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| Company » Testimonials » | Monitor Calibration Testimonials |
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Monitor Calibration Testimonials
Helpful hint: When using Spyder3Pro, it's important to complete the monthly calibration to ensure consistently good color accuracy. In summary, I consider Spyder3Pro a 'must have' tool for any photographer who wants his digital files and photos to pop with the same colors that he saw when he pressed the shutter on his camera.
What I love about the Spyder3 is that it's from an established company I trust, I can attach it to my studio computer or laptop and it saves me time because it’s easy to use and accurate. When you're a photographer who travels a lot, like myself, knowing the colors you’re working with are really the colors in the print is invaluable because a professional photographer is a lot like a painter. Color is crucial to our work.
There are two things that really suprised me. The first was the profiling of a projector, which in the past I would have done with a much higher cost solution. Results were excellent with Spyder3. I then tried to profile the LCD projector against a blue-gray wall rather than a screen, I was amazed at the quality of the profile on this background. The other thing that impressed me was when running Spyder3Elite against my professional graphics display and its bundled calibrator; the results were almost identical. This is what I would call absolutely remarkable quality from a device that retails for less than 300 dollars. As I said before, this will be what I will be recommending!
I'm a new customer using the LCD Spyder on a MAC G4 and 22 inch cinema display. In a word, I'm impressed. The software installed in OSX / Jaguar easily. The hardware worked first time and integrated with the software first time, literally right out of the box.
Just wanted to let you know that the Spyder is absolutely brilliant. I'm quite knowledgeable with traditional cameras but wouldn't rate myself highly with either computers or digital cameras so I was a little apprehensive. But the Spyder Hardware was easy to load, the on-line manual is easy to understand and the Spyder pretty well does everything itself. The end results are excellent, and I would happily recommend the Spyder to anybody.
I want to share an OptiCal success story with you. Yesterday I shot with a digital camera on location at a restaurant in Manhattan. For the shoot I rented a G4 laptop. Using Optical and my new LCD capable spider I was able to profile the monitor and create a much better match to my studio monitor than the state the monitor was in when I rented it. Knowing that the laptop's monitor more closely matched my studio monitor was a great comfort to me! Of course, I still had to deal with the viewing angle issues with a laptop scrren, but when I transferred the images to my main computer everything look just as I had expected.
I just wanted to take the time to thank you for the monitor Spyder and software. I own a digital photography studio and we use Fuji S1 and S2 pro cameras with Macintosh computers and 3 different Epson printers (Epson 10000, Photo 2000 and Stylus 1270). Our color workflow is perfect, everything matches from one monitor to the other and prints match from one printer to the other and customers are very impressed. One of our competitors stopped by to get some drum scans done, and could not believe that our prints match our monitors so accurately! He asked how we do that. We told him that it took lots of color calibration, technicians and profile configuration, blah, blah, blah-blah, which made it sound very complicated when, in fact, all we did is use your products. He nodded as if he understood and left with a puzzled look on his face, full of envy and intrigue. I'd say that since we purchased your products, we have increased our workflow by 100%, saving long hours of color correction, printing tests and guessing how the color would come out. We used to waste rolls and rolls of expensive Epson photo paper as well as ink, which is not cheap. Thank you for making our lives easier and making work fun again!
The Spyder showed up and was quite a hit at the [Santa Fe Workshop] class. Very impressive. Fast and sexy but what we all found interesting was how much better (and brighter for some reason) the displays calibrated and profiled with the Sypder looked especially after doing the same job with the same software (Optical) using the X-Rite DTP-92! I'm sure you guys have compared this in house but we didn't expect to see such a difference. I didn't time the two but I'd say the Spyder is easily as fast, if not faster than the DTP-92. Good job!
Okay, used to be that monitor calibration choices were between big, solid,expensive stuff like the DTP-92 (I can remember when that one cost a thousand bucks) and small, cheap stuff like the Chroma4, which looks like it came as the prize in a CrackerJack box, and has a bad habit of leaving its suction cups on the screen. I've actually seen users holding a Chroma4 to the screen by hand, as it had no feet left. The thing will fit in a shirt pocket, and is so lightweight you wouldn't notice it was there. So even if it does a pretty good job, it tends not to inspire confidence, and resellers are hesitant to charge hundreds of dollars for it, as it does't seem like much for the money. Enter the Monitor Spyder. This device is solid, effective, fast, the specs rival anything on the market... and its a great looking substantial piece of equipment, actually much more impressive to have around the office than the more expensive pucks. And it costs less than a Chroma4. And it runs OptiCal and PhotoCal, which are the preferred software of most all us color geeks... End of story.
Right after giving the Spyder/PhotoCal a whiz - first hand impression is : Its awesome, totally cool! Very easy to use, pretty darn good calibration, nicely integrated software, good instructions. I love the way PreCal is integrated. You have a darn good bundle here!
I installed Photocal and Profiler RGB on my system without so much as a small hiccup. This was originally installed on Win 98SE. After getting the settings on my HP scanner correct I was making printer profiles that matched my monitor in no time without any kind of a hitch. Last week I formatted the machine and installed Win ME, which has gotten a reputation for not playing nice with many devices, and the Spyder, Photocal, and Profiler RGB again installed without any type of hitch what so ever. My point is that I would not be afraid to recommend the package to anyone running a Windows system. If your looking for a good entry level CM package for Win 98se or Win ME, I would highly recommend the Spyder,Photocal, Profiler RGB set up. I don't part with $300 easily but this package is definately worth it in my opinion. It has made my trials with different papers a lot simpler.
For workgroups needing color matching Colorvision's PhotoCal software is an ideal cost effective solution. Recently, I had a customer who needed 34+ monitors calibrated and profiled. Other monitor calibration solutions were too costly or involved purchasing a color measurement device for each station. Since the customer didn't need monitor to monitor matching the PhotoCal solution with the Spyder was ideal. We moved the Spyder from machine to machine easily thanks to USB connectivity. The wizard allowed each monitor's luminance level to be maximized by calibrating the monitor's RGB phosphors guns to a target white point before profiling. It was real important that the solution was seamless and easy to use. The wizard walked the user through the process with little guidance from me. The PhotoCal delivered an elegant solution that the customer appreciated. Thanks.
I would like to convey my respect and awe at the powerful combination you offer with the Spyder/OptiCal/PreCal package. With the price point and product quality, this clearly becomes my recommendation to my clients.
Following our contact a couple of weeks ago I have a few queries and also some customer feedback. I received the Optical and Spyder with RGB Profiler and have been very impressed. The Optical and Spyder combination work extremely well and far exceed anything I have used or seen before. It is great to be able to recommend this package to my clients especially those who are bewildered by the number of choices in this area.
Some third-party calibration packages, most notably OptiCal from ColorVision (which we like a lot), allow you to set the white point by manually adjusting the RGB guns on monitors that offer individual gun control. If your monitor and calibration package offer this feature, use it - you'll lose fewer levels than you would if the calibrator had to tweak the lookup tables in the video card to achieve the requested white point.
just wanted to share a handy bit of information to those of you who would be interested. Thanks to the advice of the very knowledgeable Johnny Maclean, I just purchased a ColorVision Spyder with Optical software from nancyscans.com and I can tell you that although it set me back somewhere in the vicinity of $400.00, I'm inclined to think that it's the best $400, I've spent in quite a while. I had my monitor calibrated to a pretty high standard, (or so I thought). Turns out that it was in the range of 20 too bright. This is really important when your outputting C.D's for publication purposes, like I do. I called up Nancy Scans today and the guy (Mat) had my monitor so tweaked in less than 1/2 an hour. NOW, I have total faith that what I see on my monitor is truly what I'm supplying my clients with. In my book, that's $400.00 very well spent, or should I say "invested" in my business. Something worth thinking about, now that we are all moving into the digital age with such pace. Aloha
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