SX2E-13

[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, make sure the switch remains on "Calibrated":

Don't bother turning this off and on, it's meaningless.

Note 3:

Full screen mode is useful to get a bigger view of your images.

Dark mode is about equally as useless as the default white mode.  What we really need is a Medium Grey mode.  But since Dark Mode is more similar to the modern Photoshop interface, you might prefer to use it.

Note 4:

If you want, you can ignore this whole screen, and instead view your photos in Photoshop or Bridge.

 

How is your calibration? >>