I just got the Spyder4Pro. Calibrated my MBAir and Thunderbolt displays. In both cases I get a dialogue at the end of the calibration that says: "The calibration brightness does not match the target, therefore brightness is being adjusted from 120 to 46." Why is this happening? Am I doing something wrong? I stuck with all of the recommended settings at the beginning of the calibration. During the calibration the software instructs me to adjust my brightness to the middle. I assume this is just for the calibration and that I can crank the brightness up afterwards. The results look very good but I'm curious about the brightness issue. Any help is appreciated. Thanks, Dave
you do not want to crank the brightness up after calibration. it wants to be calibrated AT the desired level. A brightness of 46 cd/m2 would be VERY dark. Usually, you want to be in the 90-110 zone
Thank you. I figured out what was happening. At one point in the wizard it tells you to set your brightness slider in the middle. What they want you to do here is adjust your brightness to the target setting. I guess they figure that the middle is a good starting point. They just don't explain it very well. Anyway, my target was 180 so I got the brightness set there and continued with the calibration. It looks great. Uncalibrated was very blue. Its amazing that you don't see this until you compare it to a properly calibrated screen. Thanks for the help. You got me pointed in the right direction.
remember that the goal is to have the monitor brightness and it's interpretation of paper white be at/near what the paper looks like under the intended illumination for displaying it.
120+ is brighter than the vast majority of home/wall lighting.
Thanks. I was just going by what the Spyder recommended based on the ambient light. I will create a new profile based on 120 and see what that looks like. Is there a way to calibrate the white point or do I just play with the brightness? Should I try to get the screen set to a brightness that matches a sheet of paper?
I dont use the Spyder but they all have varying degrees of white point setability. Some only allow 'D' numbers or correlated temps (ie. D65 or 6500). The 'better' software allows you to specify X/Y numbers which take you off the temperature line (which is a very useful esp. if you are trying to match 2 monitors).
I personally set my monitors to about 95 which gives me a good brightness match for my living room lighting where I put my images. This is an iterative process to get the best #'s so try it and see.
I adjust my monitor brightness so that the spyder software calibration ruler shows in the middle at the recommended setting. As mentioned, I leave it there and then process my photos. I find this brightness adjustment correlates well with prints. I will recalibrate if my ambient light changes (ie I did a calibration during the daytime for some photos, then will process photos in the evening).
