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Color correction / calibration hardware...


Hazdaz
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... so what do you guys use to calibrate your screen to your applications to your printer?

There are a few devices that I have run across - I think one is called the Spyder or something - and curious how well they work.

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The Spyder is a colorimeter and will only calibrate and profile your display devices. You need a spectrophotometer or densitometer to profile printers. I use the Gretag Macbeth Eye One Photo, it does both.

 

Getting a consistant and predictable color requires many things. Calibrating and profiling your display devices is just one piece of the puzzle. You need to start using color management in aplications like Photohop and all of the other devices you use (Scanners, Cameras and Printers) all need to be profiled as well. Depending upon your working environment you may also need to use a viewing booth.

 

I highl recommend reading this book: http://www.amazon.com/World-Color-Management-Bruce-Fraser/dp/0201773406

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all of the other devices you use (Scanners, Cameras and Printers) all need to be profiled as well.....

 

I second the approval of the Gretag Macbeth Eye One Photo.... in addition to the devices jeff listed, if you get the right one it also has an attachment for calibrating projectors.

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So I'm looking into this too, and I'm seeing several versions of the Eye One. Which one do I want? Can I use one of them for several computers and printers, and since we do have changing daylight conditions in the office can I also have several Huey Pros for the people who do a lot of Photoshop to compensate for that?

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If you have the budget I would get the eye-one photo that was mentioned earlier...

 

http://www.gretagmacbethstore.com/index.cfm/act/Catalog.cfm/catalogid/2406/Subcategory/Eye%2DOne%20Solutions/category/Eye%2DOne/browse/null/MenuGroup/_Menu%20USA%20New/desc/Eye%2DOne%20Photo.htm

 

I'm not sure your daylight changes could be so drastic that you would create profiles for different times of day. I calibrate about once a month. You could do once a week if you had the time (one monitor takes about 5 minutes), I think Chris Nichols said once that someone comes and does theirs every day... but he's in a whole different level for movie screening.... I guess what I'm getting at is that you shouldn't need more than one, we have one for the whole office. The three of us who do vis calibrate regularly.... then we do it for anyone (normally interiors dept) when they complain our images aren't looking the same as on our screens.

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I'm not sure your daylight changes could be so drastic that you would create profiles for different times of day.

 

While the new spectrophotometers allow you to measure ambient room color temperature, I would not advise profiling your monitor for different times of day. That feature is meant for stable lighting environments. If you can not control your room lighting and it is affecting your ability to judge color, then you should get a small viewing booth.

 

As an aside, when you use those, make sure they are set up perpendicular to your monitor, rather than side by side. Looking away forces you to use your foveal vision which is where there is the highest concentration of color receptors on the back of our eye. It also allows us to more easily discount any differences in the color of white (paper vs display)

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Some really good info there guys - thanks.

 

Now say someone doesn't have the budget for an Eye One Photo ($1500) and has about 1/10th the money to spend, what would you guys recommend? The Eye One Display2 is only $200 - and while I don't expect it to have all the features of the more expensive devices obviously, would it be even be worth it? Or at the low-end of the market would messing around with the colors by hand be better. (I had tried to match my 2 screens and try as I might messing with the different channels and gamma, the 2 are still not showing the same colors)

 

For me, printing is secondary - so being able to match my 2 screens is tops in priority, and then matching them with everyone else in this office is important too.

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Some really good info there guys - thanks.

 

Now say someone doesn't have the budget for an Eye One Photo ($1500) and has about 1/10th the money to spend, what would you guys recommend? The Eye One Display2 is only $200 - and while I don't expect it to have all the features of the more expensive devices obviously, would it be even be worth it? Or at the low-end of the market would messing around with the colors by hand be better. (I had tried to match my 2 screens and try as I might messing with the different channels and gamma, the 2 are still not showing the same colors)

 

For me, printing is secondary - so being able to match my 2 screens is tops in priority, and then matching them with everyone else in this office is important too.

 

Yes, absolutely worth it. Just make sure the Eye One Display can calibrate and profile dual monitors. I could not find anything on their site, or missed it, but I do know in the past with some other manufacturers only the higher end models allowed you to get two monitors on the same system to match.

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(I had tried to match my 2 screens and try as I might messing with the different channels and gamma, the 2 are still not showing the same colors)

 

once you calibrate your monitors properly and they are a perfect match, you will kick yourself in the head and wonder why you ever tried to do it by eye.... I used to spend way too much time matching monitors and I was never ever satisified.

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  • 3 months later...

Hi

 

We need to calibrate our monitors and printer and was wondering if the Eye-One Display 2 will be able to do this for us ? Has anyone purchased this and used it ?

 

Also, I have noticed that I can have a different tonal variations of one image between software on my main machine - maybe this is to do with the colour management in Photoshop.

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I Just used the spyder2 today. I had my colours pretty close, but admittedly the brightness was waaay too high. Quick and easy to use.

 

I work in a printing shop and using colour profiles is obviously essential. We have printers calibrated to a certain world wide benchmark and im thinking of taking down the spyder and have a go at the monitors there. The amount of time this would save trying to read colours off the monitors to the printer and back and forth and so on would be great.

 

Pantone charts to incorrect monitor to printer is like feeling around in the dark. Possible, but stupid. :p

 

After all this LWF talk and colour calibration im feeling really angry at the fact that although we're all getting out colours and gamma correct, everyone who is likely to be seeing our work wont be viewing it in an accurate colour space... grrr

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I have never used the Eye-One calibrator, but I recently bought the the ColorVision PrintFix Pro suite. It includes the Spyder 2 monitor calibrator, and a spectrocolorimeter for calibrating your printer. After a rebate, I paid less than $350 for the bundle. The results have been phenomenal so far. I used to waste enormous amounts of time, paper, and ink trying to get prints to look right. I now no longer have to even think about it. Jeff's PDFs on color management were very helpful when it came to setting up a color workflow in Photoshop.

 

I'm sure the Eye-One products are great, but I saved a lot of money by going with ColorVision, and I can't see how my prints could be any more accurate than they currently are.

 

Jack

 

 

p.s. I found another great use for the printer calibrator as I was finishing a project this past weekend. The interior designer was not happy with how the paint colors were appearing in the rendering. So I measured a paint chip she provided using the spectrocolorimeter, and plugged those values right into my material in Cinema 4D. If I had only thought of this sooner, it would have literally saved me hours of trial and error work.

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Ok I've read through this post and I'm more confused than when I started. I want to be able to calibrate my two monitors so that when I print I'm looking at the same image. Currently I own two calibration sensors (LaCie blue eye 2 & the Monaco Sensor) problem is that they don't work with Windows XP64 or at least they didn't a few months ago. I also don't want a package that crates profiles that only work in Adobe products; I need to have color correct images all the time. Which one of these products will work?

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Hi

 

We need to calibrate our monitors and printer and was wondering if the Eye-One Display 2 will be able to do this for us ? Has anyone purchased this and used it ?

 

Also, I have noticed that I can have a different tonal variations of one image between software on my main machine - maybe this is to do with the colour management in Photoshop.

 

No, the Eye-one Display is only for calibrating and profiling a monitor. In order to profile a printer you require a spectrophotometer or densitometer and profiling software. ColorVision and many others like Gretag Macbeth sell these tools.

 

What do you mean variatons on one machine?

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I Just used the spyder2 today. I had my colours pretty close, but admittedly the brightness was waaay too high. Quick and easy to use.

 

This is becuase displays will always be much brighter than a normal amient ligth environment. You need a viewing booth to match the luminance of the display to your print out.

 

I work in a printing shop and using colour profiles is obviously essential. We have printers calibrated to a certain world wide benchmark and im thinking of taking down the spyder and have a go at the monitors there. The amount of time this would save trying to read colours off the monitors to the printer and back and forth and so on would be great.

 

If you work in a print shop having a fully calibrated, profiled and color managed workflow is essential.

 

Pantone charts to incorrect monitor to printer is like feeling around in the dark. Possible, but stupid. :p

 

If you deal a lot with spot colors, pantone swatches are a great way of ensuring you always get the colors you want. If you select the pantone number in your application and use Pantone inks in the presses, you'll already have a standardized hardcopy to match.

 

After all this LWF talk and colour calibration im feeling really angry at the fact that although we're all getting out colours and gamma correct, everyone who is likely to be seeing our work wont be viewing it in an accurate colour space... grrr

 

Yes, this can be frustrating, but if you do work in a color managed environment, at least your images represent images with a full dymanic range without color shifts. A profiled image viewed on an unmanaged environment will look a lot better than an unprofiled image in an unmanaged environment.

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Ok I've read through this post and I'm more confused than when I started. I want to be able to calibrate my two monitors so that when I print I'm looking at the same image. Currently I own two calibration sensors (LaCie blue eye 2 & the Monaco Sensor) problem is that they don't work with Windows XP64 or at least they didn't a few months ago. I also don't want a package that crates profiles that only work in Adobe products; I need to have color correct images all the time. Which one of these products will work?

 

If you want to calibrate and profile a display, you just need to use a device like the ones you have. I've not done any research into 64bit compatibility, but eventually it will be universally supported, if not someone now.

 

Profiles are never unique to adobe products, they are universal. ICC profiles use a standardized format that in most cases in recognized by any ICC aware application.

 

When you profile and calibrate a display a profile loader will load the profile generated and adjust your video card's look up tables when windows loads. You will not use this profile anywhere else, except if you want to softproof for web output. You NEVER embed or assign a monitor profile to an image.

 

As far as I know inkjets are only ever profiled, not calibrated. You use a spectrophotometer or Densitometer to measure swatches of colors on a print target of known values. The profiling software then compares the measured values against the known values in the image file used to print the target. The profile generally contains a matrix of values describing what translation needs to occur. You then use the printer profile to soft proof your image in an application like PS so you can make color adjustments while seeing how the output will look when printed. Printer profiles can also be used when using a special proofing printer to emulate the output of another printer. For example you might print to an inkjet to proof how they will look when sent to your commercial printer. Of course bearing in mind that printers all have their own color reproduction characteristics, so there are limits in what you can simulate.

 

Scanner and Camera profiles are used to describe color in images captures by those devices so the color captured can be accurately represented throughout a color managed workflow.

 

Hopefully that explains some of it. If any of this is not clear or you have specific questions, just let me know. Those PDFs I created a few years back might be slightly inaccurate as I've done A LOT of reading since then and have a much greater understanding of color management. I'm still a LONG way off from being an expert though. It's a pretty complicated subject if you really delve into it. That having been said, you can with a relatively superficial knowledge still work in a color managed environment.

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Thanks Jeff that helps, we're going to purchase this product because it seems to do everything.

 

http://www.xrite.com/product_overview.aspx?ID=791

 

On another note I don't understand why this has to be such a big issue, you would think that in the interest of compatibility all of the printer and monitor manufacturers could get together and agree upon some standards. The fact that we have to deal with this at all means we're not communicating how important this is to those companies.

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Thanks Jeff that helps, we're going to purchase this product because it seems to do everything.

 

http://www.xrite.com/product_overview.aspx?ID=791

 

On another note I don't understand why this has to be such a big issue, you would think that in the interest of compatibility all of the printer and monitor manufacturers could get together and agree upon some standards. The fact that we have to deal with this at all means we're not communicating how important this is to those companies.

 

Gretag makes good stuff, so I'm sure you'll be happy with that package. I have the i1Photo.

 

There is a standard already in place that pretty much all devices understand - sRGB. But that is really only geared at the consumer market. That's how those printers with camera docks work. They just use sRGB. There are too many variables and end user decisions that have to happen for the process to be fully automated though at the professional level.

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I found this article on color calibration, it's worth reading.

 

http://www.behardware.com/articles/626-1/calibration-ecran-0-100.html

 

Cool article.

 

Two things I noted in that article. If you are looking at high gamut monitors (close to Adobe RGB range), be sure you do some careful reading about the advantages and disadvantages to using these monitors. I have the Dell 30" HC version and it's higher color range means it has some implications when used in a color managed workflow.

 

The article mentions visual calibration tools, but bear in mind these guys are really experienced. An inexperienced user will likely not be able to get anything close to a properly calibrated monitor. And if you have multiple monitors and/or brands your degree of accuracy will go down exponentially from there.

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