Spyder 4 Pro Monitor Calibration

[Jodee Bouman]

Theonly way to calibrate your monitor accurately is to buy (or borrow) a device that measures the colours emitted by your monitor. They are called colorimetric devices and connect to your computer via the USB port.

Colorimetric devices are easy to use, and come with software that guides you through the calibration process. It shows you where to place your device on the screen, then displays a series of colour patches for the device to measure.

The first screen gives directions. The important points are that you should let your monitor warm up for half an hour before calibration and that there should be no intense light falling on the screen.

I try to calibrate my Samsung SyncMaster 2243 on Suse 15.2 (Leap). I reset all settings of DisplayCAL to make sure I did not fat-finger something. Sadly, for whatever reason, my Spyder 3 thinks that green is missing.

Update: I was able to calibrate the main monitor (Phlips 252B) on the same PC with no issues with the same spyder 3 device. The second monitor is still making problems. It is a Samsung SyncMaster 2243. I do not see why this is making a difference but maybe someone knows?

I had (yet have) a Spyder3 also and used it with Linux and Windows also (I have one another in my workplace with 20-30 monitor also with Linux and Windows). Spyder3 basically have lot of problems to determine the white balance of LED backlight monitors. This is now a well-known public information. I had lot of correct results in the past but maybe lot more of wrong results also where t depends on the type of the monitor. Usually I got yellowish result but there were greenish too. Slowly I educated myself (here at DisplayCal forum also) that Spyder3 sadly not the proper tool to measure whitepoint of LED backlight monitors. With old CCLF monitors my results were always fine but nowadays of course I have no such monitors (or just one Sony what I really like today yet/also).

When I realized the problem the solution was to determine the whole balance with my eyes or leave the native what the monitor setting gave. This latter with old monitors will give faulty results so the only solution your eyes. Because I trained my eyes in photography and monitors for years I really think that nowadays I usually really can define the correct white points but of course this method is far form the ideal especially when you would like to use your calibration device for exactly help on this. So my opinion that set the whilepoint based on what your eyes tell and use Spyder3 just for the proper curves/characteristics.

The older I get, the more I appreciate people and companies that specialize and stay focused on it. Asides the occasional device that I demand the world from, such as my smartphone, I gravitate toward products from companies that have put most of their eggs in that basket. It's no secret that doing one thing 1,000 times has more value than doing 1,000 things once. Few people are willing to grind away at something until it becomes boring, but behind that dull gate is where it gets special.

Datacolor is arguably the most famous company that works on color management. That is, everything they do revolves around color and ensuring the accuracy of it. I know fantasic print shops that use Datacolor products, I know a major fashion house that uses it, but if I accept it could be bias, it seems to me that photography is where Datacolor is the undisputed champion of its craft. I have been taking pictures with SLRs, DSLRs, mirrorless, and some quirkier cameras, for close to 15 years now, and almost all of that time, I've been using Datacolor.

Why did I choose Datacolor? Honestly, I can't remember a wealth of options, and the photographers I trusted all used a Spyder, so I bought one. I quickly learned my monitors were both horrendously skewed with both colors and contrast, and thanks to 10 minutes of calibrating with the Spyder, now they were perfect.

At the end of the calibration process, it did two things that I appreciated, however. The first was to allow me to pick an interval at which to be prompted to recalibrate (I picked a month), and the second was to show me a before and after comparison. When you have completed the calibration, you can open a grid of different images full screen, and by pressing space bar, you can toggle between your calibrated monitor profile and the profile you had before calibrating. I didn't think it had been that long since I last calibrated, but the difference was profound.

An interesting note is that if you buy the Elite version and want to start working with HDR and high brightness monitors (the key differentiator between Elite and Ultra is that the Ultra caters for these), you needn't buy new hardware and can just pay to upgrade the software.

Robert K Baggs is a professional portrait and commercial photographer, educator, and consultant from England. Robert has a First-Class degree in Philosophy and a Master's by Research. In 2015 Robert's work on plagiarism in photography was published as part of several universities' photography degree syllabuses.

Very interesting informative review. I'm sat here debating to purchase one. Now I will. A few years back I dusted off my camera and took a few awesome portraits of my grandson's 1st birthday. When I picked up the photos, I was horrified to see he was a deathly grey. I went back to my computer, and all looked great. I had to use the enhancement button when I reprinted instore.

Also, since I have already calibrated my monitor several times, is there any way of starting over so I can follow your instructions for the Set Up? I no longer have access to those pages since I have already used the Spyder X Elite to calibrate

Is there any way I can "start over" with the calibration process so I can follow your instructions for the set up? Since I have already calibrated, I no longer have access to the pages where I would make your suggested choices.

As the task of having your monitors displaying as optimal as possible is that important I would like to ask the forum around preparing your monitors for calibration with the Spyder 5 Express equipment. I might add I know the full process performing a calibration. As the latest Win10 upgrade this weekend seem to have reset monitor management I have to redo the Spyder calibration from scratch and I'm a bit concerned about the basic settings before activiating a calibration.

I have two monitors. The 'big' one is a HP ZR30w and the 'slave' a Samsung SMB 2340. I use a nVidia graphics card and the software nVidia Control Panel to monitor settings (as well as organizing monitors).

The set-up I did first time I used the Spyder was in those cases a bit of my best guesses. As I now have to do it again from scratch I would like to be more certain. To rely on the calibration I have to be sure it's done from the recommended settings. But as terminilogy, accessable settings etc. differs from the instructions I rather would like to check with anyone knowing more about those than me.

The HP screen don't have an OSD Menu BUT an option to turn DCR (Dynamic Contrast Ratio) On or Off. The instruction just say I can skip the reset step if no OSD. Still there is a choice of turning the DCR On or Off. My guess is that OFF is the right choice, and will display the most true colours and temperatures?

The nVidia Control Panel has a general option (have to do a translation from swedish in the interface) of controling colours of the individual monitors connected from "Select options of colour settings". You can choose "Other software controls colour settings" or "Use nVidia settings". My guess was to select "Other software..." as I interpreted the Spyder Software as "other". Is that correct?

You may end up having no control over the calibration which means, all you can do is profile it's behavior which is better than a stick in the eye as it will work with color managed applications. But the conditions of the display being profiled may be quite suboptimal depending on your desires for that calibration.

Question 2: From memory, it shouldn't really matter as long as it stays fixed values (so if the nvidia option can change colour settings dynamically or per-program, I'd disable it). Probably best indeed to select "other software".

If I'm not mistaken, though, one of the limitations of the Express edition of the Spyder is that it only supports one monitor (one colour profile) at a time, and to handle multiple different screens, you'd need the Pro version - it's at least what I recall (but I have an older model, so maybe things changed).

Thank's a lot. Confirmation that my assumptions was right, and it was important to get a second opinion. BTW, waiting for an answer here I've also passed the quest to Datacolor support. If anything in their answer is useful I will tell you.

Regarding Express edition you're mistaken. But I've heard it before so perhaps it was so before (did my purchase 6 months ago). I've used it since then and there's no problem at all to handle both screens. The software list all montors and you can calibrate the one at time. I'm aware of one limitation in Express as I can't calibrate my third monitor, as it is my big HDMI-connected Panasonic TV. Believe the Pro version can handle that.

The repond from Datacolor support wasn't useful at at all. On the contrary the message did NOT answer my actual question (somewhat like the quest above). BTW, what is it with customer supports these days? You ask specific questions and get answers indicating that they didn't read your message and answer something else?

The answer I got was in short that "if I've lost my profile after booting"... To start with I didn't adress that as my problem at all. Anyway, the tip was that I had to un-install my nVidia Control Panel (a lot of config issues around that) as load of graphics replaces the Spyder profiles. Not a tip I jumped to as nVidia Control Panel is a very good and reliable tool to me, handling two screens and a HDMI-connected TV. In addition I knew that this setup worked very well, until the Win10 upgrade last weekend.

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