Spyder 2 Express help

I just got a spyder 2 Express and calibrated my monitor.

it has darkened the darker tones (relative to my calibrated by eye profile) so that there is a fair bit of loss of shadow detail, including on pictures that I didnt process (so its not just that my pics were processed to look good on my earlier profile)

any suggestions? should i now process all my pics with lighter blacks to get that shadow detail back into a visible range? or is there a problem with the spyder calibration?

the darker sections of the greyscale squares on the test image are harder to distinguish from each other than the rest of the greyscale scale. this suggests to me that it is indeed calibrating the darks too dark,

why? - and how can i fix it?

its also calibrated to a suprisingly yellow white point, however this might be a good thing as my prints have been coming out yellower than the screen image so it probably needed to go that way.

any comments or help appreciated!

Make sure the monitor has been on for at least 1 hour and that the monitors on-screen display (and the mose pointer) are well outside of the calibration area.

Then try running the software again and make sure you adjust the contrast and brightness EXACTLY as it says. (Tricky with express but easy in Pro)

If your monitor has RGB sliders make sure you adjust the setting to get a variance of <.5 normally 0.15 should be possible. Note - If the RGB was originally a long way out then bringing them in to line will affect the Brightness and contrast. Once they are about right click the back button and re-adjust brightness / contrast then carry on as normal.

Alos make sure you have the curtains drawn and the lights off and that the 3 points of the spyder are all touching the screen. On mine I have to tilt the screen back a little so that it rests flat.

I used to use Express and would have to run the calibration 3 times before no changes were necessary. With pro on pass is all it needs.

PS - With MS Windows If you use Photoshop make sure Adobe Gamma is not in the Start - Programs - startup list ! If it is remove it ane re-start windows before running Spyder software.

You should always calibrate in the lighting that you are using for work.
And your lighting should be dim
In other words... best to draw the curtains, have most lights off, and calibrate and work with that same setup.

Most working environments are so bright they stuff the colour balance anyway!
Matt

Quite right Matt - the reason I turn the lights off is that for final colour balance I always turn off the lights. Rest of the tweeking I use a 40W daylight bulb

i have done all the above. except i haven't changed the screen rgb sliders in any way, the software says to set the screen to its defaults anyway.

i do often work in a bright environment but this particular issue is the same regardless. i calibrated with the light as low as i could get it.

any thoughts specifically on the black losing detail?

basically the issue is that the difference between greys of less than rgb value 20 each channel are so dark that no real detail is discernable. ie r20 g20 b20 is only barely lighter than r0 g0 b0

the black display the software displays to help you set brightness with 4 blocks i can't really discern clearly the darkest3 as being different.

there doesnt seem to be a setting on the display that will make them different.

the brightness is set full up which is its default.

if i use the profile that i did using the apple calibration tool by eye i can discern the blacks, but the spyder doesnt seem to achieve the same result.

The other thing to note is that not all monitors are created equal

Some just aren't up to the job for photography (hence the reason why Eizo and Lacie photographic monitors are so expensive).
I've had some LCD panels that were absolutely garbage. Couldn't get them anywhere calibrated, not even with the Spyder 2 Pro
Now I'm not such a skinflint

EDIT: On the Pro at least, you can choose your whitepoint. "Native" would be the best one, especially in your circumstances Hopefully the Express version allows this choice...

Matt

its a reasonably good monitor, not true pro quality, but its true 8bit S-IPS and well regarded by a variety of reviewers and user/bloggers

it's a LG L2000C

so it should calibrate OK.

besides - the shadow detail is easily obtainable calibrating by eye! so i would expect the sypder to do better, which it does for colour accuracy, but apparently not for shadow gradations.

Far enough - thought I'd raise the issue though.

If it sets a low white-point (which true sRGB is painfully low) then it'll squash the shadows into oblivion. As I said, "Native" white point will maintain the dynamic range of your LCD.

Matt

Ah the LG2000C - Wonderful monitor but you must run the Forte Manager to control it!

The main issue is that when you make changes to the monitor it takes a while to change (at least 3 seconds)

I'm not sure what Spyder Express offers as I haven't used it for so long but on mine the measured readings are

White point 5800K
Gamma 2.2
Black Luminance .53
White Luminance 125

As express probably doesn't measure external surroundings try adjusting to the above settings in express and see what happens?

I'm using native whitepoint as far as i can tell, which is 6500K

but the spyder calibrated profile still results in a much yellower display than other profiles, even though the whitepoint on the monitor itself is set the same.

whats is the forte manager? the inbuilt settings control panel? how would I run that to achieve an improvement?

I don't think express allows me to input figures for any of the settings you mention, i think whitepoint is stuck at native unless you change it on the display itself and gamma is always 2.2 i've not seen any settings for black and white luminance.

i suspect if i could adjust the black luminance that would address the issue.

i just downloaded the spyder express 2.3 (I had 2.2.3)

and redid the calibration.

the difference is that 2.3 usues fixed 6500K whitepoint and the 2.2 uses native.

2.3 produces a cooler profile more toowards the magenta/blue wheas 2.2 profile was more yellow.

the blacks are equally over dark in both.

Forte Manager is the same as having buttons on the screen to control brightness, contrast, RGB settings etc... just that it does it through loading software on the PC, once you've changed the settings in the normal way it uploads them to the monitor and allows you to save them as a profile within the monitor and not the PC.

Unless yours is an older type with buttons to control these settings on the screen itself this is possibly the part you are missing

I know when I got mine it was miles out on factory defaults

mine has 4 buttons on the screen labelled Menu - f-engine- source - autoset

as well as the power button of course.

they bring up a menu system that sets the screen settings.

it was bought quite recently and made in dec 2006 according to the back panel

I don't recall getting a CD with anything like you describe on it but i'll look again. i'm also not sure how it would be better than using the screen buttons.

i'm also confused as to why spyder express 2.2 gave a different white point (native) to v2.3 (6500k) when as far as I can tell the native whitepoint IS 6500K so the results should be the same!

although actually i'm much more concerned about shadow detail than whitepoint.

further investigation indicates that:

1. when my monitor is set with its own controls to 6500K it is in fact at a much warmer white point, but if I up it to about 7500K it then actually is at 6500...

2. 2.2 gamma (only option in spyder express) kills the shadow detail. Don't know why i didnt think of this before. in my other profiles I have been using 1.8 gamma which is mac standard.

why do we use 2.2gamma? are other people getting good shadow detail on 2.2gamma or is it just because it appears more contrasty that people like it?