Tell Me The Truth - Does This Colour Make My Monitor Look Fat? Spyder...

Still looking at the same screen, are we? The one we bought from Harvey Norman three years ago? The one that has never been calibrated or colour corrected in all that time?

Well, congratulations - you are an adventurer. Boldly going where most of us would never venture. I'll bet you eat meat pies from roadside stalls in tropical countries. I'll bet you pet strange dogs in back alleys. I'll bet you contract marriage in cocktail bars and buy gold bricks wrapped in newspaper.

The rest of us are cowards. We know that the colours in the screens of our computers are a variable feast  - and that leaving the thing unattended for three years is like leaving yoghurt open on the table for the same length of time. Most of us have chickened out and bought screen calibrators.

I chose the Spyder 4 Express since my computer is a stand-alone model and sits in a uniformly dim room - no changing lights. I fire it up every two months and it returns the screen to a fixed normality. Sometimes there is very little correction needed over the period - sometimes considerably more. The program that runs the calibrator shows me a before and after image for each cycle it goes through.

If I was running a series of computers or had weird lighting or strange desires* I would select the Spyder 4 Pro or Elite models. They do more but you have to know what you want.

Watch in the next little bit as we feature these Spyder 4 models at bargain prices. In the meantime, if you STILL have not calibrated your screen, it might be safest to convert everything to monochrome and grow a hipster beard. Then no-one can look at you funny.

* Don't ask. I might tell you.

Oh Myyyy....I FInd Out

Well, that'll teach me.

And isn't it always the case - the things that you find out for yourself are the ones that stick with you.

I have been using an iMac and a Macbook Pro for several years, resetting the colour video cards inside the computers with a Datacolor Spyder 2 Express each month, and printing out on Ilford and Epson paper. All good and I've been happy.

Then recently the Spyder 2 Express started to go weird and I replaced it with a Spyder 4 Express. Slightly different routine for the operation, but equally simple to do. I tuned up the home and the work computers last week and carried on blithely.

Today Dom handed me some files that were taken at last night's shop party. I banged them into the Macbook Pro and then out to the shop Epson R3000 so that some of the reps could have  paper prints. Ilford Smooth Pearl 6 x 4 paper.

Wow. Better than before. Accurate colours and NO colour cast. I think the Spyder 4 Express has done something really good for the system. What, exactly, I cannot say. And this on a standard paper.

Note: I also brought back some Fujifilm printing paper from Japan to test it. Only one print so far on what amounts to a super-quality glossy but again it looks as if printing has gotten to a whole new level of accuracy...with no especial efforts on my part.

These are standard goods straight off the shelf here in the shop - with the exception of the Fujifilm paper. I know the business of colour management and printing is said to be hard but this seems easy. Perhaps it is all just hear-say...?