LCD Calibration - Spyder2

[chrispy]

I bought Spyder2 Suite yesterday and have a few questions prior to trying it

out again tonight.

 

1. What should I be selecting in the calibration software, 6500K or Native, and

what is the difference?

 

2. I have a Viewsonic VX2025, you can select sRGB, 9300K, 6500K-default, 5400K,

user color - RGB. What do I select, 6500K?

 

3. When I run the calibration on the Viewsonic VX2025, I get a redish color

cast. I have read that others get this as well, but I haven't been able to find

what others have done to fix the issue or what the cause is. Is there something

I'm doing wrong?

 

4. I left the VX2025 brightness and contrast at their defaults. That is,

Brightness 100% and Contrast 70%. What effect does changing these have on

calibation?

 

5. I keep getting an error when I try and calibrate my laptop. I believe it may

be clipping during the calibration. The error message is just some numbers

(can't remember). Are laptops harder to calibrate? Has anyone else had problems

with laptops and errors.

 

Thanks

Chris

[chris_leck]

I don't have the Spyder2, but I'll toss in my $.02:

 

1. Use 6500K. 'Native' may mean that you have your LCD set to its native color temp.

 

2. 6500K.

 

3. It sounds like the calibration is not working properly. I would guess that the Spyder is not working well or that the monitor needs more correction than is possible. How good is the Viewsonic? One of my partners recently bought a VX924, which he seems happy with. He was able to calibrate it with my Monaco and hasn't had any problems. I'm not familiar with Viewsonic offerings or the Spyder2.

 

4. From my Monaco experience, contrast and brightness have everything to do with proper calibration. Before the Monaco attempts to do any color measurements, it takes one through a process of optimizing brightness and contrast. After that, these controls are not to be touched. Doesn't the Spyder2 do this? This may be contributing to your problems in #3, but I wouldn't presume that.

 

5. From what I've read, calibrating laptops is a waste of time or an exercise in futility. What does your Spyder documentation or tech support say about this? I've tried doing a couple of laptops, but couldn't get them to calibrate. I can't imagine doing any serious color correction on a laptop without an external monitor anyhow.

[chrispy]

I had bit more success tonight. I seem to have forgot to reboot after deleting adobe gamma.

 

6500K vs native seem to make a huge difference whilst switching between the two during the calibartion process.

 

I will have to send off a few photos to the lab too see what the improvements are.

 

I have another problem now. When I open CS2 I get the following error:<div></div>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

My suggestion.

 

Send the Spyder2 back and get another competitor like an

EyeOne Display, Monaco or Huey. I come across so many of

these Spyder2 issues on the web, it's not worth troubleshooting

anymore because the majority like myself with a 6 year old

system and OS don't have these types of problems.

 

My suggestion for any display calibration. Adjust what you have to

adjust on your display to make a grayramp viewed in your

monitor space spanning the entire screen display a difference

between black and RGB gray 12 and white and RGB gray 250

with the entire grayramp and white neutral looking. If you have to

choose with your LCD buttons sRGB or factory default or

whatever to get that look, do it.

 

Then measure it in native with your hardware device to see what

numbers it arrives at. If it's close to 2.2 and 6500K save it as your

profile and don't mess with it anymore. Your done.

[chrispy]

Hi Tim

 

So what your saying is not to use the calibration software, adjust the monitor visually with grayscale images, and then use your calibrator to see what the results is?

 

How do you use the hardware calibrator to measure rather than use it with the calibration software? Can I do this with the spyder2 hardware? Is there a third party software which just measures?

 

Or have I missed the point completely?

 

Thanks

Chris

[serge c]

Hold on a minute...

 

Don't send anything back. You come across so many Spyder2 issues just cause so many more people use Colorvision's products.

 

6500K and Native are both OK. If perceptually one of them seem more neutral to you then choose that one. Actually it does not matter - you can calibrate to whatever white point you think looks neutral. It's your monitor, you know. But theoretically Native is better from image quality point of view (because of 8 bit LUTs).

 

Your LCD is apparently connected via a VGA cable. Try to connect it via DVI if you have it, just to use it the way it's supposed to be used.

 

Leave your monitor at factory default, except "brightness", which you can adjust to see both ends of a greyscale ramp (any ramp you like, I think Spyder2 software has one).

 

Normally if you calibrate to Native in the end the software tells you what Native is. "Native" means "don't change, just measure what it is". So like Tim said if it's close to 6500K you might as well use it.

 

To get rid of that weird Photoshop error try installing the XP color control panel applet - it makes XP color management better organized. I would also use it's LUT loader instead of Colorvision's loader, but perhaps I'm just ideologically opposed to propriatary solutions.

 

Spyder2 pro includes a bunch of utilities in the File and Tools menues. I don't know what Suite has, but it's gotta have some utilities to get info from the colorimeter.

[Tim_Lookingbill]

I got the same message using SuperCal eyeball calibrator

some time back on my Mac in OS 9.2.2. I chose an imac LCD

phosphor set instead of my usual sRGB set for my CRT. In doing

this it created a corrupt profile.

 

I just remade the profile using the sRGB set, which I recommend

everyone using eyeball calibrators use, and all was fine. That

was the only time I got that message from PS even when

switching to the EyeOne Display calibrator.

 

And yes, you need to use the Spyder2 software when creating

the profile. Just skip the section where it requires you to push

buttons or sliders to push the display into a desired Kelvin,

gamma or luminance number.

 

On my EyeOne Display it gives me a default choice of 6500K, 2.2

gamma and 100 cdm/2 luminance. Then it allows you to set a

target-native or other choices besides the ones described. I

always choose native even with my CRT. Everything works great

on my 8 year old Princeton Graphics EO90.

[chrispy]

Thank you for all your responses. I seem to have got rid of the photoshop error by reinstalling the spyder software.

 

I still haven't completely understood how the whole color management works.

 

Once you create your color profile, I let the colorvision loader to install the monitor profile when windows starts up. This changes the color prifile everywhere. I initially thought the monitor prifile would only get loaded within selected applications such as photoshop etc. Have I missed something? How do you set the adobe colorspace in conjunction with the monitor profile?

 

I did a quick search with no success, for a step by step guide in how all the profiles fit together.

 

Can anyone help or have a good link for colorspaces for dummies?

 

Also, I installed the microsoft wincolor manager. Not sure how this works. When you select the differen prifiles, nothing happens. With the colorvision profiler you can select each profile and you see the difference immediately.

 

Thanks

Chris

[serge c]

Within the color applet you need to assign a profile to a monitor in a Devices tab and then click "set default" and "Apply"...

 

Calibrating a monitor includes two parts. One is adjusting the monitor output in all applications (colormanaged and not) to certain targets if you chose to do so (to 6500K and 2.2 in your case). This is a somewhat optional task. You may choose to calibrate to Native targets (if your software allows it) in which case nothing will change in non-colormanaged application.

 

The main part of the calibration however is actually profiling (measuring the output) of the monitor. The resulting output of the monitor (whichever targets you chose) gets measured and described in the profile. This description affects only output of colormanaged applications such as Photoshop. Photoshop adjust its display colors based on it's working space and on your monitor profile. It's called gamut remapping.

 

During the first part of calibration (when you adjust colors to match your target white point and gamma) some part of adjustment usually is done through videocard LUTs (look up tables). (This is an imperfect procedure and often leads to some color loss on the monitor. However this is the state of the mainstream technology at the moment). Those LUT adjustments instructions get recorded in the monitor profile as well in a separate tag (vcgt). That's what gets loaded on Startup or whenever you change a profile in Colorvision utility or the Color Applet. On a PC (as opposed to a mac) LUT loading is done by a standalone application in a Startup folder. There are many such applications, you only need to use one.

 

For a profile to work correctly in colormanaged applications corresponding LUTs need to be loaded. LUTs affect everything on the monitor, colormanaged and non-colormanaged applications alike. If they are not loaded correctly the monitor output would not match the description in the profile.

 

For a very thorough PC-centered overview of the process see Norman Koren's site (ignore the Picture Window Pro stuff - one screenshot can make you want to switch to mac):

 

http://www.normankoren.com/color_management_2.html

[serge c]

This link, too (it's the first part of the article):

 

http://www.normankoren.com/color_management.html

 

For some reason all those diagrams and details make it look more confusing than it is... And that Picture Window Pro thing... Oh well... You'll figure it out.

 

Keep in mind - gamut remapping is the main thing. Matching calibration targets (and usually using videocard LUTs in the process) is an important but secondary task.

[serge c]

"LUT" main sound extremely technical but essentially those tables are just instructions to the videocard to change it's RGB output. Sort of like RGB curves in Photoshop or any other input/output curves.

[chrispy]

Thanks Serge, I had a quick look at the website, need some time to go through it all in detail. So do color prifiles get assigned automatically to the colormanaged applications? If so, why can you also select the monitor profile under the RGB working space (in PS CS2)?