Opinions on Spyder 3 Express

jziegler

I'm in the market for a new, low cost color calibration device, and I'd like to know if there are any users of the Spyder 3 express on here. I'd like to go with something that is not a Pantone/X-Rite product (due to a horrible Huey experience), and the Express fits in the sub- $100 price range that I'm looking at.

Does the puck for the Express support any of the third party apps? I have an NEC 90 series monitor that has a hardware look up table. While I don't think that I will spend the money for any software that supports it right now, having the option in the future without buying a new puck would b nice.

Thanks

ColoradoSkier

jziegler wrote:

I'm in the market for a new, low cost color calibration device, and I'd like to know if there are any users of the Spyder 3 express on here. I'd like to go with something that is not a Pantone/X-Rite product (due to a horrible Huey experience), and the Express fits in the sub- $100 price range that I'm looking at.

Does the puck for the Express support any of the third party apps? I have an NEC 90 series monitor that has a hardware look up table. While I don't think that I will spend the money for any software that supports it right now, having the option in the future without buying a new puck would b nice.

Thanks

Not sure about 3rd party compatibility, but I have a Spyder 3 Pro and love it. Froogle.com can find you the lowest price.

Newsy

jziegler wrote:

I'm in the market for a new, low cost color calibration device, and I'd like to know if there are any users of the Spyder 3 express on here. I'd like to go with something that is not a Pantone/X-Rite product (due to a horrible Huey experience), and the Express fits in the sub- $100 price range that I'm looking at.

I'm not a fan of the Express or Pro Spyder3 kits simply because the software is crippled with these versions and it does not permit calibrating to a custom white or black luminance value. White luminance is the key parameter to measure brightness and getting your monitor brightness under control is the key to avoid dark prints from post processed "levels adjusted" images. Most LCD monitors out of the box are somewhere around 300 cd/m2 of white luminance and you need to get it down to somewhere between 100 to 140 for print matching. It all depends on the lighting of the room you edit in hence there is no "right" value.

Both the Spyder3 Elite and the Xrite i1D2 also offer the ability to use the puck as a sensor to measure the ambient lighting of the room. This gets very close to the "right" white luminance value for your room and usually a couple of test prints and further adjustment of the target white luminance will get you bang on a value that eliminates dark prints.

http://spyder.datacolor.com/s3compare.php

The Spyder3 PRO also has the ambient light feature.

Does the puck for the Express support any of the third party apps?

Yes. There are a couple of open source colorimeter software utilities.

This is one...
http://www.homecinema-fr.com/colorimetre/index_en.php

You can use this software with the Spyder3Express to set a custom white luminance value and then use the Spyder software to set gamma, temperature, and RGB.

I have an NEC 90 series monitor that has a hardware look up table. While I don't think that I will spend the money for any software that supports it right now, having the option in the future without buying a new puck would b nice.

I've read that this is do-able with the Xrite i1D2 puck but am not sure on the Spyder3 product.

***

For what it is worth, I've read of more post purchase unhappiness with the Spyder3 units than the i1D2 units. There are a number of comments where people have a post calibration caste and they cannot get rid of it. If I was you, I'd consider your Huey experience as essentially dealing with a different company than Xrite's i1D2 products division. The Huey had a lot of issue the first couple of years after they were introduced.

As a user of a Spyder2 PRO.... I'd likely buy the Xrite i1D2 product when I upgrade to a wide gamut monitor.

.

ivar

I have the Spyder3Elite, and it works a treat the puck works with other software, also.

Newsy wrote:

This gets very close to the "right" white luminance value for your room and usually a couple of test prints and further adjustment of the target white luminance will get you bang on a value that eliminates dark prints.

maybe I'm misunderstanding something here, but what has monitor calibration to do with dark prints?

jziegler

Newsy,

Thanks for the detailed reply. I see your points about the value of some of the higher end products, but if I wnated to spend that kind of money, I'd go right to NEC Spectraview since my monitor is supported and I would get the calibration LUT in my monitor that way. The only eye-one that I'd even consider, price wise, would be the LT. Which is what led me to the Sypder3express.

The program that you linked to looks interesting. I'm not seeing quite how to use it like you are saying, but I'll look at it. As an electrical engineer, I found their DIY project to be interesting as well.

It is also hard to consider it a different company, since I doubt that the support team is different, and I did not find them very helpful, and they were very slow to respond, and never made it right for me. I have a hard time giving more money to the people responsible for the single worst computer/electronics product that I have ever purchased. I just find it hard to beleive that people willing to sell and not support something so bad also have good products.

Why does color calibration need to be so difficult (and expensive)? Seeing the light sensor IC used in the french DIY product, a puck using it should be really cheap. Sorry for the little rant. I'm still not sure what I want to get now, but I'm very frustrated with the status-quo. I guess I need some more time to think about this and research.

Jim

Newsy

ivar wrote:

I have the Spyder3Elite, and it works a treat the puck works with other software, also.
maybe I'm misunderstanding something here, but what has monitor calibration to do with dark prints?

Brightness is very much a part of an accurately calibrated monitor.

When calibrating a monitor with a hardware kit, typically the brightness level is set first and then the gamma, temperature, and RGB settings are determined (maybe not in that exact order, can't recall off hand).

With most of the recent better quality LCD monitors the brightness has to be brought down substantially from the factory default settings. The results I often read of from hardware calibrated monitors are a Brightness setting between 0 and 15 and a Contrast setting of 60 to 80. Posts from people who have tried it by eye often have settings like 40 to 50 Brightness and 50 to 60 Contrast. These are the settings from the monitors' internal menus, not from the video card software.

With some monitors, they're so bright that you have to use the RGB sliders to tweak the brightness down a little lower but this has to be done with some caution. This is often the case with people who like to edit in a very dark room. If you move the sliders too low you end up getting outside of the capability of the monitors electronics which can result in an unnatural cast or banding/posterization.

Hence, set your brightness first using the monitor's B/C controls and go as low as you can go before touching the monitors' sRGB sliders.



So... monitor calibration to avoid dark prints.

Images straight out the camera that are exposed correctly should never print dark if the printer is set up correctly.

However, many times images are under exposed and when post processed, the levels or curve will be tweaked to brighten them up.

To the human eye, if you edit the image on an overly bright monitor so the image has a little "pop" , your amount of adjustment is likely to be less than if you edited the same image on an monitor that is much less bright. The print from the image edited on an overly bright monitor will be darker than the other. It may appear fine on the overly bright monitor, but on paper it will simply be dark in comparison.

Part of the issue here is the eye's perception of the brightness of a backlit monitor screen versus the eye's perception of light reflecting off the paper of the print.

The major part of the issue is that the eye is perceptually biased by the ambient lighting of the room. What is an overly bright monitor in a room lit by a 60w bulb is quite different from what is overly bright in a commercial office where the light levels have to meet a Workers Compensation specification. Hence, the monitor has to be adjusted to match the ambient lighting.

100 cd/m2 can be fine for a home office with one 60w bulb
120 cd/m2 is typical of where many calibrate to
140 to 160 cd/m2 may be required in an office.
250 cd/m2 or more is often the out of box level

Over time, the backlights on LCD monitors dim. This dimming is very gradual and is not noticeable in day to day use to the human eye. The monitor needs to be re-calibrated periodically else you may get prints that look too bright.

Using a hardware calibrator to adjust the monitor's brightness to a known value for the localized ambient lighting compensates for the perceptual vagueness of the eye in determining the amount of adjustment that is required to make an underexposed image look and print right.

Does this make sense?

.

CoryUT

Thread bookmarked for future reference. Thanks for the good information

marikris

Newsy wrote:

This is one...
http://www.homecinema-fr.com/colorimetre/index_en.php

You can use this software with the Spyder3Express to set a custom white luminance value and then use the Spyder software to set gamma, temperature, and RGB.

Great stuff int his thread! So I downloaded this but can't get it to work. I'm using a Spyder2Express btw. I tried the help manual built in, but it's empty The online forum is in French only. If it's not too much trouble, could you do a quick tutorial on how to fix the luminance? Sorry - this is not the most user-friendly tool I was hoping it would be lol. I'd really appreciate it; I'm sure others would too!

Newsy

marikris wrote:

Great stuff int his thread! So I downloaded this but can't get it to work. I'm using a Spyder2Express btw. I tried the help manual built in, but it's empty The online forum is in French only. If it's not too much trouble, could you do a quick tutorial on how to fix the luminance? Sorry - this is not the most user-friendly tool I was hoping it would be lol. I'd really appreciate it; I'm sure others would too!

Does this help?

http://www.marcelpatek.com/hcfr.html

http://www.curtpalme.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=115919&sid=49ee6ab1f0a5196c776756c101c68338#115919

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ivar

Newsy wrote:

[...]

Images straight out the camera that are exposed correctly should never print dark if the printer is set up correctly.

[...]

Part of the issue here is the eye's perception of the brightness of a backlit monitor screen versus the eye's perception of light reflecting off the paper of the print.

[...]

Does this make sense?

.

Yes, sort of. I know and understand the theory behind it, I just didn't get the link between monitor calibration and dark prints. Probably because I never judge dark-/lightness with my eyes but always use a histogram, specifically because eyes can't be trusted (at least not fully).
It's one of the first things I learned when I started to work for SmugMug, and from my current job I know that it's easy to fool eyes in many other ways also. I didn't know too much about colors/brightness before SmugMug. The majority of prints returned (without auto color correction) is because they are too dark.
So, my reasoning in a nutshell: Photo, check histogram, if that's 'good', the backlight shouldn't matter when it comes to dark prints.

Newsy

ivar wrote:

Yes, sort of. I know and understand the theory behind it, I just didn't get the link between monitor calibration and dark prints. Probably because I never judge dark-/lightness with my eyes but always use a histogram, specifically because eyes can't be trusted (at least not fully).
It's one of the first things I learned when I started to work for SmugMug, and from my current job I know that it's easy to fool eyes in many other ways also. I didn't know too much about colors/brightness before SmugMug. The majority of prints returned (without auto color correction) is because they are too dark.
So, my reasoning in a nutshell: Photo, check histogram, if that's 'good', the backlight shouldn't matter when it comes to dark prints.

That's basically what I do for a quick edit. Put the histogram tool up on screen and nip the ends while having the "clipping" warning active so clipped area are highlighted on screen.

A lot of people use the brightness and contrast sliders though without any kind of clipping warning.

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mmmatt

I just picked up a spyder3 pro along with a new machine and a very crappy monitor... oops! After calibrating my lappy display (very nice dell 17" 1920x1200) it was perfect and easy, but with the crappy new monitor (sceptre 22' 1920x1080) it was absolutely awful. Orange caste to everything, super warm skin tones, and my reds looked like blaze orange. After messing with it for a few days I ended up forcing the spyder software to allow me to use the rgb sliders instead of the Kalvin presets and that brought me into a screen that allowed me to set the rgb levels as well as the luminescence. After knocking down all the sliders about 35%, I got my luminescence down to about 110 from 258 and that made all the difference in the world. That is the key to using the spyder3 pro effectively ime. I also preset to 6500k and 2.4 gamma and disregarded the ambient suggestion. My ambient level/temp changes a lot in the room I work in due to natural light through colored curtains, but I do most of my critical work after the sun goes down.

Matt