Spyder2 - Questions

[Yi-P]

I have my hands on borrowing a Spyder2, how can I not love this forum!!


I've done the colour calibration following the direction on screen. My desktop LCD monitor adjusted with RGB values, and got into a difference variation in 0.02, okay near perfect here.

I ran the calibration process, let Spyder2 do whatever its designed for... Woah, what a difference in skin tones and dark/light colours. They all seem to pop out of the screen now!!

My only concern now is, my colours seems to be warmer in a yellow/green tone, okay maybe this is 'skin tone' optimisation...

I ran Photoshop, painted down 3 stripes. With RGB values of (0,0,0) - (128,128,128) and (255,255,255).

The white and black are just pure... but the neutral grey appears somehow 'too warm' in the tones. I've put my 18% grey card next to it, it is definitely different in the colours, appears much warmer, like what the grey card is seen under incandescent light.

Opening past B&W converted images, they appear to have a slight warm sepia tone on them...

I've used the 2-2.2 6500k base setting to calibrate the monitor.

[Yi-P]

I had a try on my laptop, but after calibration is complete, upon closing down the Spyder2 software, a warning box pops up saying "cannot find profile"

I've used profile loader, the saved profile appears under 'all profiles' but not under 'profiles for this monitor'...

Restarting the laptop, it pops up the warning saying cannot load profile because no profile is found...

Anyone got an idea?

[robw25]

oh oh i just ordered the spyder2suite tonight so i hope you get an answer and i will learn from this, was it easy doing the calibration ?

cheers rob

[Yi-P]

It was really easy process if you can read proper English

[Steffen]

The white and black are just pure... but the neutral grey appears somehow 'too warm' in the tones. I've put my 18% grey card next to it, it is definitely different in the colours, appears much warmer, like what the grey card is seen under incandescent light.

How did you illuminate the grey card in this comparison?

Also, did you give the monitor some time to settle down? Many LCD monitors require over an hour of warm-up before you can achieve reproducible profiling.

Cheers
Steffen.

[daniel_r]

Yi-P,

I don't have much experience with colour calibration on Windaz with the Spyder2 - I have the Gretag MacBeth Eye1 and use it mainly on OS X.

I've found that like Steffen recommends, make sure you give your displays time to warm up, and at a minimum of 1hr for a CRT (obviously you're using a LCD here, but they also benefit from a warm up period of at least 10-15 mins to stabilise the backlight, and particularly the even-ness of the backlighting).

I'm unsure of the pedigree of your LCD, but some of the cheapies don't handle backlight consistency / light leaking very well - ie the display has a completely black picture being shown, yet it isn't a consistent - the black isn't uniform across the screen, and may appear "brighter" at the edges. The most reliable point to calibrate either a LCD or CRT is right in the centre of the display.

I'm unsure if the Spyder2 software allows this or not, but see if there's an option to calibrate for "display native white point" as well as 6500K. Typically most CRTs are at 9300K and LCDs at 6500K.

I always calibrate 3 times in a row for each display to rule out any variance - if you end up with 2 calibrations that look the same, and one odd one, you know that the odd one is an anomaly and to toss it out.

Also, if you work under sufficiently different lighting during the day and the night (eg ambient daylight and incandescent) you may benefit from having a different set of profiles for those times. The Gretag uses a ambient light adaptor (think how the pringles lid / expodisc technique works for custom WB calcs) that you can optionally use in the calibration process. I'm unsure if the Spyder2 also has this or not, but I'd run separate calibrations for the different lighting conditions to see if it has any difference.

Colour management can be a right pain in the backside

I highly recommend this book - Color Management for Photographers

I picked mine up at the Uni Co-Op for $70 or so after Co-op discount.

The author's site is here

[MattC]

I had a try on my laptop, but after calibration is complete, upon closing down the Spyder2 software, a warning box pops up saying "cannot find profile"

I've used profile loader, the saved profile appears under 'all profiles' but not under 'profiles for this monitor'...

Restarting the laptop, it pops up the warning saying cannot load profile because no profile is found...

Anyone got an idea?

Hi Yi-P,

I have the "pro" version and see the same from time to time. Try setting it as the default profile in the Windows colour management tab.

Cheers

[Yi-P]

Hi Yi-P,

I have the "pro" version and see the same from time to time. Try setting it as the default profile in the Windows colour management tab.

Cheers

Thanks!! Seems to be fixed by now


Re: My desktop LCD...

I did the calibration few more times under different lightings, I have now got a close match at the 18% grey card when viewed under warm daylights... tho the tones are still bit yellow/green than before, maybe I need to get myself used to this new accurate colour look