general

First and foremost you need to know my background. I'm an Illustrator and I've been working with color and images a very long time. I'm also extremely adept at computers having my A+, Network+, MCSE, MCSA and CCNA certifications. I've always relied on Adobe Gammma to do the job but my Dell 5100 Laptop needed a lot of help.

Ok, so I've been trying to get my color calibrated correctly for a while now. The main problem has been my Dell 5100 Laptop showing colors a tad bit too dark. So I went out and bought this Spyder with PhotoCal software.

Installation was a breeze. The software booted up great onto Windows Xp Pro and Home and it instantly recognized the Colorimeter tool (the plastic attachment that measures the color on your screen).

The calibration is only Wizard-based (which kinda sucked). It guides you step-by-step with the following questions...
1) Is this a CRT or LCD
2) Would you like 1.8 or 2.2 Gamma?
3) Would you like 5000 or 6500 color temperature.
4) Can you adjust the color settings? Yes, No and Presets are options.

If you select No, then it starts the calibration immediately by scanning all gradations of RGB, White, Black and Grey.

If you select Yes, then it quickly scans normal RGB and then asks you to adjust the colors through your monitor until they all meet inside a thin rectangular box (I thought the calibrator was supposed to do this!). Once you calilbrate your own monitor, it starts running through all the gradations of RGB, White Grey and Black as mentioned above.

Finally...it asks you to save your ICC profile and it creates a nifty Startup program similar to Adobe Gamma that boots with Windows.

First was my 19" Dell 1901FP LCD monitor. The love of my life. Color on this monitor is quite nice but I decided to give it a go and test it out anyways. I deleted Adobe Gamma from my startup folder and away we went.

Once done, I was somewhat happy. The white, however, seemed rather blueish. All the other colors seemed ok. I was semi-content and moved on to my notebook. This was trickier since I can't adjust color settings and I had to completely rely on the Spyder to do the job. It finished and looked semi-decent. So being in a hurry I packed everything away and left to work.

At work...things got bad quick. I booted up my Dell 5100 Laptop and immediately noticed the colors were quite dark. As a matter of fact, my gamma was screwed. I was looking at a picture of some black Rollerblades I was selling on eBay and I couldn't differentiate the blacks from the midtones. It was just a congestion of really dark mids and highlight.

So I did some research and found out I was supposed to calibrate without any ambient light sources. This was buried in the PhotoCal CD and was never mentioned in the Wizard. At the time I had daylight and tungsten lights (Reveal lightbulbs) so I guessed that's what I did wrong. So tonight, in complete and total darkness I once again calibrated both the LCD and Notebook monitor and I achieved the same results. The notebook was deathly dark and although the colors were much better off, I simply couldn't adjust the gamma. The whites on the Dell 1901FP 19" display were still blue-toned.

This product did not calibrate my Notebook as promised and it left my LCD's colors questionable. In my line of work, there can't be any questions. This product is going back.

If the image on your monitor doesn't match what comes out of the printer, this gizmo will fix the problem. It works with both CRTs and LCD's. It takes 15 minutes and when youre done the monitor will use a custom profile that sets the mix of red, green and blue correctly, along with the brightness. You have to know in advance what kind of controls your monitor has -- no color controls -- common on laptops, or user-set RGB and color temperature controls. But the insructions tell you how to find out, and the product works with either type. Hint #1: To see the monitor controls and the calibration pattern simultaneuously, open the PhotoCal software, drag it over to one side of the screen and then open the monitor controls and drag them over to the other side. #2: Re-run the calibration after you adjust the monitor to check the results -- the software doesn't cycle back by itself.