Color Monitor Calibration Tool Comparison

Dan7312 · December 28, 2009

I've been looking at which monitor color calibration tool to get. There doesn't seem any objective comparison of them and I'm not even sure one is possible. The vendors don't make it easy to compare their products to other brands... no big suprise there:wink. I'm not looking at any of the real high end stuff in any case.

I've put together a spreadsheet of some of the attributes of each band/model I'm looking at... I thought others might be interested in it. I'll keep it up to date with any additional/corrected info that passed back to me in replies. The info in the spreadsheet is based on vendors web pages and comments and reviews I could find on the web.

I wouldn't doubt that some of the entries I have made in the spread sheet are incorrect because most of the material the vendors provide are really along the line of "Use our tool and your colors will be perfect." as opposed being objective about what their tools do. Also in many cases it's the software provided with the hardware enables more advanced capabilites. Again just reply back and I'll keep the spreadsheet up to date

Here are my definitions of the columns in the spreadsheet... they are a bit mushy because I don't necessarily understand color calibration that well and the vendors really try to specify "market" definitions, not objective ones.

Measure Color: the ability to measure a color on a physical object.

Ambient Light: the ability to measure ambient light and take it into account in making the color profile

Luminance Compensation: The ability to adjust the brightness of the monitor to make prints have full detail in dark regions.

Ambience Monitor: Warns or compensates for changes in ambient light as you do your color work.

Gamma Curve editing: pick a custom gamma number, rather than just some presets.

Custom Curves: make you own custom target profile curve that will be used to calibarate to:

Sets LUT: sets the Lookup table in the video card directly.

Jeremy Winterberg · December 31, 2009

I just got the Eye-One Display 2 a few weeks ago. It took me a while to figure out how to calibrate my screen properly, but I think I have it pretty accurate now.

It allows you to check the ambient light, choose from a list of gamma settings ranging from 1 to 3 in .1 increments as well as custom, custom luminance, custom white point... You can either run it in Easy Mode, which is the auto mode, it does everything for you. Or Advanced mode, which takes you step by step and allows you to change the settings on your monitor till its where you want it.

Its really nice, and I recommend it. But, it only does monitors. If you need to calibrate it to your printer, projector, etc... its not the one you need. I think I paid $187 for mine, got it brand new on Amazon.

HTH

photon · January 1, 2010

Good resource
Thanks for the spreadsheet... I hadn't heard of a couple of the other competitors, as you mostly hear about Spyder and i1 .

I have a bit of a n00b question... Your spreadsheet has the column 'Luminance Compensation,' which I take to mean you can dial-in the luminance of the monitor and adjust until it matches... If so, is this the feature to look for when trying to get your prints to match the brightness you see on the monitor? I've heard a lot of horror stories of prints being too dark, with the explanation that the monitor is set too bright.

The short question: if you want your prints to match your monitor, you need either the i1 Display 2 or the Spyder 3 Elite??

Thanks in advance for any advice...

Jeremy Winterberg · January 1, 2010

photon wrote:

The short question: if you want your prints to match your monitor, you need either the i1 Display 2 or the Spyder 3 Elite??

Thanks in advance for any advice...

As I said in my post... the i1 display 2 only does monitors (hence the name Display 2

)... so if you're looking for calibrating your printer to your monitor, you'll have to find a different calibrator. I don't know much about the other brands, so I wont make a suggestion as to which one. I hear the Xrite ColorMunki's are good for this though.

Dan7312 · January 1, 2010

They all do monitors, some do projectors and printers. Spyder has a separate package for doing printer calibaration... and yet another package that includes both the Elite and printer calibration.

I just getting into monitor calibration and I ended up going with the Spyder 3 Elite. The other spyders would be sufficient for monitor calibration, but I wanted the extra data the Elite provides... all the Spyders are the same hardware, the software included with them is different.

With the Elite you can specify a lumininace level... I'm not really sure when that is an advantage but I know that the lack of this capability is often cited as a deficiency. The Elite also shows just how well the calibration worked... I have a more than 5 year old LCD monitor and one of the the things that deteriorates the the florescent tube that illuminates the LCD, so I wanted to see if I needed to replace my monitor, among other info it provides.

photon wrote:

Thanks for the spreadsheet... I hadn't heard of a couple of the other competitors, as you mostly hear about Spyder and i1 .

I have a bit of a n00b question... Your spreadsheet has the column 'Luminance Compensation,' which I take to mean you can dial-in the luminance of the monitor and adjust until it matches... If so, is this the feature to look for when trying to get your prints to match the brightness you see on the monitor? I've heard a lot of horror stories of prints being too dark, with the explanation that the monitor is set too bright.

The short question: if you want your prints to match your monitor, you need either the i1 Display 2 or the Spyder 3 Elite??

Thanks in advance for any advice...

edmacke · January 28, 2010

Some Updates?
Dan,

I think this is a great idea. Getting info on some of these products is like pulling teeth. Pantone/X-rite provides very little info, but the Spyder products are easier.

I took the liberty of adding some stuff to your original spreadsheet. I thought the Gamma and Color Temp choices might be important. I also added a few more products, like Spyder 3 Express and ColorMunki Create. Oh, I also added a price column - I thought that made it easier to see what you're getting for your $$$.

Use or discard at your pleasure!

Dan7312 · January 28, 2010

Thanks for updating the info!

edmacke wrote:

Use or discard at your pleasure!

Color Monitor Calibration Tool Comparison

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