma. Anyway, enough of the lecture and onto my conclusions.

When the Eye-One Display 2 was first introduced I was generally very happy with the improvements made by GMB. Nevertheless, there were still some issues with the Eye-One Match software that needed to addressed before it equalled the best of the rest. This latest version of Eye-One Match (i.e. 3.6) certainly takes the package a lot closer to the best, and with it GMB have managed to enhance the basic feature set without compromising on quality or increasing the cost. Both greyscale neutrality and smoothness of gradations have been greatly improved when using the new linear gamma option, although this is feature is probably only suitable for better quality LCDs and high end CRT type monitors. For the more usual  choice of gamma 2.2 GMB have improved upon the smoothing algorithms, and the earlier tendency to block shadows has also been substantially eliminated. I still believe that it would be useful to be able to define an actual black level. The ability to profile laptops was also welcome addition to version 3.3, but didn't really receive the acclaim that it deserved. Likewise, "One Push Button Monitor Calibration" should have proved very useful to many users, but didn't appear to receive much coverage in any of the more widely read web sites.

Eye-One Display 2 is Mac and PC compatible; i.e. OS X (including Intel based Macs), Windows  2000, XP and XP64 Eye-One Display 2 currently costs about $249. If you have deeper pockets and a need to profile scanners, digital cameras and/or printers then take a look at upgrading to the Eye-One Pro spectrophotometer and the full Eye-One Match 3 suite.

For more details on Eye-One Display 2, Eye-One Match 3.6 software and the $200 discount voucher (serial number of your device required) you should visit the dedicated web site at http://www.i1color.com