Spyder Pro and Printfix

While colour calibration is probably not something every PC user has thought about a great deal, it's of critical importance to the likes of professional digital photographers and publishers.

It's no good making an adjustment to the colours of an image on your computer just so someone else can see the image with noticeably different colours. The problem is that not all monitors are the same. If you sit two side by side and display the same image on them, you can end up with two very different results. This is where the Spyder Pro and Printfix tools attempt to help out.

The Spyder Pro is reasonably easy to use, and attaches to your monitor via three sucker pads. If you want to calibrate an LCD panel or notebook screen, the wires included in the package allow you to hang the Spyder Pro from the top of the screen to prevent damage to the display.

There is a range of software included in the package. The Precal utility prepares your monitor for the calibration process by adjusting the brightness, contrast and colour balance. It's not a completely automated process and requires you to play around with your monitor settings. Unfortunately, many monitors have very fiddly menus, so this can get more than a little frustrating.

The Optical software then guides you through the process of calibrating the screen using the Spyder Pro device. After making the initial adjustments to your monitor, you simply place the Spyder Pro on the screen and it starts to read the colours displayed - the whole process doesn't take much more than 10 minutes. If you're only purchasing the Spyder, as opposed to the Spyder Pro package, you get a utility called Photocal, which is a cut-down version of Optical and doesn't allow as much fine-tuning.

Although the Spyder Pro will also work on notebooks, we found that it couldn't produce the same results with notebooks as it can with standard CRT and LCD monitors. The reason for this is that most notebook screens don't have the same controls as a standalone monitor, and therefore can't be put through the Precal process.

Windows can only handle one profile at a time, so the calibration software hits a bit of a wall when it comes to PCs with multiple monitors. You can only fully calibrate one of your monitors, leaving the others running on your primary monitor's settings and, more than likely, looking a little odd as well.

The Printfix utility, as you'd expect given its name, deals with colour calibrating printers. If you've spent an age getting your images looking right on the screen, you're going to want them to print out correctly as well. It's worth noting that you'll need a copy of Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop Elements in order to use Printfix.

The Printfix package consists of a small scanner, similar to a business card scanner, and the Printfix software. The whole process is a little more complex than the Optical calibration and we ran into a few problems during testing. Unfortunately, this isn't helped by the fact that the manual isn't of the highest quality or very easy to follow.

Printfix is only compatible with a small selection of Epson and Canon printers. We tested Printfix on an Epson Stylus Photo 2100, and you can get the full list of compatible printers at www.colourconfidence.com.

If you're looking to buy either of these products, there are a few options open to you. The Spyder monitor calibration tools cost just over £110 and comes with the basic Photocal software. The Spyder Pro is priced at £170 and comes with both Photocal and Optical. Printfix is available for £225, but if you want to purchase both Printfix and the Spyder Pro as a package it will set you back £351.33 (£299 ex VAT).

Our experiences with these two products differed somewhat. While the Spyder Pro worked well in calibrating both CRT and LCD monitors, Printfix wasn't particularly easy to use and didn't really produce the results we were expecting.

Contact: Colour Confidence 0121 604 1234
www.colourconfidence.com

Specifications:

• Windows 98 or higher
• Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop Elements
• USB connection
• Supported printer

Price details:
RRP: £351.33 (£299 ex VAT) Spyder Pro and Printfix bundle
£111.63 (£95 ex VAT) Spyder
£170.38 (£145 ex VAT) Spyder Pro
£233.83 (£199 ex VAT) Printfix

See also:

Sharp LL-T2015

High-quality but at a steep price.  15 Apr 2004

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