Originally posted by: Nnyan
OK so I got my Spyder2 Express a day early but I wasn't able to play with it with all the getting ready for thanksgiving. So I ran it for the first time on the 2232GW and it did make a bunch of changes but it did not change the brightness/contrast (instructions indicate to reset these to defaults 100/75). Is this normal since the default B/C is just way too bright for me. By the way I checked this after the reboot and it did indicate that the profile was successfully loaded.
Well I don't know how the Spyder2 works but it would seem to me there'd be options to adjust brightness/contrast.
See here:
http://www.northlight-images.c...ws/spyder2express.html
Apparently color temp/gamma targets, RGB controls are fixed (but probably not if you use third-party software that also supports the Spyder2). But again you should be able to adjust brightness/contrast with Spyder2Express (and incl. software) and end up with something very good.
Software like ColorHCFR may let you exploit the Spyder2Express fully:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=737550
I think the Spyder2 series all have the same colorimeter HW, just different software.
You can get about 90% as good of a calibration just by adjusting brightness/contrast and letting Spyder2 profile your monitor, as long as your monitor's RGB controls aren't all wacky. I recommend setting R=G=B in the monitor controls (so they're all equal), and then let Spyder2 profile it.
It may take a few tries before you really get the hang of it. Maybe a little background on what it's actually doing will benefit you.
- It wants to get black as dark as possible
- It wants white to be a certain brightness (usually 120 nits)
- It wants to set white to a certain color temperature (like 6500K daylight)
- It wants to adjust the gamma curve to match sRGB ("the" color standard), or the exponent 2.2 as a close approximate to this standard
--- This gamma correction controls how much brighter the current color tone (n) gets than the previous tone (n-1)
- It wants to do all this without sacrificing gamut (the range of colors) and bit depth (the number of colors) too much
Gamut is not something you can expand. It is defined by the LCD device and its backlight. The same goes for bit depth. The calibration software however has to sacrifice both of these a little to make you achieve only the most accurate colors.
It is harder to calibrate consumer LCDs because they have little devices inside (lookup tables) that try and solve the problem on their own. When they fail, you have to compensate for their failures and by doing this you already lose a little color bit depth, or resolution. Don't confuse color resolution with screen resolution (e.g. 1280x1024)... All I mean by resolution is the strict definition of it in the dictionary. Ultimately, the compensation is provided by the video card's secondary lookup table.
Professional LCDs include lookup tables that can be completely modified, so it is simpler to get a full calibration out of them and you don't have to touch the video card's lookup table.
Don't worry though, you can still get awesome performance out of consumer LCDs with good video card calibration and adjusting what you can of the consumer monitor's lookup table (primitive R, G, B sliders).