Pantone Spyder2 - opinions...

Hi

Has anybody got any experience with the above or the profiler plus software that comes with it for creating printer profiles?

It's about the only one that is affordable in the UK.

Help please.

Kind regards
Chris

ColorVision Marketed under pantone if I remember correctly. It should do a very good job for you. I have not checked prices recently they used to be all pretty close. I have a couple different packages Monaco, Colorvision, ICS and they all work well enough for most.
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Enjoy the Day

Is there much difference between Spyder I and Spyder II?

Regards
Chris

It depends on what printer you want to profile.

I found a company http://www.drycreekphoto.com They have a printer profiling service. There is a target file you have to download and print from a printer. You send it to them, they will scan it and they will make an icc profil to that printer. I use their service, because you would have to spend a fortune to get a profiler that accurate. They have one that is very accurate and they not charging too much to do the job for anyone.
On their website they explain all things in detail.

The Spyder2 is good for calibrating your monitor, that is a great product. But, I wouldn't get a printer calibrator. A cheap one will not do a good job for sure.

Viktor
'Happy shooting!'

Bought the Spyder2 Plus a few months ago and have found it to
work as advertised. Easy to use and accurate. Have used it only on
crt monitors so cannot comment how it might work on a lcd.

After a bit of testing and fiddling with settings in PS and Qimage my prints are now a match for what I see on the
screen- finally

JoeyB

I originally purchased a Spyder 1 and was never satisfied with the results. Read a few reviews and then picked up a Monaco and have been very happy with it. I don't know about the Spyder II.
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Hi
I have had very good results with the Spyder 2 and my 19" CRT monitor.

Once you have calibrated your monitor you can then look at printer profiling. I would suggest using some one who will do this for you as it can be a very frustrating exercise. I have had very good results from Cathys Profiles in the USA. Highly recommended: http://www.cathysprofiles.com/buy%20profiles/buy_custom_profiles.htm

Good luck
Don

I had really bad luck with the ProfilerPlus software - save your money and put it towards some professionally made custom profiles for your printer.

The Spyder 1 was ok, not great. Spyder2 gets better reviews, but I personally would go for the eye-one display which is similarly priced.

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Charles Bandes
http://www.bandesphoto.com

It took me a long time to find out how to do this but I think I found an appropriate way to create useable profiles with ProfilerPLUS.

First I tried it with the settings in the profiler software (Lightness, Saturation, Contrast and those color sliders). I already wanted to give up because it’s simply impossible to get accurate print/screen matching with these controls and you need to print hundreds of test prints.

So I figured out another way to set the image parameters:

1. Print the color patch as suggested by profiler plus, scan it and create a profile without changing any of the controls in the profiler plugin.

2. Create a nice test image, which should contain 6 regions, each dominated by one of the following colors: red, yellow, green, cyan, blue and magenta. I used the this image: http://www.pbase.com/image/14111553/original

3. Print this test image with the unchanged profile you created.

4. Now use photoshop controls to edit the test image on the screen until it matches your printout exactly.

Use the Hue/Saturation controls for this task. There is a list on top of the dialog box where you can choose red, yellow, green tones etc. Set the hue, saturation and lightness values separately for reds, yellows, greens, etc. until the preview matches your print. Don’t hesitate to make quite big changes to the settings. I needed to increase some of the values by up to 57 units and decrease others by up to 18. Particularly saturation was way too high on the printout.

Then save these settings but don’t apply them to the test image.

5. Now open the scanned image of the profiler color patch and apply the Hue/Saturation settings you saved before to it.

6. Create another profile with the edited color patch scan. Again don’t change any of the profiler controls.

7. Print your test image to check the profile you just created. It should now match your screen quite exactly. Of course you will still need to tweak it a little bit but for me this method worked much better than using the profiler controls and I got a really good profile

thats really useful and much appreciated.

Kind regards
Chris

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