Spyder3 Studio

[duke2]

So I bought a Spyder3 Studio. It contains the Spyder3 Elite and the Spyder3 Print. Only semi-knowing what I'm doing, but annoyed that different screens show different things and prints are anywhere from almost right to noticeably off, it seemed a logical thing to do.

I have a few questions though, which the manual does a terrible job at explaining.

- Should I be using the sRGB target? Or 2.2-6500 ? I chose sRGB.
- It demands I set my monitor brightness to 0 to meet it's 80 cd/m^2 target. This makes things, well, dark.
- There's no clarity on how I should be doing the print component. I print the sample sheet with my normal settings, and read it with the Spectrothingo, which gives me a print profile. I then print it at the end step, and the end print looks different to the target print, but not quite what I see on screen either which i'm guessing is the aim?

[andrewjohn81]

I wouldn't pay too much attention to the brightness they recommend. I think that's based on really old monitor specs.
We use Lumens in the US. It recommends 120 I think. Well, most monitors are standard 300 now. So yeah, even with a brightness of zero, it still is too bright.

I have noticed, I have monitors that are about 3-4 years old, that they definitely lose a lot of brightness over the years. If you want to keep it relatively consistent and want to keep your monitors for a few years I'd recommend turning it down to about 80% brightness and calibrate it there. Take note of the recorded brightness, and each time you calibrate, push it up to that level. After a while you'll be up to 100% brightness, but still at the same lum/cd .

[plastic_]

that's how I do it:

-) ignore the brightness stuff, just use comfortable values, but stick to them after calibration!

-) don't use 6500K but "factory white point" instead. This will preserve the monitors contrast. With 6500K whites turn somewhat yellow.

[duke2]

Thanks for the responses. The latter shall solve my bosses "my big monitor seems to have a yellow filter now" comment after I did his :\

[zoranm]

I have Spyder 2 suite (older versionof yours)

-WHite point temperature depends on your output. If you're producing prints, use 6500K (which simulates yellowish-white paper colour). If your work is for screen mostly use 9000K or simmilar and picture should be much brighter.

-For print component: after you create a print profile for a particular printer (and paper stock) you need to disable printer profile and embed your working profile with the images that you sent to print. Only then should you have a decent print. BTW if your print software allows you to scan 1024 swatch, use it. Anything less than that'll givu you poor result(from my own experience)

hope this might help

zoran