Display calibration - need help deciding what to do

Hardware
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Until now I have used an ancient version of Lightroom on Windows and calibrated the display system (Dell 2410/AMD Vega64) with a Datacolor Spyder 3 Elite.

I have tried other commercial software, Capture One and others but it was a love/hate relation every time so the old Lightroom stayed.

The old system has worked for me, cropping, fixing colour issues et.c., basic editing, but darktable looks like a whole new game compared to where I come from…

I am now considering to move my image editing to another computer running Linux (LMDE7) and darktable 5.4.1, the monitor will stay but the other computer has a NVidia 1070 GPU instead of the AMD.

Having read vastly differing opinions in forums regarding hardware and software for display calibration I need input from you - the darktable community in order “to make the best of a bad show” -:slight_smile:

Alas, I have questions.

Will display calibration work well with NVidia GPUs or should I move the Vega card as well ?

Is display calibration working the way it should in Linux ?

My Dell 2410, opinions on that ?

How do I know if the Datacolor device is doing a decent job, or not ?

Depending on the previous answers, is it even worth it to bother calibrating my system ?

I have located an X-rite i1Display Studio device available second hand, is that a good/better unit ?

Many speak of the Calibrite Pro HL and Plus HL, are they working reliably with Linux software and which one is the preferred one ?

Please share your experiences !

Thank you in advance

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Hi! And welcome to the forum.

On linux you’ll be using DisplayCal, which in most cases gives better results than the vendor software. When you profile with DisplayCal, it’ll produce a calibration report, which you can look at to help judge if it is accurate or not. If you have two hardware devices, you can run them both and compare the reports after.

As far as I know, DisplayCal does not care about graphics cards, I’ve used it on systems with discrete nVidia GPUs, intel embedded graphics laptops, and amd apu laptops. Worked fine on all three for me.

On linux, you probably want to make sure you’re using X11 for the time being, as wayland isn’t quite ready to go for a smooth and easy calibraiton experience. Hopefully soon, though.

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You will find my beginner guide very helpful: How to Get Started with darktable, 2026 Edition — Nis' Notebook

The GPU doesn’t matter.

Yes and no. Under X11 it works fine, but Wayland is… complicated (but getting better).

It’s almost certainly not. The Spyders up until and including the 5 have degrading color filters, so are unreliable at the best of times. Get an X-Rite/Calibrite meter.

As far as I know, all X-Rite/Calibrite devices work fine. The Studio is a spectrophotometer, but if you’re only going to calibrate your screen, a colorimeter is - as I understand it - a better choice. The Calibrite Pro and Plus devices, as well as the i1Display Pro (also sold as Calibrite Display Pro), are colorimeters. But the best place to ask would probably be the DisplayCAL forums.

The software to use for calibration is DisplayCAL. You can find a good tutorial here:

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I have anecdotal evidence of this: my Spyder 5 had been slowly shifting color for years, and I only realized after 8 years when the calibration was so bad that my wife’s skin was basically olive on my phone’s screen :person_facepalming:

And to answer your other question: I ditched the color calibrator and now I just use a good but uncalibrated IPS display, with the profile set to sRGB. It’s not perfect, but for personal/family/web use is good enough (in a place where a good color calibrator costs 40% of my monthly salary)

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Happened to me, too, with a ColorMunki Smile. Extremely annoying.

I, too, would recommend using a decent screen, and use it in DP3 or sRGB mode without calibration. On a good screen, calibration does very little.

Many other factors, such as room illumination, colorful objects in your field of vision, glare on the screen, and screen brightness, play a much bigger role.

Calibration is mostly necessary for advertising, so as to exactly hit the copyrighted hues. Otherwise, every screen is different anyway, so there’s no way to get things “right” anyway. Calibration is not wrong, of course. I do it, too. But I don’t deem it necessary in most cases.

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I’m using a Datacolor SpyderX2 on Linux Mint Cinnamon and DisplayCal on my laptop - works like a charm and I’m happy with the results. Btw, I also followed the suggestions in the guide that @Donatzsky recommended. Keeps things simple and straight forward :+1:

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Thank you all for your insights.

Having read up a little on the topic I have decided not to rush anything, at least for now.

I will play around with argyllcms/displaycal, do some tests with/without the old Spyder and my current display, might learn a thing or two…

Most likely I will take the advice from @guille2306 and @bastibe - get a better display and not venture into profiling territory :slight_smile:

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It’s a Calibrite Display SL I have, which works well on my Kubuntu 24.04 system, no issues with it on Displaycal.

It replaced my old Spyder 2 Express calibrator.

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52fedab3d58e898d00f76f2a4a60774de7cdc525_2_1124x20001124×2000 360 KB

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Seems like Calibrite Display SL is discontinued, what are the options now for linux calibration?

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DisplayCal, just like its always been.

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I mean devices, sorry, I wasn’t very clear

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As @Donatzsky said, the old Spyder devices (up to and including Spyder 5) had organic filters that degraded over time. This is no longer applies to the subsequent Spyder X product line. I used Spyder X in the past and upgraded to Spyder X2. I unfortunately lost track on their naming game when introducing product updates into the market…

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Why would they discontinue them…? It was like the only long-term usable device (unlike Spyder with fading filters) for calibration. I can still find the higher tier versions of the SL still available, like the Pro HL (€269) or Plus HL (€339), but that is much more expensive than the base model.

EDIT:
I’ve read the post above regarding Spyder X series, but the Pro HL seems to be the cheapest of those that I could find

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Yes, they only kept the Pro HL which is 100 euros more expensive than the SL. It seems like they curbed their lower end segment and now if you want decent calibration you need to shed out 270 euro :frowning:

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When you take into the account of cost of cameras, lenses, and decent monitors for photo editing, perhaps it’s not that bad in the grand scheme of things, 270 Euro for the ProHL.

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Just a thought, not a critique.

I know at least a photographer who is using only old equipment that nobody wants anymore and cannot sell. So he gets it for free! He cannot afford to spend a dime for photo devices or even a computer, but he loves photography and he keeps doing it. I admire such passion!

On the other side, I know at least one photographer who just buys the most expensive equipment just because he can afford it. Of course, he does not have enough time for photography because he has to work hard…

Of course, these are 2 extremes, but you never know, who are you talking to in this forum. So 100 Euro could be big money or peanuts. :wink:

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