Datacolor Spyder 3 Elite Unbox and Sniff Test

At Photo Plus in NYC a few weeks back I made it a point to seek out Datacolor the makers of the SPYDER monitor calibrator to get as much information as possible and a test unit.

There have been hundreds of questions that have come in asking if I calibrate my monitor and if I do how important is it. Well the honest answer is I have never calibrated my monitor and I do have a few reasons for that. One I have never purchased any device to do so. Two I do not do a ton of printing where I would need to match my screen to my printers color profile (more on this lower). Three I felt that if I calibrate my monitor and place my images online 99% of the world who does not calibrate their monitors still wont see so called “proper color”.

Lets look at the reasons to color calibrate. If you do a lot of home with an INK Jet Printer you will save a ton of TIME and Money by calibrating your monitor to your printer. There are a ton of printer profiles out there that will make sure that what you see on your screen is what you are going to get.

If you use multiple monitors you will have the ability to make sure they both have the same color insuring that you will have matching screens.

If you order prints, books, albums, posters etc from online printers you will want to make sure that your monitor matches the online printers machines. This is very important, if you see a print one way on your un calibrated screen and you get back a print that is dark and the wrong shade you not only wasted time but you wasted money.

What it comes down to is I have never calibrated my monitors, this will be the very first time I actually set my screen to so called “color calibration”. I will be sure to export images that have been processed before and after calibration and show the results. With that said if your screen is not calibrated it will probably end up looking different than what I see.

This is the description from the Datacolor Web Site

Spyder3 Elite™ was designed for the way photographers work, bringing a new level of color control to imaging. This powerful solution gives photographers the tools to trust the colors on the screen, for reliability and consistency on each of their LCD, laptops, and projectors. Award-winning Spyder3 hardware, with innovative new software features, makes this the ultimate solution for any serious photographer.

You asked and we’re delivering some hot new features just for you, with the richest feature set we have ever offered! New 4.0 features include monitor quality analyzer, display graphing compared to sRGB & Adobe RGB, enhanced iterative gray balancing and automated brightness adjustment.

Designed for:
Professional Photographers, Photography Studios and Professional users of all kinds.

Features and Benefits
New Monitor Quality Analyzer
gives you the tools to find out just how good your display actually is; and compare it to other displays using easy-to-read maps of your screen’s uniformity, allowing you to determine which areas of your screen are precise enough for the most demanding work

New Display Graph
allows you to compare the gamut of multiple displays to one another, as well as to standard color spaces like sRGB and AdobeRGB. This helps you understand what colors your display can reproduce

New Iterative Gray Balance Option
the most accurate gray balance algorithm available. This gives you the best gray calibration for your display

New Software Brightness Control
allows owners of iMac and other displays with limited controls to work with these displays in more desirable, dimmer environments, and to match them to other displays

New Automated Brightness Adjustment
means users no longer need to adjust front panel controls on Apple Cinema Displays, iMacs, MacBooks or PowerBooks. All brightness adjustments on these screens are done automatically by Spyder software

Front Projector Calibration Option
gives you confidence that all your presentations will look their very best

Intelligent Ambient light Control
automatically measures the ambient light within a room to determine optimal conditions for a new level of precision calibration

StudioMatch Assistant
the best possible match on your entire studio so you can rely on consistent and accurate color and luminance on all your displays