I’m surprised it even needs a driver. It doesn’t with DisplayCAL, since it’s a hid device (unlike the Spyder).
DisplayCAL. Same for Windows, actually. As I understand it, the software that comes with the device is generally not recommended if you care about highly accurate results. Always use third party if you do care, and DisplayCAL/ArgyllCMS is about as good as it gets.
Another thing to note is that the Spyders are pretty much universally derided as being junk, by those that know about these things. Something about the colour filters make them unreliable, especially as they get older, but even when new. I posted some links with further details in this thread:
Thanks for your informative reply. I am now dowloading displaycal and I may try a comparison of the early x-rite device and the Spyder device I have. But my nose was really put out of joint when x-rite would not supply new software for windows, but expected me to buy a whole new device.
The ColorHug and Spyder X Pro aren’t Photospectrometers, they’re tristimulus colorimeters.
I seem to remember X-rite partnering with another company to produce their consumer PSMs and colorimeters. Jeti, Colorimeter Research and Klein are also worth a look.
Building your own spectrometer is a romantic idea, and a very worthwhile leaning exercise, but the Achilles heal of such projects is calibrating them. Traceable calibration standards and sources are much more expensive than a reasonable quality spectrometer. So unless you happen to know someone with a NIST certified calibration lab, the best way to get an instrument that you want use, is to buy one.
@Donatzsky I have installed displaycal and successfully used my old xrite i1 to calibrate two different monitors. Using darktables two screen preview mode the screens are very close to each other. Better than I have ever achieved before. Another win for FOSS saving hardware that the OEM will not support.
Just in case it was not clear, I know that (for the colorhug).
I only made a remark about this colorimeter as I made a research on the forum (before posting my request for advices, to check if someone else had recently asked the same thing) and I found this other thread where someone was saying that by buying a spectrophotometer, they could finally get their colorhug to calibrate a bit more accurately (as I recall, that is because commercial colorimeters usually have some per-display matrix data to fix calibration, and the colorhug doesn’t have these data by default; so people were sharing their homemade ones on a community database; it required that someone with the same screen than you had a spectrophotometer then shared the resulting correction file).
A spectrophotometer colorhug was in fact planned eventually IIRC, but it seems that it never happened.
Anyway it was just a fun remark. And yes, now I search a spectrophotometer, not a colorimeter. So I’ll ignore the discussion on the SpyderX as it seems irrelevant to my case.
It looks like it’s not sold anymore. Apparently the ColorChecker Studio (which @ggbutcher also advises) would be the replacement for this too? My web search seem to indicate that ColorMunki became i1 Studio which in turn became ColorChecker Studio?
So bottom line, it looks like ColorChecker Studio is what is recommended so far?
Forgive my ignorance. I didn’t realise the difference. But anyway I got helpful advice despite my stupidity. Thanks for your patience and good responses
Hello, I bought the X-Rite iStudio three years ago. It works fine with ArgyllCMS and DisplayCal (flatpak) on Linux. I use it for profiling/calibrating my screen and for printer/ink/paper profiles.
About the price, I bought it for 375€, today I see the average price in France is 550-600€!! Mega inflation…
They’re good for what they’re designed for, calibrating screens of known types.
A colorimeter has 3 filters (roughly red, green and blue) and measures the amount of each, then using a precomputed matrix for the type of screen, allows calibration to occur. It’s no good without the matrix.
A photospectrometer measures the power across the visible spectrum (the more expensive, the smaller the steps it measures) and allows you to measure the colour and luminance of anything it’s pointed at. It’s more accurate, can be used for more things, but significantly more expensive.
One use may be to measure a test chart under LED lights and then measure how accurately a display is showing those colours. Or to define the matrices for colorimeters.
As a (retired) analytical chemist I was quite curious about this post, then quickly learnt it was an inappropriate use of terms: a spectrophotometer is a type of instrument used in chemical analysis. As is a spectrometer.
What is needed appears to be a form of colorimeter, like a SpyderXPro for example.
That is where I got confused because I have spent the last five weeks teaching undergrad students how to use a spectrometer to measure blood analytes based upon absorbance and transmission. So I presumed the initial conversation was about color calibration for monitors.
Nope, spectrophotometers are also used for display calibration. So what is requested here is really a spectrophotometer, and not a colorimeter. Look at the ColorChecker Studio link which was given above. This is a spectrophotometer, not a colorimeter.
Colorimeters are actually quite limited. Not only are they less accurate and may not work as well on all types of displays and technologies (especially future, yet un-commercialized, screen technologies), but they can’t be used to calibrate printers, projectors… unlike spectrophotometers (which are therefore more versatile). Also colorimeters don’t grow old that well (especially because that’s often technology using filters which get bad with time; though there might be other technologies too, not sure), unlike spectrophotometers which should last you for years (unless you drop it on the ground, I guess! ).
Research labs do also use spectrophotometers, which are usually much bigger and more expensive (from what I saw), thus likely more accurate or maybe for even more specialized usage (I guess? I don’t really know, I never needed to use these, only assuming from seeing much higher prices), but computer graphics for sure also use spectrophotometers.
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