Product Description

For more advanced users, Spyder2 Suite calibrates your monitor and allows you to profile your printer (software based)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3582 in Software
• Brand: ColorVision
• Model: S2100
• Released on: 2006-03-14
• Platforms: Windows XP, Mac OS X
• Format: CD
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 2.75" h x 8.37" w x 10.25" l, 2.00 pounds

Features

• The "Standard" in Monitor Calibration
• Rated Best Calibration by MacWorld April 2005
• Calibrates any monitor (Laptop, CRT, LCD)
• The leader in monitor calibration solutions

Customer Reviews

Spyder2 Suite (including PrintFIX PLUS)
Sypder2, the monitor calibration product, is excellent. My monitor never looked this good! Documentation is a bit terse, however. Additionally, you have to know how to do a few things such as (1) disable a program from starting when you boot up and (2) manually adjust your monitor for brightness, contrast, and color temperature and reset it to the factory defaults. Of these, the most important is probably knowing how to disable Adobe Gamma on startup (if enabled), and this is not explained adequately. Some patience and possibly a call to tech support may be required.

PrintFIX PLUS (the printer profiling tool) is less intuitive and more difficult to use. There is no printed documentation, and the Help files are a bit terse. You start by picking a printer/paper combination (any one will probably do, but pick a matte profile if you want to make matte prints). You probably won't find your printer/paper combination in the list, but it really does not matter. These profiles can be used as starting points for profiling of any color printer. You disable the ICM profiling included with your print driver (in the print dialog box for your printer), then make a test print. You compare your test print with an image of the print on your monitor and then make adjustments for brightness, saturation, contrast, color, and viewing conditions.

It's an iterative process to be sure, and some patience is required. The printer profile that I created was much more accurate than any of the ICM profiles provided by HP. It made a HUGE difference in print quality.

I use the ICM profiles from Spyder2 and PrintFIX PLUS in conjunction with Photoshop Elements 4.0 and do all of my critical color printing from within that application. (Note: the ICM profiles that you create with these products are accessible from within the Photoshop Elements Print dialog box. You don't have to install them.)

Additionally, I have not experienced any crashes or other instability issues when used with Windows XP as reported by one reviewer.

Conclusions/Recommendations:

Spyder2 is recommended for any intermediate or advanced amateur photographer who uses Photoshop Elements or equivalent. Novices might be better off with Spyder2 Express, which is considerably cheaper but less robust.

PrintFIX PLUS is recommended for anyone who has some experience making color prints requiring color correction and that has an older printer or even a newer one with inadequate ICM profiles to get satisfactory results. Patience is required.

Easy to use
I bought the Spyder 2 suite and the monitor calibration worked very well. The printer calibration, not so good. The printer calibration is strictly a judgement call. You pring a picture from the program and they match it to the monitor picture. I could have done that without paying extra for a program that is pretty lame. I thougtht the printer program would print something and then the hardware would scan it and set the printer program, unfortunatley it doesn't work that way. As I said at the stare the monitor calibration worked very well and was easy to use.

Earl Stuckey

Good monitor calibration
I've had no issues with the monitor calibration. Works great.

The "suite" version differentiates itself from regular Spyder 2 by the printer calibration. It is not worth the $20 difference. The printer calibration is TERRIBLE!!!

The printer calibration included no printed documentation. The installer crashes on WinXP. The program itself crashes VERY often -- and required reboots in between crashes (warning of some obtuse 'unable to open file' message).

After spending about an hour re-booting and re-running PrintFix, all it allows is to select from a pre-defined list of printers, and then has slider bars for things like "Brightness" and "cyan<->magenta", etc. There's no way to calibrate the results other than eyeballing the printouts! That's not calibration, that's eyeballing! They don't even offer a service (or a discount for that service) of say, mailing in a few test-sheets to a lab to do the analysis (since the included sensor is unable to analyze the paper).

The final result? Prints that look identical to how I started. All I did was waste a few hours rebooting.