timjpriebe — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 12:30:51 +0000

Greg and demonhale are correct. The Spyder2Express is actually a pretty neat device that you temporarily hang off the top of your monitor to calibrate it. It's in the low end of ColorVision's Spyder family.

demonhale — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 06:21:53 +0000

Yes, a spectrophotometer, I use a small one, it connects to your PC/Mac and also saves an ICC profile, the profiles I saved as mentioned, is the one from the calibration of the hardware spectrophotometer...

Greg K — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 06:14:17 +0000

I believe the one Tim was talking about isn't software, but an actual hardware device you hook to your monitor.

-Greg

demonhale — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 05:47:07 +0000

I agree, I also match mine, although my printer now doesn't match my monitor (Inks running out), I just save my print and monitor profiles when I go and have it printed outside...

Also I tried to color match in pantone as much as possible for the printers, coming first from the print field taught me that matching color palettes does make a difference when making a design on screen and printing them in paper... (And don't forget types of paper also affects color and light absorption which could affect the overall scheme of the printed material)...

Roo — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 02:58:28 +0000

I also calibrate with Adobe's thingy. I shoot a LOT of photos, and my prints match what is on my screen, so I figure I'm doing okay.

I must say though that when my trusty old Sony Trinitron died about a year ago, and I had to buy an LCD monitor, that calibrating the LCD is a LOT harder that the old monitor was.

Megan — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 13:23:08 +0000

We've had trouble getting the APC colours to work right on laptops in particular. So you have to keep that in mind when choosing colours as well.

But yes, for a designer it is vitally important to be working with a calibrated monitor. If your not you could have all kinds of strange results without even knowing it. And test your pages for colour on other monitors too.

I'm a little fuzzy on the best way to do this - usually I use the Adobe calibration tool if I think there's a problem. do you have a link to that Spyder program?