Calibrating monitors and Spyder 5 Express

(was adviced to move this posting here instead of 'Equipment')

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 Spyder instructions start with the preparation of the monitors. I have some problems to adapt suggestions made to possible settings for my monitors.

First advice is to reset the monitors to factory settings IF there's an OSD Menu.

Second is to set the temperature to 6500K.

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.

Those details concerns me as the instructions differ from what I'm able to do:

The older (and cheaper) Samsung slave monitor has an OSD Menu and I found the Reset option in the OSD menu. So no problem with the reset instuction for that one.

Quest 1:

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?

Quest 2:

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?

Quest 3:

I can't find any controler available to set the temperatur to 6500K. Is there any? If not - does it matter much?

Most thankful for all useful input on this.

Yes it matters and you'll have to find a way to make such calibration adjustments from the panel if at all possible.

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.

The Spyder isn't a very good product I'm afraid to report back. :(

Question 1: yes, turn it off.

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".

Question 3: It matters; however, according to the HP specs, the default setting is 6500K (HP ZR30w 30-inch S-IPS LCD Monitor - Specifications | HP® Customer Support).

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).

....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.

Summing up:

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.

The main part of their mail did instead push for the much more expensive software ELITE. So the advice was to un-install an instance that didn't affect the problem as I descibed it, and that I should buy a more expensive product of theirs.

I answered that I hestitate to do that as my conclusion was that something else was the problem, like the OS upgrade that really made a change. My first quest was answered in a few hours, my respond wasnät answered at all in two days. And then I repeated it after one day. I have nothing bad to say about the product, but the response was not a help so to speak. But I got an offer I could refuse ;).

What I did? Followed the advices above before calibrate. Then performed the calibration on both monitors. Both profiles was saved and both loaded at re-boot. Some reference to the profiles was probably lost at the Win10 upgrade, but saved again after a new calibration. Everything works fine (without a lot of work and without any money spend).