( 4 reviews )
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Posted: Jul 5 2009
After struggling trying to make proper prints and wasting paper and ink, I did further research into a profiling kit. I had seen that they were expensive when I looked into them before. I heard about the Color Munki and saw people comparing it to the Spyder Studio. Both products are affordable but the Spyder duo (separate monitor and a print profiling equipment) seemed to have more features and was a more professional system. Other reviewers in blogs seemed to think so. I purchased the Spyder Studio kit not long ago and have been amazed at the accuracy of the prints. They are virtually identical to what I see on the monitor. An affordable, accurate kit for achieving properly profiled images. Highly recommended.
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Posted: May 17 2009
The Spyder3 Studio has proven itself to me quite wonderfully. I recently took over as manager in a print shop and there was no color management in place. One of the hardest tasks I had was making artist prints because the screen wasn't even close to the print and if I had to print it to a different paper or printer then I would have to readjust the image again. The Spyder3 Print lets me profile each paper on each printer and then print the same image to many different papers and printers and the prints match very well. I would recommend this product to anyone that wants an easier way to print high quality images to many different papers without having to fuss with the image every time. Just keep in mind that to take advantage of the icm and icc profiles created with this software you need to be using programs that are icc-aware.
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Posted: Feb 21 2009
I shoot 4x5 large format black and white and for the time being I use an Epson R2400 printer (although I'm thinking of upgrading to the 3800). I discovered Quadtone RIP and thought I would try it to improve my prints. I couldn't get it to work that well - the shadows were muddy but the highlights looked quite nice. Researching this on the internet, I found this to be a not uncommon complaint about Quadtone and the solution was to somehow read the test strips created by the Quadtone software and feed these readings back into the software to improve the result. This led me to exlore different profiling tools and Datacolor's product seemed to have some affordable products that received good reviews. I started by profiling some Epson papers - namely their Ultra Premium Presentation Matte (UPPM), Ultra Smooth Fine Art (USFA), and Velvet Fine Art (VFA) papers. I resisted doing this in the past becuase conventional wisdom has been that Epson profiles are supposed to be near perfect. I was stunned by the difference in prints made using Epson's canned profiles and those created by the Spyder3 Studio software and spectrocolorimeter. More detail in the deep shadows and more vibrancy in the lighter shadows and darker grays. The highlights didn't change that much. So far I don't see much of a difference in color but the test matrix that the Spyder software prints out at the end of the profile-building process includes three color strips that look near perfect with the Spyder profiles and not so good with the Epson profiles. I was never able to get a satisfactory result using glossy-surface papers and Epsons photo black ink and I now realize it was due to less-than-adequate profiles. I just profiled Hahnemuhle's Glossy Fine Art Baryta paper using photo black ink and cannot detect any improvement over Epsons's USFA paper using matte black ink which I found quite interesting - I love Epson's USFA paper. Bottom line is that the Spyder paper-profiling tools work amazingly well and I regret not having done this sooner. Warnings about using the product - 1) I downloaded the latest version of the software which was listed as beta. At the end of the profiling process you can view the software's matrix of 16 small photos merged into a large 8x10 sized image. You can toggle back and forth to see the 'before' and 'after' versions using the new profile. The 'after' image appeared washed out and gave me the impression I messed up somewhere and didn't run through the process correctly. After repeating the process a number of times and not getting past this stage, I decided to gamble and try the profile anyway. It worked very well so this washed out 'after' image must be a bug in their program. 2) The spectrocolorimeter seems to be quite picky as to how you set it up. It sometimes will work when plugged into a powered hub and sometimes it won't (using the button on top of the meter itself). It will also sometimes (sometimes not) work when plugged into a USB port in the front of my computer. This must be a common problem because Datacolor's FAQ says it should be plugged into a USB port in the _back_ of the computer. For me this always works if I want to use the button on top of the reader itself. You can also capture readings using the 'Enter' key on the keyboard. This seems to work no matter where I connect the reader. Recommendations: If you want to print black and white, print out and measure the gray scale test strips as well as the color ones. Also, view the video tutorials on Datacolor's website. Finally, read the reviews of the product on Datacolor's website because many of them contain detailed instructions as to how to use the product. The more preparation you put into it, the easier it will be to get the desired result. The monitor profiling process was easy and it does result in obtaing much closer matches between what I see in Photoshop and what I finally get from my R2400. I'm looking forward to not wasting so much expensive paper and ink. Now - back to tackling the Quadtone RIP to see if I can get even better results (the Spyder software outputs readings into a text document just for this purpose).
