I pulled the trigger on a Crossover 3412UM, I messaged dream-seller asking if any ‘perfect pixel’ units would be restocked and they said no… so I decided to go with the regular unit.
I’m taking for granted that its out-of-the-box calibration won’t be ideal and I’d like to try getting the display as accurate as I can. I don’t think I can justify the cost of a colorimeter, as I don’t do anything professionally that depends on my monitor’s color accuracy, but I’d still like to get as accurate as I can.
My understanding of a colorimeter is that it’s “just” a camera that integrates with software, and I was wondering–can’t my smartphone be that, too?
Googling led me to this video showcasing a solution that does my exact idea over a Bluetooth connection. But, the comments include a lot of negative feedback. The developer or their representative in the comments does seem sensible and helpful, for whatever that’s worth.
Still, if I could work off of someone’s recommendation, I’d rather do that over installing a random thing I found on Google. I’m sharing that one as more of a proof-of-concept.
The problem is that you have to know the sensor’s exact response and have calibration/transform data to match it for good results. If your sofware isn’t targeted at a very specific binned set of sensors, with per-device adjustments done in the lab, you can’t really get accurate profiles.
I’d go with an old pantone/datacolor or the relatively inexpensive and open source ColorHug
any reputable brand will give you the results you want, the price typically is a matter of a few % on accuracy and the speed of the calibration.
Been stealing settings from written reviews, try that
There was some variations to that but same gamma seemed to result ±2 to some settings, its fine, I switched them around for few days and then made my choice
I’m dealing with the Crossover 4312UM, L1T did a review of it but I don’t see a profile on their review (or from a quick glance over the forum thread)… any idea where I could find a few profiles to try with that monitor?
you can improve the accuracy somewhat by doing this, but again, ICC profiles are basically a display LUT that makes more fine, granular adjustments than the monitor’s OSD will ever be capable of doing
Check craigslist and other places for a used model, price typically comes down a good bit given colorimeters are something of a specialized item
I think my likelyhood of finding a used option or a rental locally (craigslist/local photo store) is really low, I’m in rural Louisiana. But I’ll try asking in the bigger cities which are all pretty out of the way from me.
Are there any online places I should be checking besides (or before) ebay?
I’d like to jump in as this is one of my interests. I hate poor lighting. I prefer old style light or very expensive LED bulbs with over 90+ CRI at a minimum. So if you are familiar with f.lux, they now recommend a cheaper colorimeter that you can carry around with you if you have a compatible tablet. It can be had for less than $400 and you can even upload the charts to their software now.
If you’re not familiar with f.lux (I don’t work with or for them, I’m just very excited that they are recommending fairly affordable hardware to measure light sources), the main program is designed to limit the blue (and green) light from your monitor as the sun sets. This will hopefully prompt you to dim your monitor, and turn down your room light levels etc.
Oh, and I do believe that this device can also calibrate a monitor! Go see their website (just get flux) to see all the details.
we’re talking about color management, and $400 isn’t cheap for a colorimeter, even an industry standard one. (also flux is for eye strain, it completely throws out any semblance of accurate color profiling, not sure why you bring it up)
Yeah, for even much less money you can just buy an Xrite i1Display Pro and call it a day. And of course that is a great solution if you can afford it. I have one myself and it works perfectly.
And what you call old style light is tungsten. That is also what f.lux is trying to emulate. The reason for that is that it mimics sunset lighting, it lies to your eyes and tells your body that it is late and time to sleep. Blue-ish light tells your brain “it’s high noon, blue skies… Wake up! Time to do shit!” and that is what stresses you out if you look at that all day long.
The thing is this: accurate colors are not straining on the eyes at all but most monitors are tinted blue because the LEDs are more effective in that color range and the display seems brighter that way. And a display that seems brighter is more likely to be bought, even compared to a more accurate one, when people look at both of those in a store.
So yes, like @tkoham said, f.lux is a good thing and makes sense (redshift does the same thing on linux) but it has nothing to do with accurate colors.
I would also be interested in the lightsource you are talking about. CRI can be an indicator of quality but there is a lot more to it than that.
I used to use colorimeters and used to be able to calibrate a screen and the laser printer to output accurate Pantone chips. I also used them as quality control for plastics at Black + Decker. At Color Bureau I was doing pre-press 4 color films. Others did laser scans and printing.
We used this Adobe provided image to do the initial “by eye” calibration.
