ColorVision Spyder2PRO Win/Mac

It does the basic job well. The calibration runs smoothly and accurately. Hardware looks and feels solid. My two completely different brand, size and age CRT monitors ended up with exactly the same colors sitting side by side.

User interface is merely adequate. Pop up help instructions are better than many I have seen. You will need to know already how the calibration buttons on your monitors work (the hardwired buttons on the monitor, not software). In order to make any edits you must run the entire time consuming calibration over. Sometimes you can use "back" within the calibration, sometimes you must start over. Also the separate "profile chooser" utility software, has not add or delete profile feature even if it is a profile created and saved by the calibration software earlier. You can see it with windows display properties, but it may not appear in the profile chooser list.

Dual monitors is the one obvious reason to choose pro over plus version. Yes, it does dual monitors, but with an asterisk. It will create separate profiles, but will only apply the correct profiles automatically at startup to both monitors if you have two separate video cards. If you have a single video card with dual outputs, it will load the same profile (the last one you created) to both monitors at startup. This quirk is documented in a readme file on the installation disk (and blames windows for the problem), but this limitation appears nowhere in advertising material, catalogs, or on the box. Fortunately there is a work around (not documented) at least with my particular video card and running XP. After windows opens, you can run profile chooser then choose the correct profile for each monitor. You may have to use windows display properties settings to specify default profile and rerun the calibration to get the profiles you want to appear in profile chooser and to select the correct profile as default.

Once it's all set up, running profile chooser is a four of five click procedure, but you must rememeber to check it before using any application that uses color profiles. And check it after you open the application. I've had them change after opening photoshop though not every time.

Previously I owned ColorVision's Spyder2 program and was quite satisfied with it. It did not include, however, a program for correcting the printer's color rendition. The new Spyder2Pro includes PrintFix Plus. This along with the monitor correction Spyder2Pro works very effectively. I am very happy with the program. For the price it is a great addition to Photoshop editing. The Spyder program allows the monitor and printer to show a print that reflects what the user has taken in his digital camera. I have not found any particular negatives about the program. In the past I have used their tech service for fine tuning the program. They were very responsive and helpful..

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I bought this because I try to take photography seriously and needed my images to look right on the screen while editing.

The software does an okay job of getting this done right.

My problem is with the printer calibration software in that it supports a limited amount or printers.

I have four Epson printers none of which are supported.

It's kind of disappointing for the price you pay for this.

-Mario

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I upgraded from the Spyder2Express, not really an upgrade because its cheaper to just purchase the pro version than it is to get the upgrade, which means I ended up with a spare device.

On my mac the dual screen supports just works, I use a single card with two outputs and it does support two profiles at the same time. Worked first time, but Mac dual screen support is much better than Windows.

I also calibrated my Windows systems and my laptop with no issues.

Makes the complex task of calibrating your screens pretty simple.

One point to highlight before you start though and this applies to ANY product of this type.

You simply MUST try to learn what you are attempting to do BEFORE starting any calibration process. If you do not know what the device is trying to do, then you will have problems. Color management is a complex process, expecting this device to simplify it while ignoring all the other aspects of a color managed workflow is a recipe for failure.

This applies to Gretag and the others as well.

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I bought the Spyder2Pro for the specific task of color calibrating my dual monitor setup. 1 monitor being my 15" MacBookPro the other a 22"Samsung LCD. Installed the software and ran the setup on both screens. Worked better than I could hope.*

*One thing that I noticed was that you have to run it more than once with different ambient lighting to get the desired color settings. The ambient light feature really changes color (wether you have sunlight, flourecent, incandecent ect.) you just have to keep running it till you like what you see and if it matches your printouts. Took me twice on each monitor with different BG lighting (I found a room lit by indirect sunlight the best). On my apple the Dual Monitor thing DOES work flawlessly, I am able to run 2 different color profiles at the same time (1 for each monitor).