# Calibration with Spyder 4 Pro



## Susan Taylor Brown (Aug 22, 2012)

I don't know where to post this so mods, please feel free to move if it this isn't the right home for it.

I understand that calibrating is the first step to getting photos/prints correct. So when I bought my new laptop I also bought Spyder 4 Pro. I have a new Lenovo T530 with a FHD screen running Win 7.
I was anxious to calibrate it because the default was rather garish.

Ran the Spyder and wow, the icons on the desktop looked better, in LR everything looked better. Then I opened Firefox (14.0.1) and all the white backgrounds have a very pink tint to them. I opened MS Word and the white page is pink. Opened Scrivener (another writing program) and everything is pink.

Also, I keep reading that native white point of 6500 is what you want for photography but mine comes out, after calibration, at 5800. 

I'm at a loss as to how to proceed.


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## Susan Taylor Brown (Aug 23, 2012)

Okay, and just in case my eyes were playing tricks on me I took a photo of the screen.


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## Jim Wilde (Aug 23, 2012)

Oh, that's an interesting shade of white!!

Obvious question: have you tried to recalibrate, just to check that the same thing happens? I use the Spyder3, and have never had this problem....incidentally, because I have very subdued ambient lighting in my study, the calibration software recommended I use 5800 for the white point on both my monitors, which I do with no apparent problems at all.

Couple of other questions: you did allow the screen to warm-up properly? And the ambient lighting remained consistent during the calibration? And the puck was properly seated over the target area?

If you've answered "yes" to all these questions then I'm a bit stumped. On my Vaio laptop, being a Sony it's preloaded with loads of unwanted bloatware, which includes an automatic ambient light measuring system coupled with auto adjustment of the monitor brightness. Needless to say, that had to be turned off prior to calibration. I haven't used an up-to-date Thinkpad, but all the ones I've had in the past were similarly well endowed with various utilities, not all of which were understood! Maybe there's something on your laptop which is interfering with the calibration?

Beat might know, he is (or was) a Thinkpad user, IIRC. Hopefully, he'll drop by soon.


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## Victoria Bampton (Aug 23, 2012)

I've seen similar weirdness in the past where the monitor was trying so hard to force a white point that it couldn't manage, that everything ended up a weird colour.  So I'd try setting it to calibrate at the white point it wants.


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## Susan Taylor Brown (Aug 23, 2012)

Thank you all. Always good to point out the obvious because those things are so easy to miss.

I recalibrated three times with the same results each time.

System had been on for a couple of hours.

I moved it from room to room for subsequent calibrations because the main room I use it in has red walls and I wanted to make sure that had nothing to do with it.

I haven't been able to figure out how or where to set the white point on this new computer so today I will do some more digging around. Also will dig around and see if I can find anything on the ambient lighting adjusting itself. I did have everything set to factory defaults when it started.

Today I'll try to calibrate my external NEC monitor and see how that goes. Fingers crossed it goes well and then, if I can't get the laptop to work right, it won't be as much of a problem since I plug into the external monitor for printing.

Of course the printing is another issue. But I'm going to pout through the forums again before I ask those questions.  

Thanks everyone. Will report back on how the NEC does.


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## Mark Sirota (Aug 24, 2012)

When you calibrate, try selecting the native white point instead of forcing it to D65 and see whether the results are more to your liking.


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## jjlad (Sep 8, 2012)

Susan, I don't have any calibration programs but I banged my head into a workaround that may assist you and others. 

 - I recently did a family shoot at sunset in a beautiful park.
 - setting sun in background/Caucasian husband and balance of family Phillipino each having had drastically different exposure to sun this summer and so each with unique skin tones
 - Editing was done in LR with some minor touch ups on a couple in CS5 (Tummy tuck for Grandma, etc.)
 - Got everyone to where they looked great on my HP laptop monitor (at one angle at least ) and on my large Samsung Monitor.
 - From LR I sent the images to the lab (in this case Costco)
 - I picked up the prints and was thoroughly disappointed in the results and couldn't possibly deliver them to my clients.
     - Out of towners were returning to Philipines Monday and this was on a Friday so I needed to sort it out, and deliver prints and enlargements for them to return home with
     - The color was totally wonky
 - I got an idea ...to sight in a rifle you shoot a 3 round group, see where they hit and adjust the sights ..moving the crosshairs or metal sights to point to where the rounds landed. Why couldn't I do that with my monitors?
 - I opened LR and adjusted my monitors until on bothe of them, the photos looked almost exactly like the prints I'd picked up (adjusted the sights)
 - Then, re-edited the photos to get them looking the way I wanted again (settled into shooting position and took careful aim)
 - Sent some to the lab again (fired another group)

*   Bullseye!* Exactly what I had edited them to look like!

My clients wanted poster prints so I ordered those the same day. Every one turned out just fine. Task was done on time with smiles all around.
That was 3 weeks ago and all the prints I've had made since then are exactly what I expected when I ordered them.

You may think that was a psyco workaround ...but it worked just fine. It would be nice if one could use different labs and at the press of a key ...adjust the monitor to match what would be supplied by that lab. 
So my question is this. If I do that with prints produced by multiple labs can I capture and save the monitor settings as 'profiles'.
My large monitor is a Samsung 1080p TV/monitor which, because it is adjusted for that now too, is a little less bright than I'd like for watching TV and videos and the brightness is set at 30. I'm thinking if I increase that for when I'm not 'editing' and ordering prints, I could just set the brightness back to 30 for those tasks and all should be fine. I don't see any way of saving settings so I'd probably have to photo the settings screen and save that image to have it readily available to reset the monitor as needed.

Does anyone have thoughts about this Monitor Calibration System by JJLAD? Feel free to shoot holes in this if there are some.

Susan ...I'm sure after investing in the Spyder you'll want to get it to work so this may be more for others like me, who don't have such equipment. I figure monitor calibration is primarily for getting prints right so if you have some you need urgently this may help you until you get your spyder weaving the right web patterns.

Cheers,
jj

PS if anyone happens to read my post on the Facebook plug in not working ..I could sure use some help there!


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## GBM (Sep 8, 2012)

JJ,   That was a great and entertaining post....and I do believe you have hit on something very needed by several of us.   This Calibration stuff is HARD.  My one complaint when I paid $310 for Silverfast SE PLUS 8 scanning software was that this ' automatic IT8 calibration ' did not include the ' TARGET' to scan.... which a few years ago cost about $50 and they recommend replacing every three or four years because it ' deteriorates '..... NOW it costs $300 for the TARGET !!!!!!!     
   So I am hoping someone can come up with some kind of bottom line practical method like you have described to get  my Canoscan 9000f calibrated.   To broaden your analogies... to the machine shop..... to get something really really flat.... they use three laps I think... going back and forth...and the highs and lows are finally cancelled out and you get at least one item really really flat...    I am hoping between something like a ' color passport' one can take a picture of and use to set the white balance on a camera and other methods I do not know of.... we can get some practical method for color correcting or at least color synching some of these machines and or software....


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## jjlad (Sep 8, 2012)

GBM ... I didn't know what you were speaking of with Silverfast so looked it up. Seems like you are trying to scan slides. I had purchased a cheapo slide scanner from Costco and returned it thoroughly disappointed. I'd shot a few insects with the Fuji s7000z 'prosumer' camera I still have. It has a macro feature that allows focusing down to less than 1cm from the lens. So my workaround for digitizing slides became

 - the purchase of a battery powered Optek Pocket Viewer for $12.99
 - duct tape the viewer to my desk to prevent it sliding around
 - slip in a slide
 - set the camera to view on the LCD instead of the viewfinder and set for a short review of each image
 - lay the lens of the camera (with uv filter to prevent scratches) right on the Optex viewer and adjust to frame correctly as seen on the LCD
 - with the camera on 'aperature prioity'  ...to get it nice and sharp I used F5.6 on that cam since it only goes to F8. 
 - shutter speed got down to 1/25th or so as I recall, and would be relevant to each slide ..some faster some slower.
 - set the self timer for 2 second delays
 - press the shutter and go 'hands off' to avoid any chance of shake
 - repeat process several thousand times

That's how I digitized my kodachromes. The camera delivered crisp 12mp images which are every bit as useable as some I had scanned by a local lab for $1.50 each and got back as approx 10mp jpegs. 

My way took considerable time ...at about 10 sec per slide and allowing another 10 seconds each for sorting and re-boxing etc, 1000 slides takes 5 or 6 hours. I'd do it on rainy days or evenings with a game on through the TV Card on my desktop PC ...and once started and 'cooking' it becomes very easy ...albeit repetative. Of course I peeked at some when remembering the circumstances surrounding taking that box of slides, so that slows it down more but adds to the enjoyment and breaks the monotany.
I still haven't reviewed them all but am confident they are all fine because of the verification on the LCD and all those I randomly checked in LR ..looked fine.

On macro with a camera like that you'll get a slight barrel distortion which is so easily corrected in LR now its almost irrelevant. A friend's frend wants me to do his for a fee but I haven't decided yet and am not sure what to charge for that service.

I had also tried a few with my newer bridge cam ..Fuji S100fs and it works too but has to be zoomed because the lens is 28-400 where the s7000z is 35-200 and on macro at 35 it gives a nicer picture. That means for any camera that would require zooming to get a desired crop, one has to stand the scanner up and shoot with the camera horizontal otherwise the lens will collapse from the weight of the camera and the zoom won't be maintained.

I would think my D7000 with the right lens or tubes would work just as well and a D800 with one of those ebay slide copier attachement:
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Opteka-HD2-S...495?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item45f9c1ab3f

would probably be as good or better than most scanners. If I'd seen that before I started I'd have done it that way and if I do any for remuneration I'll get one of those.

I watched as a few of my K64's were scanned on a really good pro scanner and it took about 10 minutes for 4 of them. I have those as enormous tiffs and the same ones done as described above. For for prints up to 16 or 20 on the long side I don't think the IQ difference would be discernable at a viewing distance of 2 feet or more. For sure, pixel peeping would reveal the difference but that's also comparing useable jpegs to enormous tiffs.

The huge pluses are speed, virtually no cost, and the color from the camera generated files is* far and away more accurate *than what that scanner produced. 

Now if I was wealthy ..I'd probably have just sent to a lab and if not satisfied with the color ..had them do them over again. So all depends on what's right for the user.

Hope this provides and idea for those who may have been looking for one.

jj


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## GBM (Sep 8, 2012)

JJ,   That is very interesting.... since I have the new scanner and new software I am committed to using them... your method sure saved a LOT of time... 
Greg


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## Roscoe17 (Sep 10, 2012)

I suspect that your system has some competing and conflicting color profiles.  I met a dude from Datacolor at Photoshop world and he suggested calling tech support (I had a different issue).  The IT guys there maybe be able to talk you through the issue.


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