[Review] Datacolor Spyder 3 Pro

[SirEvan]

So after battling UPS customer service on the phone for 3 days, I finally get my Spyder 3 today, was supposed to be delivered friday, for some reason they lost it friday and had to reschedule to monday....whatever I hate UPS. Now for the review.

A short introduction to the spyer 3 Pro and why you want one if you're an artist or photographer:

LCDs/CRTs/Televisions come from the factory all set pretty much the same way. Same brightness, same contrast, same back light intensity, same color temperature settings. These are usually set to display the web standard color profile, sRGB pretty well, but suck for anything else. "But my monitor looks fine" you're saying. Well yeah, because your eyes adjust to it, as long as it's relatively close to good, so you think its good. But what happens when you fire up photoshop or gimp or some other image editor, work on an image, and then go to print it...just to have it come out too dark, too light, too red, too green...etc. What happened? Simple, your screen was not profiled, so what you thought you saw on the screen wasn't what colors were really there. This is where the Spyder comes in.

There are many calibration tools out there, from companies such as Gretag Mcbeth, Datacolor, and a few others. I believe the spyder is currently the best on the market, I've had the Spyder 2 pro, and now the Spyder 3 Pro. The spyder 3 elite didn't offer enough improvement to justify the cost, and at 159$ for the pro with a education discount, i couldn't pass it up.

You install the software, plug this thing into a usb port, and stick it on your monitor. The software walks you through the calibration stage, and it's noticeably faster with the 3 vs the 2, about 2-3 minutes vs. 5-7 minutes. It measures the colors your monitor is showing, compairs it to the known value of what the colors should be, and generates a LUT (look up table) to store in your graphics card that gets loaded at startup, so it always shows the corect colors.

The Specs vs. the Spyder 2:

37% Smaller than the Spyder 2, 29% more accurate, 246% larger measuring area, 29% faster, and 64% faster at recalibration, so you can now recalibrate in roughly a minute time.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with it, if you're interested in pictures, and before/after shots of what it can do, check out the manufacturers site

Datacolor Website

All in all, I'm very impressed, my current profile looks even better than what i got with the spyder 2, so i can trust what i see to come out on prints even more now.

Edited April 14, 2008 by SirEvan

[saxondale.]

Just a quick question, how often do you recalibrate your monitor?

[Aperture]

You could do it weekly if you like, they recommend monthly as a safety barrier, although I've been known to do it when ever I have anything major I have to edit colour wise.

[Raa]

I'd get one, but my problem is, I want a device that actually TELLS me what my monitor's calibration problem is (Eg too much green, or not enough contrast etc.)

I don't want a tacky "profile" that bypasses the problem instead of actually telling me what to change on my monitor.

Or will this device do it? Because I'd like to calibrate my Dell 2408WFP, but not using profiles.

[SirEvan]

You specify what controls your monitor has such as : brightness, contrast, backlight, color temp, RGB sliders, kelvin values, gamma, etc. Depending on what options you select, it will give you different options to calibrate. My Samsung 213T in DVI mode only has brightness, so im limited, due to it disabling everything else. But if you have color bars on your monitor, then the profile software will tell you the levels, and allow you to adjust them (such as it showing your green too low....raise it up, remeasure, adjust blue a little.) this takes care of the hard adjustments to bring your monitor close to spec, then it generates the look up table to fine tune it.

so to basically answer your question.....yes. I'll take some screen shots this weekend of my other monitor that does allow these changes so you can see.

compaired to the spyder 2, this thing is fast! dont know about the huey, i've heard bad reviews of it, datacolor is the best

saxondale: I recalibrate every month. HOWEVER, if I'm doing a photoshoot, I recalibrate right before i start to work on my images so my profile is completely up to date...otherwise no real reason to do otherwise, so I'll let it go for a month.

[Twisted Chaz]

I've got the Huey Pro, I don't really like it, but it does change the colours of your monitor in reaction to the light in the room at the time, which is pretty good when you work in the day and night.

Might look into getting a Spyder.

[saxondale.]

I don't understand why you need to recalibrate? Obviously i'm missing something, but once calibrated, how can the colours change?

[SirEvan]

the reason for recalibration, is because your monitor drifts over time, as it gets older, and its ability to display colors changes, so over time colors aren't going to look like they once did....its similar sort of to film shifting. As film ages, its color rendering abilities change as well, or if you have developed film, its why the colors change over the years. This happens very slowly, but it is noticeable, thats why pro film is refrigerated up until it gets sold, upon which the customer will usually freeze or refrigerate it themselves until ready for use, so that it maintains its properties.

every 2 weeks is pretty hard core, unless you're a serious pro, or work on alot of stuff, every month or two should be fine for most people, you won't notice that much of a shift. I do it before working on every shoot just so i have something up to date.

I've got the Huey Pro, I don't really like it, but it does change the colours of your monitor in reaction to the light in the room at the time, which is pretty good when you work in the day and night.

Might look into getting a Spyder.

The spyder 3 does this as well, asd will tell you if the lighting in your room changes too much and requires a recalibration to match for your room light. Another nice feature is ambient light compensation, where it measure the room light color, and then can adjust for that in its calculations.

[Echilon]

Nice review. I stick to RGB wherever possible. CMYK's lack of green annoys me. ;)

[BenMV]

Glad you are enjoying the Spyder3Pro SirEvan!

Yes, CMYK is not necessary unless your prepping files for offset printing. Despite there ink-sets, inkjet printers are RGB devices for all intents and purpose.

I personally profile my display every week with my Spyder3Elite. I use it a lot and this way I won't procrastinate and wait a month or two...

Yes, the Spyder3Pro or Elite is a far superior display profiling Sensor/Software package then the Huey Pro. I may be biased but the reviews are pretty unanimous....

@Raa, Unfortunately your Dell display is not capable of calibrating and then accurately displaying colors, gamma, ect without the use of a profile. To do this you would need to purchase an Eizo, NEC, or LaCie display which incorporates hardware calibration and internal LUTs when using there own calibrating software which bypasses your computers video card. Of course there software works perfectly with the Spyder3 colorimeter!

While the common wisdom is to adjust as much as possible with the displays controls we've come to discover thru testing and product development that actually it's best to set your display to it's factory defaults and to only adjust the displays backlight, (called brightness if your display does not have both brightness and backlight controls). With the Spyder3 device and software more accurate color, greater dynamic range, and smoother tonal transitions will be achieved via the software generated profile than can be achieved with your displays controls.

Our software does provide precise color numbers, gamma curve plots, white and black luminance values ect. With the Spyder3Elite all aspects of the profile you create are user adjustable so the limit for precision is hardware(display), not software based.

So you can still get excellent color and gamma rendition strictly from a profile loaded onto your video cards LUT!