Monitor calibration.

[dropoff]

Regarding the quality of your monitor and calibration tools. I have an old 19 inch dell LCD thats pretty ok i guess, i plan on buying a bigger monitor, but i don t plan on dropping several hundred or a few thousand on a fancy LaCie or the other expensive brand who's name i forget.

I do plan on picking up Spyder2express though and calibrating the monitor i have. I was just wondering if it is a waste of time calibrating plain ol' consumer monitors.

I have CS3/BR/LR and one thing that all my books/instructors have said that any editing/correction is a waste without a color managed/calibrated monitor.

[erichlund]

Regarding the quality of your monitor and calibration tools. I have an old 19 inch dell LCD thats pretty ok i guess, i plan on buying a bigger monitor, but i don t plan on dropping several hundred or a few thousand on a fancy LaCie or the other expensive brand who's name i forget.

I do plan on picking up Spyder2express though and calibrating the monitor i have. I was just wondering if it is a waste of time calibrating plain ol' consumer monitors.

I have CS3/BR/LR and one thing that all my books/instructors have said that any editing/correction is a waste without a color managed/calibrated monitor.

Actually, the calibrators are for the consumer monitors. The LaCie comes with it's own calibration capability, though I'm not sure how that is implemented.

[Nickcanada]

Calibration made a huge difference on my monitor. I highly recommend it.

[njoy_az]

Mine even provided its own profile (which is used by ColorSync to "calibrate" it).

[GaryS]

I have a Pantone Huey... It has made a HUGE difference in how happy I am with my photos.

Before: I would think that all shots out of my XTi were too dark, so I would brighten them up. But then when I printed or checked flickr on my work computer, I would think they were all too bright.

After: Now I think most shots out of the camera are pretty good, so I do a LOT less editing. And if I get them right on my calibrated monitor, then they look good at work, my friends computers, and when printed.

Highly recommended....

[BBPhoto]

Calibrating your monitor is essential if you are doing prints. Even without prints, things just look better on screen. I think that the Spyder2 is a great product but I would advise against the express version. The software does not allow and control over the white point setting. If your monitor's native white point is very different from the express default your monitor could end up looking worse than before calibration. This is a problem with some LCDs - especially some Dell models. Stick to the spyder2 suite at minimum. Let us know how it goes.

[zmikers]

Two questions: 1)What is a decent price for the spyder 2? I've sen it for as low as 99 dollars US on amazon. And that brings me to question 2)Amazon won't ship it over seas. Do you know any trust worthy websites that will ship overseas, Taiwan in particular? Cheers guys

[SpecialK]

I've only ever "calibrated" my monitors using 3 or 4 various website tests, and looking at other people's images :-) None needed any major tweaks, so maybe I'm just lucky.

I wonder how varied people's monitors really are, just judging from the different gallery posts. If everyone had out-of-calibration monitors, it would seem that we would have a variety of tints and exposures. I don't see that in the galleries, though.

[BBPhoto]

Two questions: 1)What is a decent price for the spyder 2? I've sen it for as low as 99 dollars US on amazon. And that brings me to question 2)Amazon won't ship it over seas. Do you know any trust worthy websites that will ship overseas, Taiwan in particular? Cheers guys

I picked mine up on Ebay. That's probably better than dealing with retailers as far as shipping goes. I see them occasionally in the sell section on POTN.

[zmikers]

I picked mine up on Ebay. That's probably better than dealing with retailers as far as shipping goes. I see them occasionally in the sell section on POTN.

Cool, I'll check it out. Cheers for the info:)

[The Mangler]

I have a Pantone Huey... It has made a HUGE difference in how happy I am with my photos. [...]
I have that too. I made a huge difference on my monitor too.

Anyone know how much of a difference upgrading from the Huey (to Sypder2, for example) will make?