Damien Symonds

Yep!

I'll answer this part. No. You only ever need your resolution to be such that the pixels are small enough to reproduce the smallest detail of your wife's brush work. And on canvas, this is not very small at all.

For calibration purposes, it's the same as a laptop. Follow my laptop instructions. https://www.damiensymonds.net/calibration.html

Yeah

Well, it'll never be amazing, but some sharpening will make it passable. I think it's a keeper, just.

Is there any part of the photo with better focus than the eyes? Fur or bushes?

I don't know, I'm so sorry. I've moved this thread into Brian's area so we can see if he has any ideas.

Ok, phew. So there must be an obscure power setting on your laptop that's clashing with Bridge somehow.

Gosh, that's weird. You might need to do this.

The BenQ software is a dud, ignore it. Surely SpyderTune will take care of that?

Gosh, how weird. I'd be curious to know, if you plugged in an external screen, whether it also dimmed.

Well, the usual thing. Start by going to Preferences>Performance, and turning off "Use Graphics Processor".

You bought a new calibrator?

It's very very rare to have to adjust contrast, you're right.

I hate to raise this, but we can't ignore the possibility that the Spyder just doesn't work any more. It's a bit old now.

What about the S5Elite instructions?

Yes, just.

Remind me which calibrator you have?

There should be no need to start from scratch.

Ah crap. The Spyder4 might not be able to properly cope with the modern screen technology. Sounds like the 178 might be more accurate than the 84, eh? Did you check and turn this off? https://www.damiensymonds.net/premiercolor

Good. Yeah, OpenCL (formerly called OpenGL) used to be the main culprit.

Ok, cool!

Thanks. So turn off "Use Graphics Processor" then restart Photoshop, and see if it helps.

If you'd like to show us a screenshot of your Performance preferences, maybe we can help a little more.

Yep, you're not the only one. It's very similar to the old black boxes problem caused by an update a few years ago: https://www.damiensymonds.net/2015/09/black-boxes-and-other-weird-behaviour.html So you need to go to Photoshop's preferences, and play around with the Performance ones. Try turning off Graphics Processor to start with.