Over time, even a calibrated monitor can fall out of calibration. Many systems don't give you precise brightness indicators – like at 25% or 50% – so you'll have to visually guess how bright your screen is using a brightness slider. While the movement of the colorimeter can't be automated, I had hoped that the brightness adjustments could have been.

It takes less than twenty minutes to complete the entire analysis, but the software will prompt you for specific actions, like moving the colorimeter to different positions on your screen and manually adjusting the brightness to get readings at different screen brightness levels. I found the brightness consistency test from the Elite model useful in understanding which areas of the screen are brighter than others.Įven though you get a lot of information from the Spyder Utility software, the program requires frequent user input. The sRGB and Adobe RGB color gamut measurements are similar on the Lenovo ThinkPad T450, but the ThinkPad had a screen with more uniform brightness than the MacBook. Looking at the data from my MacBook Pro, the Datacolor software found that the display on my laptop achieved 100% of the sRGB and 78% of the AdobeRGB color gamut, color and luminance uniformity varied at different brightness levels. This is a more detailed process and takes longer to finish, but helps you understand your screen's weak spots, such as areas of the display that are lit darker than others.

To calibrate, you'll want to remove the cap off of the colorimeter and place the colorimeter on your screen – the software will guide you on where to place the device – and use the cap as a counterbalance to keep the unit from sliding off of your display.Īt the end of the process, a display profile is created, and you can apply this calibrated profile to your screen to get the most out of a color-calibrated display in your workflow.įor those who want to understand what is happening with their displays, the included Spyder Utility software reads your screen and gives you a detailed analysis of your display's gamut for color saturation, tone response, brightness and contrast, white point at different presets, screen uniformity for brightness and color at different areas of your display and color accuracy. Once that's done, the calibration process takes five minutes to complete, and the wizard will walk you through each step.

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