Sony Vaio VPCZ1 display profile calibration tweaking

In some threads it was already discussed that the Vaio VPCZ1 screen is great but not perfect.
In some situations the blue seems to be more neon blue or "glowing" or even it looks a bit purple.

Well here are some tips that help to improve the display. Some of the tips were already mentioned.

- adjust Clear Type in Control Panel > Display > Adjust Clear Type text
look very close at the text to see if there are any color shadows etc. , but don't look too close too long

- check the settings of the video card in Control Panel > NVIDIA Control and Intel Graphics and Media
I would recommend to set it that other applications control the settings, and in case of the Intel I would uncheck override Applications setting at the Enhancement settings

- calibrate your display with tools like Spyder 3 or i1Display. Before you begin calibrating make sure "Use Windows display calibration" is unchecked in Color Management and no profile is active for the display, and also reboot your notebook before you begin.

- If you don't want to spend the money for those tools I have attached a collection of profiles I created with my i1Display2 but I have to say that every display is different (more or less) even at the same model

Sony-Vaio-VPCZ12-1600x900-ICC-Profiles_2.zip > ICC profiles for VPCZ1 1600x900 display includes NVIDIA brightness 100%, 76%, 52% and 40%; Intel 100%, 64%, 52% and 28%.

Has someone Profiles for the 1920x1080 display?

I know that the the notebook comes with a profile but that has been created a long time ago and is very different from what your see with calibration tools.

Here is how you install the ICC profiles:
- unzip the files in my attachment
- copy the icc files to this folder on your computer: C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color
- go to Control Panel > Color Management > Advanced, click on change System Defaults > Advanced > check Use Windows display calibration, click Close
- In Color Management > Devices select Display, check use my settings for this device, click on Add, select the profiles you want to add (the one you put in the folder above) and click OK
- select the profile you want to use as Default, click close
You have to repeat these steps at the other video card (change mode and do steps again).

i1Display2 calibration summary:
NVIDIA video card (64% brightness):


Intel video card (64% brightness):


Brightness is in 12% steps per bar, 8 bars are 100%, 7bars 88%, 5bars 64% and so on.

 

If it's not too much work for you, can you please give us each video card profile with every brightness settings. I personally work at a relatively dark environment, so my brightness settings vary from 0 bar to 4 bar (the bar when you press fn+f5 or fn+f6. However, I still found your icc profile very useful. It has already improved my display even in 0 bar brightness.

Thank you very much.

 

There was an issue when I calibrated with the Intel video card. I uploaded a new package with the proper profiles and more settings. All the profiles are with the latest video driver (190.24 from Sony), not sure how much difference the driver can make. Not every brightness settings is different, 1 step usually does not make much difference.

Here is the 190.24 video driver: http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu-download.pl?mdl=VPCZ133GX&upd_id=6053&os_id=47

 

Thanks for taking your time to issue these color profiles for the community! May I suggest adding a short instruction file in the rar for distribution? It's just a copy-and-paste job from the OP but it may save some time for someone who got this file and didn't pay attention to the post Or didn't know about it, i.e. got it through a third party

 

You're welcome. I added a readme file.

 

Thanks a lot for the color profile. It really helps.

 

Internet Explorer 8 and older do not use ICC profiles. On my 24" IPS monitor I can see that really extreme all colors are oversaturated. Firefox 3.x can be configured to use ICC profile with a free Cclor management add-on.
The Windows internal Windows Photo Viewer does use the current/default ICC profile but not when you do slideshow.
Also some games use the default ICC profile and some don't.
Civilization IV seems to use it, Company of Heroes in window mode uses it but not in full screen mode.
IrfanView can also be configured to use an ICC profile.

 

For people using Firefox... Firefox has built-in color management, in order to activate it type 'about:config' at the address bar and then look for gfx.color_management.mode key and double click on it. Set the corresponding value to 1. That should do it. Please note that this would be useful for wide gamut displays only (displays that are capable of 96% plus of Adobe RGB color-space), so SONY FHD display only.