Are the 100 dollar or so Colorimeters for Display Calibration worth it?

D

Deer Film

Well-known member
Hi
I have two dell monitors. What is an inexpensive way to color correct or calibrate the monitors? I would like to match the colors on both monitors to a correct color setting. Does not have to be 100% perfect.
There are a few options I saw on Amazon, like the Spyder4pro, Pantone Huey, or X-Rite?
 
Just be aware even if you do calibrate them, they will only be accurate for color correcting IN THE COLOR SPACES THEY REPRESENT. So unless that's one of those monitors that can reproduce REC 709, it's only good for color correcting stuff meant for the web/computer monitor viewing as web/computers, TV, projection screens are all different color spaces.

To answer your questions more directly the mid and high level/priced spyders are supposed to be good. Got my girl one (for photoshop). She tried using it when I first got it and got really strange results (screen, when "calibrated" looked really warm among other things). So take that for what it's worth. That may well be how it's supposed to look and we're just not used to it.
 
I've got the spyder2express. It's a hell of a lot better than nothing. But it's definitely not as good as I'd like it to be.

My biggest issues with it are:
* The software it comes with is awful. They may have solved this, or maybe not.
* Video playback will sometimes bypass the color profile set by the spyder. This is software dependent. In the end, instead of investigating what is affected and what is not, I ended up using the spyder to make sure my monitor settings are as good as possible, through a slow cycle of manual-adjust, spyder, manual-adjust, spyder, etc, until the before and after images looked identical. I think I got it really close, but not perfect.
* It doesn't give you proper reports, just a before and after image. The CalMAN software is A LOT better in this respect (see here), and I think I could use it with my spyder2express too...

If nearly-there is not good enough for you, you'll have to buy something more expensive.
 
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