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(More customer reviews)I don't review products normally, but I'm making an exception here because of the product, but equally as much because of the company behind it.
I have been involved with displayed images, both big and small since the early 70s. For two decades, there was no way to really judge the accuracy of a displayed image; you simply adjusted things until they "looked right." In the early 90s, I "discovered" what having a properly calibrated display can do to both your enjoyment and your comfort level, knowing that what you were seeing was what you were supposed to be seeing. Often though, calibration involved an extremely lengthy process which included writing a bunch of stuff down, and trying to figure out how to make things work properly. Then along came SpectraCAL with their software called CalMAN. Not only did it automate many of the things that I used to do by hand, it offered compatibility with a ton of the instruments available to technicians, from inexpensive color analyzers, through $40,000 (yes, 40k) reference tools. Just keeping up with this alone could be a full time job. The software continued to grow and mature, and it has become the "de-facto" standard for almost everyone, from hobbyists through people who do nothing but calibrate for extremely important applications all day long.
One of the most ironic things for me was the fact I couldn't get the same level of accuracy and consistency from my computer monitor. Sure, there are many applications that can measure and adjust things for you-- but being picky and also a geek, I would sometimes run one of them, and compare the results to a different one. Sure enough there were differences, not just ones that would show up in measurements-- these could be seen. Most of the other software packages would also only work with the (usually inexpensive and less than stellar performing) color analyzers that they would ship with. Enter CalPC.
This software has the same look and feel as the existing CalMAN platform, but it is designed specifically to work with your PC. It ships with a colorimeter, but one of the cool things about SpectraCAL is that they have become a calibration lab for all types of color measurement devices, so the X-Rite color analyzer that ships with CalPC has been calibrated itself. However if you own one of the others, or maybe even a reference quality measurement instrument, licenses are available to allow CalPC to talk to those as well.
One thing that I love (being a geek and all) is that if you want it simple, click 4 times and you're done. But if you like to play, you can play all night and into the next day. CalPC, out of the box offers up three profiles (standard, day, and night-- but you can rename them if you like) which allows for the various conditions that might occur when sitting in front of a monitor. The cool thing is that if a specific monitor has DDC capability-- in other words, if you can adjust things like brightness, contrast etc. in software instead of the controls on the face of the monitor-- CalPC will use that capability to assist in the automation of the process. It will ultimately create a LUT (look up table) for the monitor itself, along with grayscale adjustments in the monitor. Then it does color correction and creates an ICC profile for Windows. These three combine together to create the final result. In my case, my monitor was pretty close, but CalPC took it the last 5% with ease. When I decided to wipe out all of my previous settings and start as if my monitor was out-of-the-box new, the results ended up almost exactly the same. Once profiled, things like fixing problems in Photoshop are much easier and you have eliminated one more variable.
The last thing I want to mention is the company itself. Again, being a geek, I have found myself countless times having to work with what companies like to call, "CUSTOMER SERVICE". Over the years, things have gotten to the point where I'd rather take an hour and type questions and post them to a forum somewhere rather than take the 5 minutes on the phone that a good answer should take. I used to train customer service folks. I know how hard the job is and I am also aware that once someone gets good enough to be a real help, they usually move on somewhere else. But my feeling is that if a corporation offers phone support, then it should be worthy of the call. With SpectraCAL I have found myself sometimes looking forward to making it, because I usually come away knowing even more about calibration than I did going in to it. Everyone from the CEO and founder on down is a real pleasure to work with. They are accessible, down to earth, and are more than interested in solving your problem, they are concerned. I have even seen interim releases of software based on issues that I have called in to them!
I realize that $300 to calibrate a monitor that you might have bought for $150 seems steep. But the accuracy, the flexibility, and the fact that you are using a subset of the same software that is now being used in Hollywood post-production facilities makes it worth it to me. Not to mention that you will have it for the next monitor, and the one after it. This is the real deal.
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CalPC is a powerful monitor application for precisely calibrating your display.Through easy to use workflow wizards, CalPC provides an effecient way for anyone to automatically adust their display controls for optimal performance, day or night.CalPC will not only improve color fidelity, it will bring your display to life.CalPC is the first PC monitor calibration software to support multiple profiles.With CalPC, you can set your monitor to be brighter during the daytime in a room filled with natural light, for example, and reduce the light output at night when it is not needed and is perceived as glare
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