SXE-17

[Damien Symonds]

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Analysis

Here, Datacolor gives us a grid of images to assess the calibration. It’s a completely pointless grid, because we don’t have those prints, do we? To assess the calibration, we need images that we can compare to prints. So immediately press the “Open Custom” button ...

… and one at a time, you can open their files and compare the screen to the prints. Here are a couple of examples of photos I used:

I wish there was a way to flick between your five files more quickly – unfortunately, I haven’t found one. So allow a few minutes to go through all your files a few times, while holding their corresponding prints out to the side, and assess the result of the calibration. Don’t rush this part – take your time.

I have found, however, that you can drag-and-drop your image files from their folder onto the Spyder screen, which does speed things up a bit.

Note 1:

Remember that if any of your photos have extremely vivid colours in them (eg a bright turquoise dress, or a glowing orange sunset) those colours might be unprintable, and should be ignored when assessing calibration. Concentrate on the “normal/everyday” range of colours instead.

Note 2:

On the right-hand side of the screen there’s a “Switch” button which shows you the difference between the uncalibrated and calibrated state of your monitor. This might seem handy at first glance, and it’s fun to toggle for curiosity’s sake, but the truth is it has no relevance to the task of print comparison, so don’t spend too much time playing with it.

How is your calibration? >>

[Bean]

The colours certainly seem marginally better. But on the spyder version of one of my photo (calibrated and uncalibrated) the photo looks ALOT noisier than it does in ps and on the print

[Damien Symonds]

9 hours ago, Bean said:

The colours certainly seem marginally better. But on the spyder version of one of my photo (calibrated and uncalibrated) the photo looks ALOT noisier than it does in ps and on the print

Ah, don't worry about that.

[CarolynP]

Hi Damien,

I've recalibrated and the report has the black brightness well below target, should I redo it? It's a MacBook Pro so wide LED. The prints match my screen.

[Damien Symonds]

Do you have any test prints with really dark detail, that you can compare to see if that black level matters?

I don't anticipate it will matter much.

[CarolynP]

Yes, the dark detail looks okay, thank you

[Damien Symonds]

Great.

[jamiemichelle]

Perhaps a dumb question, I have a Macbook Pro (2022). So I did the calibration just to adjust the brightness of my screen? I read the article and know you said you hate laptops for editing, and one of the reasons is portability. I often use my laptop for non-photo editing purposes at various locations and change the brightness of my screen as needed in the setting. So, I'm undoing the work I just did each time? I essentially need to re-calibrate before every editing session? 

[Damien Symonds]

Correct.