Since this place is such a wealth of random knowledge, I figured I would pose my question here.
Has anyone ever tried calibrating a monitor or paper using anything other than one of the commercial tools available?
I'm working on my PhD in chemistry and as such I have access to all kinds of spectrometers that cost tons of money. Since I like to tinker, I was wondering if anyone has ever tried something so crazy and/or knows someone/somewhere that I could find out some additional information regarding this. A piece of software that I could use would be awesome - but I figure that would probably be really expensive. (Graduate students are cheap.) I could very easily get a spectra from colors printed on a piece of paper and probably less easily from a monitor, but I don't really know where to go once I've obtained this data.
Thanks!
-Jason
Jason, there is a technique that I had developed years ago, before color management became popular, for improving the monitor to print match using a visual technique. Basically, you enter a "calibration mode" and you use software controls to adjust the monitor image to look as close as possible to the print. The software then computes the inverse of the correction applied to the monitor image and applies it as a LUT & matrix correction to the printer image. Note, the inverse correction isn't just a simple inversion, it actually takes into account the gamma characteristics of the monitor. For more information, you can take a look at US Patent# 5,081,529.
With such great calibration systems available now for less than $250, do you really want to try and reinvent the wheel? Other than saying that you did it yourself, is there something you're trying to achieve that you can't get from X-rite?
Bob:
Thank you for that information - I will absolutely check out that patent when i get a few moments.
Peter:
Thanks for the reality check - I've been seriously considering some of the calibration systems. Specifically the spyder4 since it's the only one bestbuy carries and I need to burn through some old gift cards. From what I understand, I need a spectrophotometer to accurately profile papers for printing, and the cheapest one I've seen is the Colormunki Photo. I understand that what I'm paying for is the convenience of these calibration systems - which is certainly nice. As much fun as I would have reinventing the wheel, I agree with you - I don't think that it would be necessarily worth my time. I'm just curious as to what I can do (and if I can do anything) with the tools that are already available to me here, especially since they are probably far more precise and accurate than any consumer grade equipment.
There are of course the benefits of it being cheap, and learning something new in the process.
Best Buy gift cards not withstanding, the consensus seems to point to the X-Rite Display Pro 2 as being the "best buy" available today, surpassed only by the BasicColor unit ($1300) and far ahead of anything else on the market. While I am a huge fan of doityourself, I can also see the amount of time these companies put in to getting it right, figuring out the right compensations, interfacing with a variety of hardware and having a product that actually works. If I were you I'd spend those gift cards on something else there and order an X-Rite from Amazon.
