Pantone Huey Pro Review
 

Having just bought a Pantone Huey Pro monitor calibrator, I thought I’d share my experiences here.

The device itself is rather smaller than I had anticipated, being about the size of my forefinger. It is supplied with a cradle allowing the device to sit unobtrusively on a desk next to the monitor taking up minimal space. Along with the calibrator and cradle, the Huey Pro comes with a USB extension lead, this is essential if your computer’s USB port is more than about 300mm (12 inches) away from a space adjacent to the monitor. Completing the delivered bundle is a couple of ‘wet’ screen cleaning wipes, a ‘dry’ microfibre screen cleaner cloth, a CD with the required driver and calibration software, and a simple multi-language quick start guide – the latter is also available in pdf form on the CD.

If you use Adobe CS or CS2 under a Windows environment, you will almost certainly have a program called Adobe Gamma in your ‘Startup’ folder. Though there is no mention of this in the quick start guide, an earlier scan of the Pantone web site support section told me I should disable this. Instructions on the Pantone support section here:
http://pantone.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/...i=&p_topview=1

Not having these instructions in the guide seems like a serious omission to me. Users who have gone so far as to buy a monitor calibrator are likely to be the kind of user who will have Photoshop installed. Having two monitor gamma adjustment programs, Huey Pro and Adobe Gamma, running on startup could well cause all sorts of problems as they fight each other. It should also be remembered that if you apply a bug fix patch e.g. taking CS2 from 9.0.3 to 9.0.5, applying the patch will probably put Adobe Gamma back into your startup folder.

Having done the above, following the quick start guide is simple and can be summarised as;
Clean the screen, wet wipe followed by dry.
Install the driver for the Huey Pro from the CD. This is painless and automated, stick the CD in the drive and go.
Plug the calibrator gadget into a spare USB port and launch the calibration wizard – shortcuts to which will have been placed on your desktop, start menu and sys tray.

The wizard is fairly easy to follow, advising that the monitor should have been switched on and not in a screensaver mode for over half an hour before continuing. The user is also advised to remove all ambient light if possible and ensure that there are no strong reflections/light sources on the screen before continuing.

The wizard then takes the user through selecting the type of display in use, be it CRT, LCD or laptop and, for CRT monitors (I did not follow the LCD path) adjusting the brightness and contrast settings on the monitor using the monitor’s hardware buttons.

The wizard usefully points out that you may wish to drag the wizard dialogue box off to one side as the monitor’s own on screen display for adjusting brightness and contrast controls will almost certainly be slap bang in the middle of the screen. This would overlay the graphics the user is required to study whilst adjusting the brightness/contrast. It is during this adjustment phase that I found the only real niggle with the calibration process.

The user is presented with two circular graphics showing in one a series of concentric black circles, and in the other, a series of concentric white circles. The user is asked if they can see three different shades of black in one set, and two different shades of white in the second set. Having answered ‘No’ to the above question (I could only see two shades of black, though I had no trouble with the different white circles), I was prompted to look at the white circles and adjust the brightness/contrast until I could see two white circles. With any combination of the brightness/contrast controls, I could always see the two shades of white, the only difference being the extent to which they were visible. It was not made clear exactly what I was trying to achieve or which control should be adjusted to achieve this. Should I have as large a difference between my circles as possible, or a small a difference as I could perceive? Having said this, some default settings are suggested by the wizard, though this seems to defeat the object of the exercise. Knowing that the monitor’s white point is set by the contrast control, and not having any problem with the white circles, I put it back to its original setting where the difference between the circles was still clearly visible, but to a lesser degree than elsewhere.

The wizard then moved on to the black circles; the same sort of problem was found here. The monitor’s black point is set by the brightness control. At all but the very lowest brightness settings (<15%), and at any contrast setting, I could see three black circles. Winding up the brightness above 15% made the three rings more obvious, but it was not made clear if I should be setting the controls to only just be able to differentiate the rings, or having the difference to be more obvious. Again, some defaults are suggested. I set the brightness control to 17%, the minimum point where the three rings were clear without squinting, and put the contrast back to its previous whitepoint setting.

Having adjusted the monitor hardware settings, the calibrator is placed adjacent to the monitor, facing the user, where it measures the ambient light level and colour temperature. Following this, the calibrator is stuck onto the screen, the wizard tells you exactly where to put it, and the screen flashes with a series of red/green/blue patches and black/white/grey patches. A progress monitor keeps the user informed that everything is going well and the process has not become stuck for some reason.

After this, the calibrator is placed back in its cradle next to the monitor and the user selects a preferred default colour temperature (selectable from 5000K, 6500K or 7500K) and gamma setting (1.80, 2.20 or 2.40). These settings can be changed easily later without having to go through the calibration process again. This completes the calibration sequence. The user can click on ‘before’ and ‘after’ buttons to see the difference, whilst a colour checker chart and portrait picture are displayed. The settings are saved to a file which can be given a memorable name and this file is used by Windows on startup to adjust the graphics card output. When I later launched Capture One, I was nagged that the monitor profile file noted in Capture One did not match the profile in use by Windows and would I like to correct this? After saying ‘Yes’ the correct file was used by C1.

Even with the messing about agonising over the monitor’s hardware settings, the whole process still took less than 15 minutes, this included having to pull my base unit out from its cubbyhole and plug in the USB lead. Recalibrating, a reminder to do this can be set to pop up on a variable timescale from 1 to 14 days, on its own should be less than 2 minutes. There should be no need to tweak the hardware settings in the future now it’s been done. In normal usage, the calibrator sits in its cradle next to the monitor, facing the user, and adjusts the monitor in accordance with ambient lighting – both for level and colour temperature. The time period for this ambient sampling frequency can be adjusted from 1 minute intervals to several hours.

So, after all this, does it work? Has it made any difference? I had previously got the brightness level set too low (at 0%), this was despite running the Adobe Gamma (eyeball driven) calibration routine which had indicated that things were fine at this low level. With the brightness wound up a bit more, my blacks are still black, but I’m seeing more shadow detail in my pictures than previously. Also of note is that the grey background of WPF is brighter than it used to be. Some colours were pretty much unchanged, which in many ways is reassuring, my monitor wasn’t too far out to begin with. Blues and greens are not noticeably different, reds however have distinctly more punch to them. Flesh tones are well, more fleshy, if that makes sense. It’s not something that I had noticed previously, but now I can see that people’s faces were really quite pasty before, they have a bit more colour in their cheeks now. Seeing the ambient light sensor change the monitor is really quite spooky. After calibrating the system with the curtains closed to remove as much ambient light as possible (recommended), on opening the curtains again, the wallpaper I have on my desktop changed to look the same as it had with the curtains closed. I hadn’t realised how much difference this made until I saw the effect in action.

Pros:
You now know that the colours you are seeing are ‘right’, as far as right can be on a PC monitor.
Colour accuracy is better than eyeballing and subsequent guess/estimating the resulting adjustment.
Improved hardware brightness and contrast settings give more dynamic range to photos (despite previously adjusting these using Adobe Gamma utility).
Adjusts settings automatically to compensate for changing ambient light levels.
An essential first step in getting your screen to match prints.

Cons:
Setup instructions miss out warnings about removing any existing gamma adjustment programs.
Setup wizard does not make it clear how the hardware brightness/contrast levels should be adjusted to achieve the desired results, or indeed, what the desired results for the black/white circles should be.

I bought from Calumet Photo, the service was quick, the process painless.

Hope this helps,

Duncan

Thanks so much for this Duncan, I'm looking at calibration programs and it's so useful to have a user point of view.

Thanks Duncan for the detailed report.

Thanks for all the effort put in. I am considering the Huey Pro as a possible future purchase so much appreciated.

Duncan thanks for the posting your findings. Do you know what the difference is between the the ordinary Pantone Huey and the pro version I can't find any comparisons.

Duncan you did a great job. As usual.

Unfortunately seems not meant for me looking at the length of you review. Any suggestion for a simpler thingy?

Christine,

The Huey and Huey Pro appear to be the same hardware items, but the software used for the Pro calibration routine does more. Having read the help file, which covers both standard and Pro, it would appear that the basic Huey software does not have the routine for the hardware brightness/contrast settings. The user defined whitepoint and gamma adjustments do not appear to be in the basic Huey software either. There is more advanced help available in the Pro too.

The process actually used to do the calibration may well be different for the Pro, more colour swatches, more variation in different grey scales, etc. Not having seen the basic Huey calibration I cannot say for certain.

Pantone offer a Pro upgrade to existing Huey owners, this is a software download only, so it would appear that the gadget itself is the same, what the software does with it could be quite different.

Duncan

Sassan,

For a simpler thingy, the basic Pantone Huey is about as simple as they come, and very, very cheap too.
http://www.pantone.com/pages/product...px?pid=79&ca=2
I'm sure you could get it even cheaper if you shop around.

Duncan

Thanks Duncan, I have found the standard version for £49 so may go for that one. and at a later date upgrade the software.

Must the huey be connected all the time. I.E could I buy one unit and use it to calibrate a number of monitors all on different computers, afterwards store in a cupboard?

Yes, you could do exactly as you suggest. I use the Huey connected all the time on the main PC with the CRT monitor, this then adjusts for ambient lighting on a regular basis (you can turn this feature off if you want).

I have calibrated the screen on the 2nd PC, fitted with a flat panel screen, this made a huge difference. Having calibrated it, it uses the monitor profile that has been created. The widget was then removed and put back on the main machine with no problems - the same as putting it in the cupboard as far as the 2nd PC is concerned. The monitor still uses the adjusted settings. The only thing it can't do is adjust for changing ambient lighting. Oh, and I forget to recalibrate the screen as often as I should.

As an aside, a work collegue of mine had the basic Huey and used it on his PC which is fitted with dual flat panel displays from two different manufacturers; they gave very different views of the same picture. The basic Huey cannot apply different calibration profiles for multiple displays on the same machine, it can only do one profile setting for the two displays. The Pro can do multiple profiles for multiple displays on the same PC.

I loaned him a copy of the Pro calibration software as it appeared the widget was the same - you can pgrade to "Pro" via the Huey website, it's a software download. The software reported "you haven't got a pro widget, I'm not going to run" (not verbatim ;) ). My collegue bought the upgrade (£40 by the time VAT had been added) and ran the calibration. The upgrade must apply different firmware to the widget as it all ran fine. He's astonished at the difference it's made. He'd previously spent hours trying to adjust both displays manually to try and get them the same, with no joy. He's now seeing the same tones on both screens thanks to the upgrade. Well worth the money he said.

Duncan

I now have one of these and just calibrated by beloved Sony Trinitron monitor.

The calibration process took less than 5 minutes including taking out of box etc. Initially I noticed the whites were quite yellow but I knew it would take a little while for my eyes/mind to accept the new white. Colours seem better balanced with an even saturation across the colour spectrum. Photographs seems more life like and a photo I am working on at the moment as much black and flashes of white, viewing this photo on the calibrated monitor showed a true white rather than a tinted white as before. On the whole colours are now better balanced as it seems the monitor now has a true grey point reference.

Not sure what to make of the ambient light sensor adjustment of bightness/contrast, will have to gain more experience until I fully decide if its for me.

I have been on the verge of colour calibration for years and although its made a slight change its for the better.

I've also been on the verge of purchasing Monitor Calibration equipment since buying my new monitor last year.

Today I received my Spyder 2 Suite. setting up was quite simple, well almost.

Although it says on the box and in ColorVisions advertising blurbs that it's Vista compatible, no mention is made in the instructions that there are no vista drivers Drivers included on the software disk.
After half an hour trying to get the thing to work I checked the control panel and found incorrect drivers, however a trip to the ColorVision web site + an 130Mb download sorted things (Good job I'm on broadband)

The setting up was then child's play, but when switching back and forth between my old configuration and the new I found only a very minor diference and that was only on the brightness.

So the question is are these monitor calibration gadgets worth the money. Previously I used "Monitor Calibration Wizard".

http://www.hex2bit.com/products/product_mcw.asp
and Gamma control software.
http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html
Both freeware.

The main reason for buying the Spyder 2 Suite to make sure my Printer is calibrated correctly. So hopefully I've not wasted £109.

Harry

I believe monitor calibration is worth it. The human eye is a poor judge of colour so to have correct colour is a big confidence boost. Prior to monitor calibration I thought by camera produced a slight blue colour balance and adjusted accordingly. Since acquiring a Pantone Huey I rarely touch the white balance of my images.

My older images all have too much red! :o when viewed in a calibrated monitor.

That's the trouble with an uncalibrated Monitor, it might look ok to you but for other people the colours could be off - like you say, it is worth it (I recently bought eye-one display 2 and it is superb IMO).

Did you misread my post?. the monitor was calibrated via software and switching between the two profiles showed that they are identical, apart from a very,very minor brightness difference.

Harry

I too am considering getting a calibration device so this was a very useful post for me. Thanks!
One point I might mention is that I'm told on the Canon forums that Adobe Gamma should be removed or disabled if you are using an LCD monitor.

Harry, I think it all depends on where your pre-calibration starting point is. You seem to have been lucky and had a monitor that was very close to "true" to begin with. Unless you get a hardware based calibrator, you would never know this. Also, it may be worth checking a range of different images that contain different balances of colours. The one(s) you have checked so far may show little difference, but other images with different colours may show a greater difference.

I found little difference in blues and greens with my CRT, but the reds were noticeably improved. Your monitor may have a different amount of before/after correction applied to different colours. The biggest improvement has been to my LCD screen. The colours aren't that different, but the black/white and greys are much improved. So, you may find that the colour balance may not be that much changed, but there's differences in the mid tone details.

If you haven't seen an improvement then you have a point that you may have wasted your money. Without wasting your money, you'd have probably never known this!

Duncan

Duncan, I certainly agree with the last part of your message as any doubt has now been removed.

However whatever the final outcome, the money wasn't really wasted as I bought the Spyder Suite, so I will be calibrating my printer with it over the weekend.

When you consider the cost of our equipment, camera/s lenses monitors etc, the £!00 is really chicken feed.

Harry

Dan, I've never heard of this before.

I use an LCD monitor, but could not get Adobe Gamma to work on my PC, hence my search of the web for software calibration and discovering the "Monitor Calibration Wizard".

Harry

It was a surprise to me. I had been trying to calibrate my LCD monitor that way until I accidentally ran across the info. while I was reading about calibration on the Canon forum.

I agree with Yelvertoft, calibration is a must for an LCD type screen.

The Pantonne Huey pro has arrived.

I have set up my monitor and it looks all washed out and very light. I couldn't get the brightness and contrast anywhere near what they suggest so went for the default values. Is this normal, am I seeing it look wrong because I was used to things being a lot darker.

Christine, how were you setting the brightness and contrast? If you adjust them using the hardware buttons on the monitor you should be able to get it pretty close. I found that using the software based adjustments via the video driver (the only way I can adjust things on my laptop) was more problematic.

I certainly can't get the settings anywhere near right using the "default" suggested values, I had to do some fairly extreme adjustments on my flat panel screen(s) to get the brightness/contrast even close to right. The CRT was a doddle in comparison.

Duncan

Duncan, I reset the monitor with its own buttons to its preset settings then tried adjusting them with the huey at the side.
I tried brightness then the contrast sliders but still couldn't get the whites to adjust down to give two shades. I gave up and set the brightness and contrast to what I thought looked okay and continued with the calibration. I have tried a number of brightness and contrast settings to see if it made any difference to the final result but it doesn't, I also notice a slight blue cast..

Adjust the settings using the hardware based adjustment controls directly on the monitor. Get them as close as you can even if they aren't perfect. Remember that it's the contrast control that adjusts the white point and the brightness control that adjusts the black point. Having said that, turning down the brightness may well allow you to see the two shades of white on the contrast adjustment screen. By adjusting the two controls in a cycle of one after the other you should be able to get it right.

If you can't see the two shades of white, turn down the contrast to its minimum and if that still doesn't allow you to see the two bits of white turn down the brightness a long way until you can. Then fine tune on the contrast control.

As for the blue cast, what colour temp have you set the monitor to (on the monitor hardware)? 6500K is the norm.

D.

Duncan, I did the adjustments on the monitor not software, even with contrast and brightness at zero there wasn't two shades of white just the one.

The way I had to set it before I bought the Huey was to adjust the hue and saturation in the graphics card profile. That is now set to defaults so it doesn't conflict. I have also checked that adobe gamma isn't loaded.

It may look out to me now because I am so used to it being wrong.:)

I am using a 22" Acer Monitor AL2216W, it only has a setting for warm, cool and custom it doesn't give temp like my old monitor.

Sorry Christine - but I think it's a bummer - the following link to a review of this monitor shows there is no temperature adjustment available on this model apart from warm or cold so any fine adjustment you need is not there -

http://www.trustedreviews.com/displa...een-Display/p1

I installed Huey Pro a couple of months ago ater getting new computer and have had the same problems as Christine. The colour calibration didn't seem to make any discernible difference. Has anyone used used Huey and found that it did make a difference and could they post before and after photos? I'm not convinced that Huey actually does anything except to get the user to change the brightness a tad.

A Huey makes a massive difference to LCD monitors. Colours are spot on so if you are looking to make any colour changes then it needs to be done on a calibrated monitor or your photos risk showing a colour cast.

Lets say your monitor has a deep blue cast. When changing white balance or selecting a grey point to look correct on the bad monitor an opposite amount of red would have to be present in the photo for the monitor to display a 'true' representation of the real scene captured in the photo.

If this editted photo with an unnatural red content were to be displayed on a calibrated monitor it should be obvious there was too much red.

Thank you Andy, unfortunately I have had the monitor since Christmas so can't take it back. I didn't realise at the time that I couldn't change the temperature to something I know. I got around it by changing the Hue and saturation.

Mike, I do see a vast difference from my original settings to the new calibrated one, just to my eye its to bright and a bit washed out. I tried setting the brightness and contrast to what I think it should be and then run the Huey but it keeps coming up looking exactly the same so altering the brightness and contrast made no difference.

Sorry about that Christine - can I suggest you add an attachment that looks good to you or blue and let us look at them on other calibrated monitors. I use a Spyder 2 Pro on mine every two weeks - it might help you to know what some of us see. I must admit however that I have not noticed anything off in your recent posts.

The first macbeth chart on my monitor doesn't look right. the border around all the colors I presume should be black on my monitor its medium grey and it looks like it should have more depth of color and contrast.

The second photo I have added 100% contrast which has made it look good.

Hi Christine - the Macbeth chart - bottom row is meant to go from absolute white to absolute black. According to my monitor both white squares are shades of grey - the first one goes to dark grey - the second to almost black but not quite. The contrast increase brings the white squares nearer to white but it they are both still grey on my screen. The first chart also shows a definite yellow/orange cast which is very faint on the increased contrast chart - but detectable. Try a cooler setting and lets see?

Attached are 2 electronically produced versions of the chart. I have a program that produces a bmp file. I have resized the bmp file to meet the forums limit. Also is a reduced to a lesser extent jpg version.

It maybe useful to compare against.

I have the same problem as Christine my monitor at work is much brighter than the one at home. To add further confusion work has just given me a 17 inch laptop which looks different again. My first thoughts were that my work monitor was wrong until I checked this out.

http://www.pbase.com/image/67769565

Setting my home monitor to this makes everything far too bright.

So have my gallery posts been too bright ?

I am looking into getting a spyder 2 but I am a bit concerned that it will not make matters better.

Out of interest for those who are calibrated using a gismo does the about link display correctly ?

Andy, the first chart I should have said is straight from a download with no alterations. The second is the one I altered to what I think looks okay.

Rob I have just checked the link, the colors look good, vibrant and bright. Maybe I do have it set right and its just me not used to seeing things correct.

I have been going through my gallery and most photos look awful, foggy and wishy washy.

Hi Rob - the bottom of your Macbeth chart goes from off white to dark grey on my monitor. The Pbase link I see as absolute white to absolute black and I can see all the marked divisions on that chart.

Hi Christine - the second chart also has the definite orange cast so I suggest "cooling" the screen - as I think you can - and see the result.

Thanks Andy

This site also looks interesting

http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/m...alibration.htm

Hi Christine - a link I've just found that tells you how to adjust the colour on your monitor I think - hope it helps.

http://www.anandtech.com/displays/sh...px?i=2944&p=10

This link may also help


http://www.behardware.com/articles/6...take-over.html