Other products on the market and history
LCD monitors have the reputation of having inaccurate colors, and we have been writing articles for years to prove the contrary. For this purpose we obtained a colorimeter, a tool devoted to monitor calibration. Three manufacturers monopolize the market with affordable solutions: Gretag Macbeth with the Eye One, X-Rite with the Monaco series, and ColorVision, associated to Pantone, the color specialist.
In the office we use a product developed by LaCie. Not only aren’t they part of the top 3, but they don’t even build the colorimeter themselves. In fact, they only test other companies’ colorimeters, select the one they estimate to be the best, and then develop their own software calibration suite. In the end this combination pleased us starting with the release of its first probe and this is the reason for our loyalty to this manufacturer. The first two LaCie probes were based on X-Rite products and the last one, the Pro version, is a Gretag.
This choice doesn’t stop us from regularly testing competing products upon their release. Amongst other products, we tested the 1st Spyder, which was a catastrophe. We found incoherent results, obvious instability, and uselessness in some of the tests. Needless to say we weren’t fans. We even thought that calibration with this tool was useless and this is what we told Colorvision when they asked our opinion on their product.
Now a few years later they are back with the 2nd version, at half the cost of the previous one. You probably guessed we weren’t too excited about testing it, but their representative convinced us by right off acknowledging the flaws of the 1st version, problems that were apparently corrected. So, why not test it. It would be a nice surprise if an inexpensive colorimeter could compete with high end quality products.
The tests
We used the Spider with several monitors under standard settings (6500K, gamma at 2.2), compared results to initial findings and then to a calibration made with the LaCie. We used the Spyder 2 pro version and not the basic one. The hardware is the same, the only differences are the possibility of calibrating two monitors in multi display, and more precise and numerous manual adjustments. You will see later on that these additional manual adjustments are useless. The basic mono monitor version is enough for most uses.
We used the LaCie tool in two ways, in calibration and at the end of tests. Before evaluating the color quality, it’s possible to take a reading of colors at time “T” before any calibration. We then evaluated initial colors and after compared the Colorvision calibration. The detailed procedure was:
Initial color quality evaluation
Automatic monitor calibration with the Spyder 2 and then color evaluation
Second automatic calibration with the Spyder to evaluate calibration stability
Manual monitor calibration with the Spyder 2 and then color evaluation
Automatic monitor calibration with the LaCie tool and then color evaluation.
By automatic calibration we mean that we didn’t adjust brightness, contrast or RVB channels. We let the colorimeter do all the work. By manual calibration we mean adjusting these parameters when the colorimeter requested us to do so.
