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I just got myself a spyder3 pro and successfully calibrated my laptop and the mrs laptop. I then went ahead and tried to calibrate my two monitor setup on my desktop. The two monitors are different in size and brand, I've calibrated both under the same lighting conditions but the results are different for each one. Am I asking for too much? Do both monitors need to be the same to get identical colour?

Did you set a target based on one monitor and use it for the next, or did you calibrate them independently?
You really should use the former for all your monitors even if they are on a different computer.

That said, I find there is a difference between the monitors in my setup, but it is only slight. I put it down to the fact that one has a wider gamut than the other, but maybe we are looking at a deficiency in the Spyder system. After all there must be a reason why it is cheaper than a lot of other systems out there.

Mr Darcy wrote:Did you set a target based on one monitor and use it for the next, or did you calibrate them independently?

Is there such an option?
It just asks which monitor I want to calibrate, I pick monitor 1, it does its thing, when it finishes it gives me the option to calibrate another, I pick monitor 2 and does exactly the same thing.

See the Studio Match option here:

Thanks Greg, but that seems to be a feature of the Elite version, mine is the pro.

I found this bit of info in a "read me" file in the datacolor directory:

3) On Windows, it is necessary to use a separate video card for each monitor. Multi-head video cards (one card that drives multiple monitors) will not work because Windows will not allow you to assign a different profile to each monitor.

Not sure what this is all about.

Phillip
Is it critical that both monitors exactly match colours? If you correctly calibrate your main monitor...IE, the one that you process your imagery and or print from, then the accuracy of the second monitor is probably not that important. Are both monitors the same type and brand? If not then differences in quality may mean a perfect match is not possible.

phillipb wrote:Thanks Greg, but that seems to be a feature of the Elite version, mine is the pro.

The only difference is the software. You can upgrade to the Elite version through the calibration utility.

Matt. K wrote:Phillip
Is it critical that both monitors exactly match colours?

I suppose it's not critical, but I thought the idea of a monitor calibrator was to take out the guesswork. Now I have to guess which one of the two is closer to being the right one.

Wink wrote:The only difference is the software. You can upgrade to the Elite version through the calibration utility.

At $99 it's not a cheap upgrade considering the Spyder3 pro cost me $131 including delivery.

Phillip

Gnerally you can have 2 profiles in a dual monitor setup with a dual head video card as long as you have a recent vieo card (eg a good nVidia one).

What OS version are you using. If it's XP then there's a MS add on called the "Color Control Panel Applet" that lets you have dual profiles. If it's Win 7 it's much easier since it's built in - see THIS thread for more on Win 7.

Thanks for that Peter, I'm running windows 7 with Nvidia gforce 1gb card so it shouldn't be an issue.