Quote:
Originally Posted by barrypriddis
Rob I will be very interested in your results. I have a flat screen monitor and had problems matching my prints with what my monitor was showing. I have purchased a spyder 2 and used it to calibrate the monitor, which did give an improvement. However, I find my prints are still a bit darker than the monitor which is somewhat annoying.
I will be changing my monitor soon, and would appreciate any advice on what would be a good buy. My budget is limited to around £250.
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In answer to your monitor question, have a look at the
Colour Confidence web site - there are a couple of Eizo entry level monitors that they recommend that are just about within your budget depending on what size screen you are looking for. I used to have a (cheap) flat screen but it was pants for colour critical work so I went back to CRT ... but I'm saving my pennies for an Eizo 24" wide screen
which start at £586
To get your prints to match your monitor output you have to calibrate not only your monitor, but also your printer. The problem with calibrating printers is that it is both ink and paper dependent ie if you change either your ink or the paper, the results will be different. The solution is to
- Always use cartridges from the same manufacturer, and I would suggest that should be OEM - true their inks are more expensive but they are colour consistent from batch to batch, where as, in my experience, cheap after market inks are not.
- Have a profile written for each different paper that you use
Sometimes you'll find that one profile works well for a couple of papers by the same manufacturer for example I find I can use my profile for Jessops Gloss for Jessops Satin ... but not for Jessops Matt. Similarly my profile for Ilford Galerie Satin works for their Gloss & Permajet Papyrus works for a couple of their other fine art papers. So how do you get printer profiles.
Colour confidence can sell you a spectrophotometer which will do the job for you ... for about £500. The alternate if to use a profiling service. This involves printing a test card at know defaults and then sending it to someone with a spectrophotometer who creates the profile for you. Most of these seem to cost ~£30-£40 per profile. I have a contact who used to offer a very good service at a much more competitive rate & I've emailed him to see if he is happy for me to pass his details on. Another source is
Native Digital who I bought my Spyder 3 from. They actually dissuaded me from buying a spectrophotometer on the basis that, unless I wanted to do loads and loads of different papers, they offer a remote service for £15 (I think it was) per profile - & you can have a lot of £15 profiles created for £500
That said I haven't actually tried them yet but planning to send a couple off this weekend