I’m considering to get some display calibration hardware to correct my (aging) DELL U3011. It wasn’t the most accurate display and 5 years of aging probably haven’t helped it either.
I want something that’s supported by argyll. But that still leaves a lot of options.
Is just buying a cheap ColorMunki Smile colorimeter ‘good enough’? Are the slightly more expensive colorimeters any better? Or do I ‘need’ to get at least a cheap spectrometer like the ColorMunki Photo to get useable results?
I know these questions are really vague but I hope you guys can still give me some pointers.
If you live in the U.S. then these are frequently found on special for $50 of retail. If you don’t need custom profiles for your printer, would you actually need a spectrometer?
I also have a ColorHug (and some more expensive models) and I don’t think that it should be recommended. At least I never got anything decent with modern monitors.
I share the impression of @houz, I own a ColorHug as well and never got reasonable calibrations. But it seems that Richard Hughes recently introduced a new version 2 of the ColorHug using a new sensor. Due to the FAQ on http://www.hughski.com it does not need the complex procedures to fit the device to your monitor (obtain suitable CCMX, what proved impossible for all my monitors) and should be able to produce reasonable results (see http://www.hughski.com/faq.html#ch1-ch2-what-changed). It would be interesting to read some impressions from people owning v2. If Richard really solved the limitations of v1, I think it’s worth to think about supporting his open hardware approach. And the device is comparatively inexpensive.
At the moment I use a datacolor Spyder 4 pro and it serves its purpose, I’m happy with it. For the Spyder 4 the pro and elite versions shipped the same hardware but different software which limited the maximum number of monitors with the cheaper pro version. Since I work on linux and therefore do not use the original software I never observed problems or limitations. I don’t know if it’s the same with the latest Spyder 5.
Maybe I’ll try renting a ColorMunki spectrophotometer to compare the results against my cheap colorimeter gotten off ebay for $30…it sounds like it will make a big difference for a wide gamut screen?
My understanding is that colorimeters ideally have the same spectral response as the human eye (as opposed to cameras which are optimized for maximum transmission), so no matter how peaky the spectrum of the backlight and color filters the screen has, it should produce perceptually identical results.
I had the same experience with my ColorHug as others have mentioned. It didn’t produce a usable profile. But I really like supporting the open hardware option, so I may buy one of the new ones.
I’ve experienced issues accessing my ColorMunki (both in Linux and Mac OS X). My best experience has been with Spyder models.
I don’t know why this old thread was bumped, but just in case… I have a ColorHug2, and after my initial struggles to use the proper settings for displaycal, I do get quite reasonable results.
