Calibrated At Last

Today I finally got a Spyder2 Express monitor calibration kit, and calibrated my ThinkPad's laptop. I've known it to be shockingly badly calibrated (although it is an improvement over the X20), but was curious as to how much it can be corrected.

One word: wow. Thanks to Graeme Gill et al of ArgyllCMS fame for reverse-engineering how the Spyder2 works, and making calibrating displays reasonably easy to do. I'll probably write up what I did at some point, because if you are like me and don't read the documentation there are a number of stumbling points.

I also blame Jakub entirely for making me think ArgyllCMS was broken by picking slightly warm grey tones for Darkilouche. My freshly calibrated screen looked a little warm instead of the usual very cool, and it took me a good ten minutes to think about checking that the theme is actually pure grey.

NP: Blue Skied An' Clear - A Morr Music Compilation

17:00 Wednesday, 14 Nov 2007 [#] [computers] (11 comments)

Posted by Marius Gedminas at Wed Nov 14 20:34:05 2007:
A writeup would be very nice.  Although I probably am not like you in that I've no idea how to start with this whole color-calibration thingy.  All I know is that the colors on my Thinkpad's LCD look different from the colors on the external Samsung LCD, which slightly mars the dual-head experience.
Posted by Panos at Wed Nov 14 21:39:59 2007:
I've been thinking of getting a calibrator, since my macbook, is nowhere near the display of the desktop screen (EIZO FlexScan L768).

I've tried callibrating the mac by hand (the app it provides), but my eyes almost bled...

Is that Spyder2Express thingy worth its money?
Posted by Ross at Wed Nov 14 21:56:06 2007:
Panos: considering it cost 60 quid, then yes very much.  You can easily spend many hundreds on a calibrator, so its a positive steal.
Posted by panos at Wed Nov 14 22:51:14 2007:
60 quid sounds about right. I saw some pro 3 version of it that cost 270 or so, but for 60 you've got (almost) nothing to lose... :)

Thanks for the info Ross.
Posted by Jakub Steiner at Thu Nov 15 10:32:44 2007:
/me forwards the blame to tigert as he's largely responsible for the tango color palette :)

Glad to hear a success story with color calibration on linux. Will take a look at one of these nifty little devices.
Posted by Andrew Derby at Thu Nov 15 10:56:02 2007:
Another vote for a writeup. I had no idea you could get colour calibration hardware so cheaply. Quite excited about this as I've had a Canon 350D for a year or so and I've been converting from RAW but without calibration there is always that element of doubt. I've been using a combination of Bibble Pro for the RAW conversion and Digikam for organisation.
Looks like I've found myself something to put on my Christmas wish list, so thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Posted by Andrew Derby at Thu Nov 15 11:36:10 2007:
Another vote for a writeup. I had no idea you could get colour calibration hardware so cheaply. Quite excited about this as I've had a Canon 350D for a year or so and I've been converting from RAW but without calibration there is always that element of doubt. I've been using a combination of Bibble Pro for the RAW conversion and Digikam for organisation.
Looks like I've found myself something to put on my Christmas wish list, so thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Posted by George Wright at Thu Nov 15 12:25:24 2007:
How much do those kits cost? I've had a dual monitor setup for a while, but I've never managed to get consistent colour across both...
Posted by George Wright at Thu Nov 15 12:27:36 2007:
Doh! Should have read the comments...
Posted by Roel at Thu Nov 15 21:44:41 2007:
And another vote for a write-up! I've been thinking about colour calibrating my monitor, but as yet haven't found a comprehensible howto on this subject (comprehensible for a normal user like me, that is :).
Posted by jcornuz at Thu Nov 15 22:32:04 2007:
I tried for myself, you can see my report here:
http://jcornuz.wordpress.com/2007/11/16/spyder-the-good-and-the-ugly/

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