Benq PH460, PL460, PH550 User Manual

Color Management User Manual

Disclaimer

BenQ Corporation makes no representations or warranties, either expressed or implied, with respect to the contents of this document. BenQ Corporation reserves the right to revise this publication and to make changes from time to time in the contents thereof without obligation to notify any person of such revision or changes.

Copyright

Copyright 2013 BenQ Corporation. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, transcribed, stored in a retrieval system or translated into any language or computer language, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, magnetic, optical, chemical, manual or otherwise, without the prior written permission of BenQ Corporation.

Table of Contents 3

Table of Contents

Disclaimer ....................................................................2

Introduction .................................................................4

Key features ............................................................................................4

System requirements ............................................................................4

Calibration overview ...................................................5

Calibration workflow............................................................................5

Calibration target...................................................................................5

Preparations.................................................................7

Installing Color Management...............................................................7

Connecting the color meter ...............................................................7

Connecting display(s) to the computer............................................7

Setting monitor ID................................................................................. 8

Warming-up the display(s)...................................................................8

Using the Color Management ....................................9

Performing calibration - a quick guide ..............................................9

Overview of components and functions..................16

Menu bar................................................................................................16

File menu.....................................................................................16

Tools menu.................................................................................16

Settings menu.............................................................................17

About menu................................................................................17

Control panel........................................................................................18

Display Wall tab ........................................................................18

Advance tab................................................................................19

Status panel............................................................................................22

Troubleshooting.........................................................23

Error message ............................................................24

Introduction4

Introduction

The uniformity in image representation is a vital element in creating a video wall that consists of multiple displays. However, due to factors like component variation and aging, it is inevitable for each display to produce images with slight differences in color and luminance even when related settings are identical among all displays.

The Color Management is designed to minimize such differences and enhance the image uniformity of all displays in a video wall application. It works by first measuring and comparing the color characteristics of each display, and then calibrating all displays with a common and optimal setting.

With the Color Management, you can also adjust color settings of each display easily on a host computer, or backup and restore calibration data quickly.

Key features

The Color Management provides the following functions and features:

• Supported calibration targets:

- Color temperature (6500K/9300K/11000K)

- Gamma (1.8/2.0/2.2/2.4)

- Brightness (backlight luminance)

Refer to page 5 for more information about the calibration targets.

• Supported display tiling matrix: 1x1~10x10

• Supported display parameter: 10 bits LUT (Look Up Table) for R/G/B

• Supported internal test pattern: 256 R/G/B/W levels

• Accuracy: Delta_x, Delta_y < 0.5% with (1) DVI source for 30%~80% white level and (2) I1D3 measurement

• Colorimeter that displays the color meter measurement values

• Local backup and restore functions that makes it easy to save and restore LUT and R/G/ B gain settings

• Manual adjustment functions (brightness, contrast, R/G/B gain and offset) that allow fine-tuning of individual display

System requirements

The following items are required to use the Color Management.

• A color meter (supported model: X-Rite i1 Display Pro)

• A host computer (PC) that meets the following minimum hardware and software requirements:

CPU Pentium 1GHz Free memory 1 GB Hard disk space 400 MB Operating system Windows XP (32-bit/64-bit), Windows Server 2003,

Windows Vista (32-bit/64-bit) or Windows 7 (32-bit/64-bit)

RS-232 port An available RS-232 port HDMI/DVI/VGA port An available HDMI, DVI or VGA output port

• HDMI, DVI or VGA cable and RS-232 cable

The firmware version of the PH and PL series displays must be V1.06 or higher to work with the Color Management.

Calibration overview 5

Calibration overview

Calibration workflow

The diagram below lists the basic workflow for performing calibration using the Color Management for the first time. If this is not the first time you use Color Management to calibrate the displays, you can start from step 2 directly.

Step 1: Install Color Management on a host PC (see page 7)

Step 2: Connect the color meter to the PC (see page 7)

Step 3: Connect the PC to the display(s) via RS-232 connection (see page 7)

Step 4: Set monitor ID on each display (see page 8)

Step 5: Open the Color Management and perform calibration (see page 9)

Calibration target

The Color Management calibrates displays by measuring, adjusting and synchronizing the following settings:

Color temperature

There are many different shades that are considered to be "white" for various purposes. One of the common methods of representing the white color is known as the "color temperature". A white color with a low color temperature appears to be reddish white, while a white color with a high color temperature appears to have more blue in it.

The Color Management allows you to set a different color temperature as calibration target. However, if the selected color temperature is very different from the native one, a large correction must be applied and the maximum brightness will be affected.

Gamma

The gamma of a display is the relationship between the video input signal and the light output (“brightness”). The display is a nonlinear device. Doubling the level of the video input signal to the display does not double the light output.

A gamma value of 1 would result in a perfectly linear display (doubling the signal level doubles the light output). You can use the Color Management to choose a different gamma target for all displays.

Calibration overview6

Brightness

The Color Management provides options for brightness adjustment with which you can change the display’s screen brightness level and synchronize it among multiple displays. According to the number of display(s) and your Brightness setting when the calibration project starts, the calibration method differs:

• If a single display is being calibrated, the display’s brightness will be calibrated to your Brightness setting.

The tolerance of the target brightness is 15 nits.

• If multiple displays are being calibrated and all connected to the computer:

- When Brightness is set to Auto, the Color Management will synchronize the brightness level of all displays with that of the darkest display. The principle is illustrated as follows:

Before brightness calibration After brightness calibration

440

435

445

Brightest display: brightness level = 450 Darkest display: brightness level = 430

430

450

430

435

440

450

430

However, if any of the displays’ actual brightness level (as measured by the color meter) fails to meet the darkest brightness level (as read from the internal memories of all displays), the Color Management will re-synchronize the brightness level of all displays to the actual darkest brightness level.

- When Brightness is set to other settings than Auto, the Color Management will adjust the brightness level of all displays to the target brightness setting. If any display fails to reach the target brightness due to various factors like hardware limitations and component deterioration, a warning message will appear.

• If multiple displays are being calibrated but some of them are disconnected from the computer, a warning message will appear. In this case, brightness synchronization will not be performed by the Color Management.

Preparations 7

Preparations

The following operations must be performed before you can use the Color Management to calibrate your display(s).

Installing Color Management

Ensure that the computer meets the minimum system requirements set forth on page 4.

1. Locate the Setup.exe file and double-click it to begin installation.

2. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation.

To run Color Management in Windows 7, the User Access Control (UAC) must be temporarily disabled. To disable UAC:

1. From the Start menu, select Control Panel > User Accounts and Family Safety > User Account.

2. Click on the User Account Control settings link, and then drag the slider bar to the lowest value (towards Never Notify).

3. Click OK and restart the computer to make the change effective.

Connecting the color meter

Follow the instructions provided in the documentations of the color meter to connect it to the computer, and complete its hardware and software setup if necessary.

Connecting display(s) to the computer

HDMI/DVI/VGA input and RS-232C serial connections between the display and computer are required to transmit control signals. The diagram below shows the general connection schemes. For details on the location of ports and connectors, please refer to the documentations of the computer and display.

Single-display connection

Multiple-display connection

HDMI, DVI or VGA cable

RS-232 cable

HDMI, DVI or VGA cable

RS-232 cable

OUT

RS-232

cable

OUT

RS-232

cable

Preparations8

Setting monitor ID

For the Color Management to calibrate multiple displays, each display must be assigned an unique monitor ID. Otherwise the display(s) will not be identified correctly.

To assign monitor ID on each display, open the OSD menu of the display and select Settings > Set Monitor ID.

Be sure to assign a unique monitor ID for each display.

Warming-up the display(s)

For a precise calibration result, the power-on time of the display(s) to be calibrated must be longer than 60 minutes before calibration.

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