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Home >> Photography >> Digital ColorVision
Spyder, OptiCal & ProfilerPLUS Software Click here for the ProfilerPLUS Review further below
With the changes I’m trying to make to my computer system to better reflect its importance as a digital darkroom set-up, I finally relented and ordered a spyder and calibration software from ColorVision. I can attest to how inaccurate the eyeballing nature of Adobe Gamma can be because in the past when I’ve calibrated, I noticed a strange shift towards green or red or blue. As much as I thought I was calibrating accurately via the RGB sliders, as much as I turned off the lights and had my monitor on for hours before running Adobe Gamma, I have just as often gotten color shifts as much as I have received relatively neutral profiles thanks to the peculiarities of my eyes. Perhaps due to mental and physical conditions I was in those past profiling sessions. My most recent try at calibrating with Adobe Gamma got a pretty decent profile, one that had no particular color cast, but one that was a bit more saturated than my first calibration with the ColorVision system. Other than the richer tone, any other differences were subtle between the last Adobe Gamma profile I had to the current ColorVision one. That was with my old MAG 17 inch CRT monitor, but having now upgraded the monitor to a 21 inch Sony E540 flat screen Trinitron, I realized that that first profiling with the spyder and OptiCal was incorrect, more on this later. Instead of squinting in the dark and trying to guess at accurate RGB tones and brightness and contrast, now all the work is done much more accurately with the spyder and the OptiCal software. I just need to follow the instructions provided and merely dial in the correct brightness and contrast setting on the monitor, as shown by a bar and number readout in the OptiCal screen. My 17 inch MAG monitor is old enough that it uses dials for brightness and contrast instead of buttons. I always thought the dials were so simple and direct, but they seemed a little too imprecise to get the exact matches I would like for the OptiCal prompts. I hoped that my Sony CRT would alleviate this concern, but ironically, I found the button controls of the Sony’s menu to be no more precise than the manual dials on the MAG. The benefit of the buttons though is that it is much harder to alter the chosen settings whereas I had to worry about my kids coming in and playing with MAG dials in the past.
For the Sony Trinitron monitors this means bringing up the menu and low and behold the menu screen pops right up into the lower right hand section of the square that the spyder does its readings. The first time I calibrated the Sony I was horrified to see my monitor reading a brightness figure well off of the recommended setting in OptiCal. Such a gross discrepancy would indicate that something was horribly wrong with the monitor and yet there were no outward signs that the monitor was not in perfect working order. This had me puzzled until I realized that it was the monitor’s menu screen that was throwing off the spyder’s reading. The OptiCal manual recommends 10 to 15 seconds between changing settings to allow the spyder to obtain a proper reading. So when the brightness and contrast prompts come up, you need to let the spyder get a reading first. See what the difference is then do some adjustments via the monitor’s menu, turn it off and then let the spyder take an updated reading. It took longer than with my MAG and its manual dials, but there seems no other way to this as it does appear that the monitor’s menu screen cannot be moved to another section of the monitor’s real estate and ColorVision does not recommend moving the readout screen for the spyder. Not a big deal but something to watch for and again, I got very close to matching the monitor’s brightness and contrast reading to OptiCal’s figures but not quite 100%. Incidentally, Sony’s top of the line CRT monitors for graphic artists come with dedicated spyders and software and I noticed in the Sony ad pictures, that the spyder was attached to the lower left side of the CRT, which would be well away from the menu screen. Then again, my understanding of the Sony calibration system is that it is all automated via the software with no need for input from you. All you need is a measly $1700 US to buy a 21 inch sized model. I set the color temperature of the Sony to 6500 Kelvin and in the OptiCal settings, as this is one of the most used color temperatures for digital darkroom editors to try and match prints to daylight, despite daylight being between 5000 to 5500 K. 6500 K will seem quite warm in balance if you are coming from a monitor that has been unaltered coming out of the box. Most new monitors have a default of 9300 K and a very high brightness setting, which is not appropriate for photo editing. So be sure to set the monitor to a more accurate color temp first before calibrating. Your eyes will quickly adapt to the apparent warmth of the lower color temperature. The OptiCal software runs through various tones of RGB and grey scales for the spyder to read and at the end, you receive a new profile that will be used as the master for your entire system. It’s quick, easy and efficient but not wholly cheap to have a dedicated profiling device and software and I do not think I am quite finished yet. You can purchase the ColorVision profiling packages from ColorVision directly or you can do so via resellers such as B&H or Adorama. I bought mine through B&H because for some reason, the packages are cheaper through the resellers than directly from ColorVision, which is quite strange. I saved more money by buying a CRT spyder instead of one capable of reading from an LCD flat screen panel. This is not a small difference in price as the CRT spyder is more than $100 US cheaper than the LCD/CRT version. I did not cheap out on the software though as ColorVision has the basic PhotoCal and the more feature-rich OptiCal. Although I am not at a stage where I could use every feature of the OptiCal software, I did not want to limit myself in this regard either. Total price for the CRT spyder and OptiCal is $200 US and after conversion to Canadian dollars with all the distasteful taxes afflicted upon me by my federal and provincial governments (not to mention exchange rate fees, S&H and border handling charges by my credit card company, B&H and Canada Post) and the final tally in Canuck loonies is nearing $400. Unfortunately, I don’t think the costs will end there. The ideal
calibration for a digital darkroom is one that profiles all the devices
in the system from a scanner or digital camera, to the monitor, to
the printer used to output the digital images. Using a spyder to profile
the monitor is just the first step and I will likely have to look
into ColorVision’s Profiler package for the scanner and printer or
another company’s similar product, such as
At this time, I’m not at that stage yet, so more to come in the future on this total system calibration approach…
With
my old, non-calibrated MAG monitor, I was doing a manual dialing in
of -15cc magenta in the Epson set-up screens. With the calibrated
Sony CRT, I’m finding that my current made in
Aside from this problem and qualification about the Epson color ink cartridges, how does the spyder and OptiCal work for accurate colors? Not bad at all thank you. I have a desktop lamp on my desk beside the monitor, nothing special, just an ordinary one that uses normal incandescent bulbs. I was using the typical 60 watt bulb for a long time in this lamp and after researching digital darkroom needs, I realized that this lamp would not do, or rather the bulbs would not do. I looked
into what others used for their lighting needs and Ott-Lite came up
as a good choice for a special, low-power, daylight calibrated bulb
in an elegant design. About $100 US for the one I was looking at,
which was about $100 US more than I wanted to bother with, especially
with having to order it from B&H again and going through another
round of being reamed by
Shopping in my local Home Depot found me the solution I was looking for, a Phillips 15 watt daylight energy saving bulb with cooler light than normal incandescent bulbs. This rather large bulb is a fluorescent design and as such, it may cause interference with certain devices such as cordless phones (I have no problem with my Sanyo in the same room as the computer system). The bulb is rated for 10,000 hours and runs very cool and fits into any ordinary light fixture, provided your lamp design will not restrict the size of the bulb. I won’t vouch for the Phillips bulb being completely daylight color temperature accurate, but it is a whole lot better than the orange glow of the hot 60 watt bulbs I used before. Now, whenever I do photo editing, the room lights are off, doors closed, blinds drawn and only my desk lamp is on. I normally have the lamp facing away from me to bounce the light against the wall behind the monitor and only turn it down when I am reviewing prints to compare to the monitor image. This modest change helped to make my digital darkroom much more accurate for reviewing what I see on the monitor to what I receive for prints, and for much less than $100 US. Normal incandescent bulbs cost literally pennies, so the $20 CAN cost of the Phillips daylight bulb is quite high, but it is the cheapest “upgrade” I’ve made to my set-up. So, over $400 CAN to calibrate my new Sony monitor and obtain a more accurate comparison between the monitor’s image to the print image. It wasn’t cheap, but neither is it the most expensive calibration option available, with most others costing much more. I’ve always tried to go with good bang for the buck products for my own use and I do think the ColorVision products offer good bang for the buck. Colorvision
ProfilerPLUS I received Profiler version 2.2, which I duly installed onto my hard drive as per its straightforward instructions and everything seemed okay. Profiler loads itself into the Plug-ins folder of Photoshop, or it should and when it did not I should have suspected something might have been amiss. I manually directed the installer to the Photoshop Plug-ins folder and completed the install. You access Profiler from the Automate option under the File menu. This comes up with the screen to allow opening up the calibration test image and from here you select the option to load this test image. No problems until I tried it and nothing happened. Hmm…I tried to access this calibration target a couple of different ways with none meeting with success and in reading the instructions a bit more closely, I noted that all the references were to Photoshop 6 and 5. A visit to Colorvision’s website confirmed my suspicion that Profiler 2.2 is an old version and that version 2.3 is the one to use for my particular system of Windows XP and Photoshop 7. After downloading the updated Profiler, everything installed the way it should and I was able to access the test target for printing. Since the updated Profiler appears to have been available since mid-2002, it appears the vendor, who shall go unnamed (but is known to be the largest Canadian mail order outlet for photo equipment), is selling old stock, but enough quibbling, onwards with the Profiler. Profiling the paper and printer is straightforward with these basic steps:
You will now receive a print that should be a match to what your see on the monitor, provided your monitor is also properly calibrated. For me, my first print was the standard test image provided by Colorvision, which seemed close to what I saw on the monitor except for skin tones and certain colors, which did not quite match. To my eyes, I thought the yellowish tone of the Archival Matte paper might have been the factor, but in the printing and scanning stages of the test target, the paper’s tone should have been factored in. The second print I did of a family snapshot also seemed close to what I saw on the monitor, but again I noticed the Archival Matte paper was definitely a warmer balance than what I saw on the monitor. This was encouraging but before proceeding further with some glossy papers, I decided I should calibrate the monitor again and ensure that this was not a factor in the very slight discrepancies found with the Archival Matte prints. And since I already knew that Archival Matte is warmer tone paper from previous tests, the print results were not necessarily unexpected. I also discovered in discussions with my friend Dennis who also calibrates his monitor with Colorvision products, that I had not done all the steps required for a full monitor calibration. I had neglected to do the Precal option in the OptiCal software and this was quite a change for the better. Precal is essentially a color temperature setter, but it does so in a very precise fashion. Previously I had simply set my monitor to 6500K color temperature via the monitor’s own settings. This automatically makes everything seem very warm until your eyes get use to the temperature. However, this simple setting is actually quite imprecise based on how much each RGB color gun is firing at, as set by the factory. Precal shows you what each color gun is firing at relative to each other and this allows you to go into the monitor’s settings and adjust each color gun until all are equal. The end result for me is a more accurate 6500 K temperature that is not as warm as the simple monitor setting would have led me to believe. Once a full monitor calibration was complete, I was off and running to profile the papers, one of which was Epson Premium Semigloss and the other Epson Premium Glossy. Those familiar with the Epson 1270 will note that the Epson driver already comes with a stock profile for Premium Glossy and Epson is known to provide very accurate profiles for their papers (when actually provided). So, why would I want or need to profile a stock paper with a custom profile? The
inks. Epson now has multiple sources for their inks and although
you would expect the inks to be consistent no matter where they are
manufactured due to presumed quality control, I have not experienced
such presumed quality. Regular readers will know that my experience
has been that color ink cartridges made in
You can try and fiddle with the manual color controls and I can honestly say that I have wasted ink on dozens of test prints trying to match what I saw on the monitor in various print jobs past. It is far more efficient to do a custom profile via the Colorvision Profiler or other brands’ calibration suite. With everything set as well as could be done for the monitor and printer paper, I did another test print with Archival Matte and…not quite the Holy Grail for absolutely perfection, but closer than anything I had ever been able to achieve in the past and accurate enough to allow for some confidence that what I see on the monitor would translate to what would be printed out. Unfortunately, the glossy papers did not reach the lofty status, as the Archival Matte paper although they are likely closer than most prints I’ve done in the past. The differences are subtle, but they are there and would likely require some manual adjustment with Profiler to obtain perfection. Colorvision
is now quite well known in digital darkroom circles and is lauded
for providing good bang for the buck compared to higher priced alternatives
from other well known and well regarded brands such as
You can try to muddle through with Adobe Gamma and if your eyesight is good or if you’re lucky, you could probably get away with it during the initial phase of your foray into the world of digital photography. As you become more serious about the quality of your images and the accuracy Holy Grail of what you see on the monitor translating to the print, you will find that Adobe Gamma or some other visually based calibrator will no longer be sufficient. Hell, even trying to set the color temperature on the monitor can be tricky and throw everything out of whack, as I discovered. Using a mechanical device with good software to back it up is far more accurate and precise than eyeballing it and the final printer profiler is the icing on the cake to ensure a full system calibration. Ideally, you would want all other aspects of your digital kit to be calibrated too, such as the digital camera or scanner, but getting the monitor and printer profiled correctly is most of the way there. It costs a pretty penny, but it is in order of magnitude less than professional graphics tools and suites, which costs several thousands of dollars. Put it this way, I could buy a decent mid-grade lens for my Nikons for what the Colorvision suite costs, but there isn’t much point if what that lens sees and is captured by my D100 cannot be printed back with any accuracy on my own computer system. Do keep in mind that what you see on the monitor is brighter and more vibrant than what you will receive on paper. Profiling and calibration is about color accuracy not necessarily how vivid the image looks from one medium to another. This is similar to how one usually is not able to translate what they see on a beautifully exposed slide to print because the paper itself is not able to handle the dynamic range of the film and of course, the paper is not backlit like the film is. However, digital done right gets you a whole lot closer than methods of years past. Update - Since writing the review about ProfilerPLUS above, I have had the opportunity to review the GretagMacbeth Eye-One Photo calibration and profiling suite. The Eye-One Photo includes a spectrophotometer, a high precision instrument used to calibrate monitors as well as profile printers. The custom profiles created by the Eye-One put the profiles created by ColorVision ProfilerPLUS to shame and so it should given the higher cost and precision of the Eye-One Photo package. On the basis of this new experience with a superior profiler, I highly recommend that you try and reach for the Eye-One Photo or ColorVision's own spectrophotometer equipped package of the Master Suite Spectro and bypass ProfilerPLUS. ProfilerPLUS is only as good as your flatbed scanner and given the fidelity of most affordable flatbed scanners in printing flat art/prints, you're not likely to be satisfied with the profiles generated by it. As such, I can no longer recommend ProfilerPLUS as being a good purchase despite its affordable cost vis a vis Eye-One. You would be better off spending the money on some custom profiles created by professionals using even higher precision instruments than the Eye-One. Reader's Tip from November 2005
April 3, 2004 - I’ve had a few e-mails in the last little while asking me about ColorVision’s Spyder and GretagMacbeth’s Eye-One packages. While all understood my very positive comments about the Eye-One Photo, some were not sure about how I regarded the Eye-One Display, which is GretagMacbeth’s basic monitor calibration and profiling kit. The basic question asked was which one would I spend my money on if I had to choose between the two. My response to them and repeated here is that I would choose the ColorVision Spyder Pro with OptiCal software. While many have received excellent calibrations and profiles from the Eye-One Display, my experience with it on my Sony CRT was less than reliable. While it did well with an LCD, I would not spend nearly CAN $400 for something that could only do half the job. The spectrophotometer in the much more expensive Eye-One Photo package had no such problems and so it shouldn’t given its CAN $2000 cost. August 30, 2004 - A curious thing happened to me that took a couple of days and many attempts at calibrating and profiling my monitor to resolve. One day my monitor profile, created with the ColorVision Spyder and OptiCal software, disappeared, as in it was no longer being loaded up during the booting/start-up process on my desktop. There was nothing to suggest that it should not be loading up at start-up, as the profile was exactly where it had always been and nothing significant had happened to the computer to alter the load-up process. I did add in a second monitor, but the profile was still loading up and I “don’t” recall messing with any settings (see my last comments below). I didn’t concern myself with it at first because I was due to recalibrate and profile the monitor anyway, but not before doing the Windows XP Service Pack 2 update. Afterwards, many attempts at calibration and waiting for the profile to load ended up in failure. Working out the problem logically, it could not have been the Spyder or OptiCal software, since I was using the latest software version and it had been working fine before the disappearing profile act. It came down to either the monitor or the computer being at fault, so I hooked up the monitor to another computer and was able to calibrate and profile successfully. That left the computer being the culprit, but the question is how could it be? Was it the OS, the way it was handling the profile, or another obscure reason that I would spend hours searching out? I searched the ‘net for possible clues, but to no avail. It came down to me thinking that I would have to format and rebuild the software installation in the desktop’s hard drives. Just great to have a weekend wasted doing that, but before resigning myself to that chore, I tried one last thing out of a lark. I downloaded the latest driver for my video card from ATI, which just happened to be from August 2004, so very current and installed it. Then I did one last calibration and profile and lo and behold, the profile took and held. I rebooted to make sure it would load properly and it did. Then I reconnected the second monitor and rebooted again and it held. Whew! Thus ends my tale of the missing monitor profile and what I did to resolve it (for the benefit of readers as a “just incase.”) And for those who like to go in and mess around with the ATI Catalyst driver menus, the monitor profile disappears as soon as you hit the Color tab (not the Color Management tab). This might just have been what I had done to cause the original problem to have occurred, but I think I would have remembered something as obvious as the profile disappearing because without the profile loading up, middle tone grey looks like mud. |
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Correspondence & About this website Copyright © 1998-2008 Edwin Leong |
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For
quite some time I had been slumming it for calibration of my monitor
with the Adobe Gamma calibrator that comes with Adobe Photoshop. Everywhere
I went when the topic of monitor calibration came up I was advised
to rush out and get myself a dedicated colorimeter, a.k.a. spyder
or puck, and companion software to provide a much more accurate color
profile of my monitor.
One
thing to watch out for with the spyder readings is with modern day
monitors and their menu driven setting controls. When calibrating
the monitor the spyder is to be positioned almost dead centre in order
to obtain the most accurate readings from the monitors RGB guns. With
the OptiCal software in Precision calibration mode, you are prompted
to match the monitor’s brightness and contrast range with the recommended
settings.
And
why would I would want or need to look into more calibration software
for the whole system? Well, truth be told, I could probably survive
adequately by using the stock ICM profiles that come with my scanners
and printer; however, Epson did a nasty thing to us users of the 1270
and 1280 printers, they outsourced the production of ink to China
and perhaps even Mexico in order to cut costs. Now sometimes I get
lucky and I receive some made in Japan color cartridges, in which
case I have few worries about getting the colors I expect, but when
I receive the made in China cartridges, I have to watch out for the
magenta colors coming on too strong in my prints.