Toronto Photography Meetup Group

Hi all,

Finally upgraded my computer and used the old LCD as the second screen. However, after using Spyder3Pro to calibrate both IPS monitors, one just look warmer than the other?! Aren't the calibration process suppose to fix that problem? I've set 'ambient off', gamma 2.2, white point 6500k, brightness to 120 cd/m^2, DDC/CI are enabled for both.

Monitors: HP 2311xi (over hdmi) & Dell 2007WFP (over dvi)

thoughts? or is Spyder3Pro software plainly sucks?

Are they on separate video cards? I think they have to be..

No. Same card, different connection (one dvi, one hdmi). Some cards have 2 dvi for 2 monitors. Spyder3Pro seems to be able to calibrate and load settings for each monitor separately without any issues. The AMD video card even have software to make the desktop span two monitors seamlessly. Just that the 2 monitors looks a little different after calibration.

I've had decent results withy S3Pro, but I admit I only run my photos on one of my monitors (one is IPS and one is TFT), both running off one card. The TFT seems a bit cooler so I only use that for text and photoshop tools.

I just bought spyder4 but haven't had time to install it yet for my single monitor. A possibility - maybe its not possible to make the monitors look identical. If a cheap monitor can look like an expensive monitor, why would we want to spend money on expensive monitors.

Every monitor processes dofferently. Just like canon and nikon, usually nikon is a bit warmer. For best results you should be using identical monitors as it says in spiders handbook.

Maybe Spyder should have a feature where it grades the monitor's abilities.

use the same monitor, even calibrated they can read information different at different times.

The two monitors will not calibrate and display the same. Ever.
I considered the spyder myself and people do swear by them, but after doing some printing
on the Epson 3880 I have no need to calibrate.
My photos look exactly the same on my Mac as they do when I print them out.

Stick to which ever monitor you like best.

I was considering the same thing ... but then the Spyder4 was on sale.

Well, I thought the whole point of calibration was to make sure that the colour of the monitors match 'somewhat'. One LCD is significantly warmer than the other one (both S-IPS panels). So what's the point of calibration again? I think this is probably due to the crappy Spyder software (or crappy meter)... I would really like to try out the i1Display someday.

being different monitors they will still look different even after being calibrated. I have a spyder 3 pro and its just fine but sometimes you just can't make up for the differences between the displays. I've noticed this with my somwhat good dell monitor and my crappy samsung. They both show about the same colour but one is far too bright and can't come down anymore.

I've had my spyder 4 installed for about a week now and I'm still not sure if it was worth doing. Since 99% of all monitors are not calibrated, having my monitor calibrated won't make any difference to most people unless my colors are way off. I still have to test my images on other monitors. Having a calibrated monitor doesn't ensure the proper print colors would be printed either. That's another device that is needed to calibrate the printer printout. My printouts seemed fine without the calibration. I can't say my colors are now better, only that they are slightly different. This might make a difference if I actually change the colour of my photos in photoshop to something that is not in the photo, or if I was creating product images for hair coloring packaging. How can I tell if Spyder 4 is doing its job? What I notice is that when I turn on my computer, the background looks white as it should, then it flickers and turns pink, and then it seems to slowly turn white again - very slowly. Then there seems to be slight adjustments going on as I work. One place where I'm stuck is that the colour switcher doesn't allow me to switch back to my old color profile. It tells me it wasn't created by Spyder 4 - right. It allowed my to switch back on my first install, but not any longer.

I've asked this question before on POTN, and it's a limitation of the video card, at least for me. It may have dual outputs but it needs to have dual LUT (Look Up Tables) in order to handle separate profiles for each output port. If not, well I don't know what profile it's assigning but it's not correct! What video card are you using?