Calibrating your monitor is a bit like checking the tire pressure on your car – we all know we should do it, but most of us don’t unless our business depends on it.
To ward off dissatisfaction from prints, and make sure all my editing adjustments weren’t making things worse not better, I recently bought a Color Vision Spyder2 Express
Like falling off a log
Setting it up and using the thing – which looks like a silver shrunken version of those boardroom table speakerphones – was very straightforward.
The software talks you through the whole process, and I followed the instructions about using with subdued ambient light to get a good calibration. Soon I had my laptop screen looking better than ever before. So far so good.
Multiple monitors hack
The Spyder2 Express is meant for consumers not pros, and one area in which it’s limited is in its support for multiple monitors. At first glance, since it automatically saves every profile with the same name, you can only use it with one monitor at a time.
But with a small amount of ingenuity, you can bypass this. You just rename the first profile you’ve set up, so it won’t be overwritten when you create a new profile for your next monitor. I’ve got three monitors calibrated this way, and there’s no limit to the number you could set up this way – for example, since I use my laptop at home and in the office, I should really have separate profiles for each location.
There’s more information in this thread on the MacRumors forum.
Soon I had all my monitors looking much better, and also much more like each other. There’s also an automatic nag you can set to remind you to recalibrate at intervals.
Conclusion
If I was doing lots of printing myself, I’d probably spend a bit more to setup a completely calibrated workflow involving my printer as well, but the ColorVision Spyder2 Express is definitely worth the $60-$70 for peace of mind when processing your images.