Monitor Calibration Software - neccessary?

[Parago]

Ok, lately I've been a little frustrated with MPix, my print shop of choice, so I looked around for alternatives and found WHCC.com. On their website, they provide an extensive 'price book' with lots of advice regarding color managment, Photoshop Settings, etc.

Now, they strongly recommend purchasing a monitor callibration tool like the 'eye-one Display' in order to get satisfying results when ordering prints.

What's everyone's opinion on that and which tool or software do you personally use and trust?

whcc makes a lot of sense to me and I'm willing to give them a try but I want to find out if buying a $250.- tool is taking it too far.. :blushing:

Thanks

 

[Alex_B]

whcc makes a lot of sense to me and I'm willing to give them a try but I want to find out if buying a $250.- tool is taking it too far.. :blushing:

Thanks

Well, if they have a good colour management, and you have it as well, then you will get what you see more or less.

You can spend an order of magnitude more for calibration and profiling tools

I am currently using a spyder2, but the shop where i bought my last screen offered me that I coud rent a pro calibration system for a small fee.

todays TFTs do not have that much drift and are rather colour stable. so you do not need to re-calibrate every month. So I consider renting that device once in a while rather than spending almost 2000 USD for buying the pro bundle

 

[Parago]

Well, if they have a good colour management, and you have it as well, then you will get what you see more or less.

You can spend an order of magnitude more for calibration and profiling tools

I am currently using a spyder2, but the shop where i bought my last screen offered me that I coud rent a pro calibration system for a small fee.

todays TFTs do not have that much drift and are rather colour stable. so you do not need to re-calibrate every month. So I consider renting that device once in a while rather than spending almost 2000 USD for buying the pro bundle

Oh see I didn't even know that was possible, thank you! I'm gonna look around and see who offers something like that.

 

[Alex_B]

Oh see I didn't even know that was possible, thank you! I'm gonna look around and see who offers something like that.

not sure if that is standard ... the shop was calumet.

 

[Seefutlung]

If you not doing product photography ... I would think that a consumer end calibration device would do you just fine. I don't know much about the processing end of photography ... so if anybody can enlighten me why a pro system is $1,800 dollars better than a consumer system for non-product/commercial photography ... seriously ... I am all ears.

Gary

 

[Alex_B]

If you not doing product photography ... I would think that a consumer end calibration device would do you just fine. I don't know much about the processing end of photography ... so if anybody can enlighten me why a pro system is $1,800 dollars better than a consumer system for non-product/commercial photography ... seriously ... I am all ears.

Gary

the more expensive ones sometimes have more reliable hardware, and are sold as complete solutions to get the whole workflow consistend from camera to screen toprinting, beamer and other media. and it all looks about the same.

most hobbyists should be more than fine with just calibrating their screen and maybe profiling the printer+paper+ink combos they use.

to take advantage of the really expensive hardware you need a screen which is good enough to be truly calibrated and which has a large colourspace and good contrast, so for most people it would be a waste to buy it.