Tim Nelson Posted April 8, 2005 Share Posted April 8, 2005 Just wondering if anybody is or has used this and what their opinions of it are. http://www.colorvision.com/profis/profis_view.jsp?id=101 I'm thinking about buying it since every time I have to print, I always end up getting mad because it never prints the way I want it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DennisHolland Posted April 8, 2005 Share Posted April 8, 2005 Hi Tim, you can calibrate your monitor with Adobe gamma (Most pc's have it allready installed but also comes with Photoshop)... Start Adobe Gamma, located in the Control Panels folder or in the Program Files/Common Files /Adobe/Calibration folder on your hard drive. Do one of the following: To use a version of the utility that will guide you through each step, select Step by Step, and click OK. This version is recommended if you're inexperienced. If you choose this option, follow the instructions described in the utility. Start from the default profile for your monitor if available, and enter a unique description name for the profile. When you are finished with Adobe Gamma, save the profile using the same description name. (If you do not have a default profile, contact your monitor manufacturer for appropriate phosphor specifications.) To use a compact version of the utility with all the controls in one place, select Control Panel, and click OK. This version is recommended if you have experience creating color profiles. This is from the Photoshop 7.0 helpfile. Must have Photoshop intalled though Good luck, Dennis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jackb602 Posted April 8, 2005 Share Posted April 8, 2005 Just wondering if anybody is or has used this and what their opinions of it are. http://www.colorvision.com/profis/profis_view.jsp?id=101 I'm thinking about buying it since every time I have to print, I always end up getting mad because it never prints the way I want it. I've been using it for a couple of years to calibrate my Formac Gallery 1710 LCD. When I print to my Epson 2200, the print is nearly indistinguishable from the image on the screen. I recommend it. Jack Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mottle Posted April 8, 2005 Share Posted April 8, 2005 Ahhhhhhhhhh! No! That Adobe Gamma is the worst thing you can use. Stay far far away. As far as the new Spyder 2, we just bought the latest version at work and it is by far the best one they have made yet. It is very very good. Run, don't walk and pick your's up now! We just bought the Pro Studio version. There have been a few threads about this recently so here is the link to the manuals I made a few years ago: http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/showthread.php?t=900&highlight=ICC+profile Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mottle Posted April 8, 2005 Share Posted April 8, 2005 I should also premise that you can get about 80-90% of the way to getting matched prints if you have a proper printer ICC and a calibrated monitor. If you want 99-100%, then you need a controlled room and a small viewing booth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craig Ramsay Posted April 8, 2005 Share Posted April 8, 2005 I use one too, they are very good if you use them properly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted April 8, 2005 Author Share Posted April 8, 2005 Thanks for the tip Dennis. I ran Adobe Gamma last night just to make sure I hadn't inadvertently missed it before, but then I remembered going through it already. I think my monitor must be getting old because it has good contrast but even at its brightest settings is still a little dark. I have to use the Nvida gamma correction to give it a little boost. Jeff, what would you say the advantage is of the PRO version over the regular Spyder package? Now that you guys have got me convinced, I'm excited to try it out, but I want to know if the standard package would be good enough for my needs. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mottle Posted April 8, 2005 Share Posted April 8, 2005 Tim, We have only just started testing all of the other features that are specific to the Pro version, so I can't tell yet, but the base software itself (Pro and Non-Pro) it MUCH more user friendly than the original and will also calibrate monitors that do not have seperate gun controls. A really nice feature too is that it will match dual monitors too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mottle Posted April 8, 2005 Share Posted April 8, 2005 Here is a comparison matrix:http://www.colorvision.com/store_compare.shtml Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
angelo Posted April 8, 2005 Share Posted April 8, 2005 We used the Spyder a lot at my old place of work--nice because it worked on both CRT's and LCD's. Once we had our monitors dialed in, it wasn't hard to get output that was very close. By the way, has anyone tried the printfx optical thingy that they also sell in one of the packages? Angelo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DennisHolland Posted April 8, 2005 Share Posted April 8, 2005 Yes, Adobe gamma is somewhat basic when you just want to tune your colors a bit. But with the advanced finetuning option and some knowledge of calibration and a good eye you can achieve a very reasonable colormanagement-level. I remember we've spend an entire masterclass on colormanagement and how to calibrate your monitorsettings with Adobe gamma. It takes time to grasp the fine art of calibrating and most people have difficulties with the how-to's... I've surfed the colorvision-site for it and I think that the spidertool is a great solution for a one-click > instant success. Maybe I'm gonna give it a shot, it must be a good co-op with the colorimetertool that comes with it. The colorimetertool is, in my opinion, more than just a measurement assistant and will greatly improve quality, and the price? Well, I'd say let's give it a go for the advanced version. It's only a couple of bucks more which is peanuts comparing to the improvements that can be achieved. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jackb602 Posted April 8, 2005 Share Posted April 8, 2005 I bought the package that included PrintFix, and I couldn't figure it out for the life of me. Since my prints were already looking very good after calibrating my monitor, I forgot about it. But one of these days I need to put a call in to tech support. Jack Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted April 12, 2005 Author Share Posted April 12, 2005 Ok, well my Spyder2 Pro Studio came in today. I went through the calibration process for my main 21" CRT and my side 15" lcd monitor. They look totally different! I thought they were supposed to end up looking the same after I calibrate them. To me, the CRT looks horrible & the lcd looks great. Maybe I'm not doing something right. This obviously isn't going to be as easy as I thought. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mottle Posted April 13, 2005 Share Posted April 13, 2005 How did you calibrate them? What method did you use to calibrate. Having never used an LCD I can only presume they only allow a color temp setting and obviously not guns. I can't recall, when you calirate dual monitors does it ask you what type of monitor it is in both cased or just the first one? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted April 13, 2005 Author Share Posted April 13, 2005 Yeah, there are seperate methods for lcd and crt screens. I recalibrated them and they look a little closer now, although the lcd is in general has more contrast/brightness & seems a little more blue. My crt's white is looking really bland & yellowish, but hopefully my eyes will get used to it. Part of it could be the fact that my monitor is at least a couple years old & even at its highest brightness & contrast is still rather dark. Right now I'm going through your calibration pdf's to really get this into my head. I haven't tried printing anything yet because I don't want make sure I have gone through as many of the right steps as possible. One thing I don't get so far is in Photoshop, you mentioned to always do a soft proof using your printer & paper type. I don't have any of those options for my printer & am not sure how to add those. Hopefully this will start making sense soon! If so, it will all be worth it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted April 13, 2005 Author Share Posted April 13, 2005 Wow I think I'm actually getting there! I figured out how to load the proof settings for each Epson paper and am using 'same as source' in Photoshops print options. Then on Epsons print options, I have 'no color adjustment' checked. I've only tested on premium glossy, but so far the prints are SUPER close to what I see on the lcd monitor. Its funny because before today my lcd has always been way off no matter how hard I tried to manually adjust it. The display on my crt has much less contrast, especially when I turn on the proof setup for my printer, but is still pretty accurate with color depiction. I'm starting to thing my crt is not capable of displaying the images levels properly at all, even after calibration. A shame too, since I just spent all this money on Spyder. At any rate, I already see a large improvement in printing. Now I like this lcd so much that I might buy another one instead of a crt when I'm finally ready to upgrade. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mottle Posted April 13, 2005 Share Posted April 13, 2005 Hey Tim, LCDs are much better at contrast than CRTs which is probably why you see that. If you want to run it again, re-calibrate your monitor using the gun controls (if your monitor has those capabilities), rather than using the built-in color temps as this will give you a much better idea of your gun levels. Typically the red gun starts to go first on older monitors. If this is the case you will find that you have the red gun maxed out at 100 just trying to get the standard deviation between all the guns into the range it's looking for. I was going to ask if you calibrated to D50, but as you mentioned my docs I will assume you are. Everyone who's monitor I have calibrated to D50 at first complains of a really pink display, but in about a week they just rave about how close the colors are and don't really notice the pink anymore. Well except our graphic designer who tell me here mouse still looks pink. LOL. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cesar Posted April 13, 2005 Share Posted April 13, 2005 Hi I'm interested in buy an spider too, I had two monitors a samsung 19' crt and a apple 23" lcd, i also have a plotter, a hp 500 PS. i liked this spider because has some special options to manage Pantone values, or i'm wrong? and this plotter in theory has the ability to work like an offset print, work with real pantone values. I get good results with the plotter, but in a very hard way, never the print is similar to the screen. the plotter is postscrip so it cames with special software (RIP). i tried a lot with this software, spent a tons of paper and ink, and finally i surrender, i can't get quality results, always to green or to dark or to red, was a nightmare. surprinsingly i get extraordinary results printing from the software where the job was done (corel, photoshop, etc.) and using an small option, The plotter prints 10 small copies of the image, and i choose the best option. maybe i get the excellents results but i still think its a very rudimentary way to check the color, and it's not a very logical way to work, because you didn't work with real values of color. Thats the reason that i want to tried the spider. I don't have to much experience in this topic, so i ask. I use the color profile created by the spider to print inside the software? (corel, illustrator, etc.) or i have to print from aditional software. Someone have any experience with the spider and a hp500ps? can i use the create color profile in a rip software? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mottle Posted April 13, 2005 Share Posted April 13, 2005 Cesar, the Pantone Colorist software that ships with the pro version only allows you to view HTML and RGB value from Pantone colors, it does not create color profiles for your printer, nor does it read values from printer outputs to generate printer profiles. To get a proper printer profile you need a densitometer and colorimeter to meaure values from a printed target, much the same way the Spyder reads targets from the screen during the calibration. Colorimeters are not cheap, especially if you go for top end models from companies like Gretag-Macbeth. ColorVision also has one too that will do what you want, two of them actually. check these links: http://www.colorvision.com/profis/profis_view.jsp?id=261 http://www.colorvision.com/profis/profis_view.jsp?id=244 If you also do a search on the internet for printer profiles for your printer, there are a number of companies that sell them. Bare in mind however that like two idential monitors a generic printer profile will never be as good as one created for your exact printer, paper and ink combination. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted April 13, 2005 Author Share Posted April 13, 2005 I was going to ask if you calibrated to D50, but as you mentioned my docs I will assume you are. Actually I don't think I did that. I just used what Spyder recommended which was gama 2.2 and temp 6500. Would you still recommend D50 and if so what target setting would that be on the Spyder setup? Is that supposed to be 1.8/5000? I did use the actual rgb gun adjustments on the crt and i did have to max out red at first and that seemed really weird to me. THen I slid the color temp bar to about half way and that allowed me to even out the individual rgb sliders. Anyways, I'm glad you posted those calibration guides. I don't think I would have been able to figure this out without them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mottle Posted April 13, 2005 Share Posted April 13, 2005 Yeah I would calibrate to D50/1.8 as that is what most photographic print houses calibrate to. Gamma 2.2 is what is used on Macs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craig Ramsay Posted April 13, 2005 Share Posted April 13, 2005 Just a quick question about calibrating dual screens... how does that work? I thought windows could only handle one monitor profile. Does this new software let you use separate profiles for each screen now? Craig Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted April 13, 2005 Author Share Posted April 13, 2005 Just a quick question about calibrating dual screens... how does that work? I thought windows could only handle one monitor profile. Does this new software let you use separate profiles for each screen now? Yes, the Spyder comes with a little program called Profile Chooser and this will let you apply a different profile for each monitor. It's not perfect though, because each time you restart windows, you have to manually reload your 2nd monitors profile. Only takes 2 seconds though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craig Ramsay Posted April 13, 2005 Share Posted April 13, 2005 Nice! Gota be getin me one of these Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted April 13, 2005 Author Share Posted April 13, 2005 Ugh, I couldn't handle the 5000k mode. It looked horrible! I ended up going back & recalibrating to 1.8/6500 and I think I will stick with this for a while since it looks like it has the most neutral gray to me. I'm still not happy with my crt. Its so blurry & un-contrasty. The before sample actually had more contrast than the after sample but I'm not sure how I could fix that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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