on 25/11/03 4:52 pm, Kurt Seefeldt wrote: > I heard that the Spyder with PhotoCAL had problems on the Apple Cinema > Displays, but nothing specifically on the 17" model. I know there are > many happy Spyder users out there, but I'd like to hear from users > about their experiences. Is the Gretag-McBeth EyeOne Display worth the > extra money? Is the BasICColor unit good? Are there others in the <$300 > (USD) price range I should consider?
I bought the PhotoCAL Spyder a month or so ago, and the profiles of my Apple LCD screen seem to be fine. The Pantone customer service, however, seems to have its problems, and the confidence I have in the profiles has been eroded by my lack of confidence in their customer service advisers. When I found that the 6500k/1.8g and the 6500k/2.2g profiles both appeared to identical, and seemed to have been produced at 1.8g, I had a series of emails telling me how it was my fault in a variety of interesting ways before they remembered that there was a problem with PhotoCal 2.7 which meant that, erm, a bug it created profiles at 1.8g regardless of the gamma you set. Unfortunately, not all of the customer service people seem to be aware of this fairly significant problem, and I was shipped version 2.7 a month after the bugs had been discovered and it was replaced with 2.7.6. As a profiling newbie, some of the advice they gave in the correspondence seemed to be counter-intuitive: "In stage 2 when the software asks you to enter the gamma which is closest to that used by the end-user, it is referring to you, as the software considers you the end user...." for one. On the good side, the time I spent waiting for a reply from them was spent making a 3' velcro strap to wrap round the Spyder and lightly hold it flat to the screen - as the provided counterweight to hang the Spyder off is next to useless. Nick McGowan-Lowe =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
