[Exclamation]

My boss has put to me the task of finding a color calibration system so that we can match the monitors in the studio. The trick is some of us have LCDs while others have CRTs.

I can across the Huey from Pantone which claims it can do both. What I'm having a problem with is how exactly does it (or any other calibrator) calibrate a monitor? My LCD, for example, has very limited color controls, which are built into the monitor itself and not accessible by software.

Pantone is no help since they don't have manuals online. If anyone who's actually used a hardware-based calibrator could shed some light on how these things actually calibrate that'd be appreciated.
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Freelance Illustration & Design | A Portrait of Envy

[B0b]

the huey is a good home system..

what u need to do is paint your studio black - black out the windows - get daylight bulb system, wear dark clothing

then you can use a hardware calibrator

my new studio will be black on 3 walls with a darker colour to help offset the blackness! with 0 windows

but if you dont want to go that far look at a spyder calibrator - if you have a printer which u use for proofing, get the PrintFIX Pro Suite

what happens is the calibrator sets a profile for windows/mac OS to use in place of the standard pofile its using currently..

carefull if you're using Dual Screens with WindowsXP as you can only have Screen 1 calibrated - i think there's a fix on M$'s site, but not sure how it works with hardware calibrators..

i calibrate my screen if there is a heavy change in the weather, like recently the sun has been showing its face more often here so i've re-calibrated my display on a bright day - the pictures weren't that far out but enough to notice..

if you visit the other thread on here about monitors you'll find a usefull link to a site that shows which TFT's are 18bit and which are 24bit

[Exclamation]

Thanks for the reply B0b, but what I was actually looking for is how the calibrator does its thing. The way the Huey, for example, is presented, it looks like it's automated, like it does it itself (again, this is how the ads make it look, I could be way off). My worry is that with a monitor like mine, since there aren't any software-based controls, that the calibrator won't work.

Or also since we have different monitors, some may have controls that others don't, and so even if we calibrate each one, they won't match with each other.
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Freelance Illustration & Design | A Portrait of Envy

[B0b]

the huey is a USB device thta you first setup by running the software that comes with the device, it usually displays a set colour on the screen that an optical device then looks at and sets the colour profile for the computer to use - you don't have to have any physical controls on the display for it to work..

once you've calibrated with the huey it then changes the display at set intervals to the ambient room colour making sure that your display is as accurate as possible throughout the time u use the computer.. i can't say how accurate it is compaired to the more expensive models - but there has to be a reason why it is so cheap compaired to the others..

the other calibrators work in pretty much the same way appart from once they've calibrated the screen, the only time they will adjust the screen again is if you run the calibration application.

if you choose to use the Huey, you'll need 1 for each workstation as you can only use 1 huey per station, you could however use the huey to calibrate each screen without the continuous calibration..

there are studios that calibrate their screen each morning before they start work, i used to do this, but found my display changed so little it wasn't worth doing.. so now i only do it with drastic changes to the ambient lighting..

[Exclamation]

Thanks B0b, just what I needed to know!
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Freelance Illustration & Design | A Portrait of Envy

[Petri.J]

Hmm.. Good to know.
Thanks for the introduction.

[glody]

If you are doing this for your boss and for work I highly recomment against purchasing the huey.The huey is something familys buy when they want to get semi close/correct colors when they printout their vacation photos from last summer...

You would be better off in terms of choosing a better calibrator that pantone offers on their site. Typically you will get what you pay for in the end. While there are always exceptions, its importatnt to remember that.

[Exclamation]

The huey actually is a Pantone product, which is why we were looking into it. Another reason why we thought about the huey is because it's marketed as compatible with both LCD and CRTs, which we need. If there's another calibrator that can do both, I'll definitely look into it.
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Freelance Illustration & Design | A Portrait of Envy