SpyderX: slight difference from the “official” app

[Florin Andrei]

I just bought a SpyderX Pro sensor. On the MacBook Pro I used the “official” app to calibrate the display. I used the D65 setting, which I believe means 6500 K / 2.2 gamma. I set the brightness as close as possible to 120 cd/m2. I’ve disabled all automatic adjustments to tint and brightness.

On my Acer Predator laptop the “official” app does not detect the sensor, which led me to discover DisplayCAL, which has no issues using the SpyderX. I used DisplayCAL to calibrate the laptop’s own display, and an external LCD (Acer R240HY bidx 23.8-Inch IPS) connected via HDMI in a dual display setup.

The settings I used on Windows with DisplayCAL are:

• color temperature 6500K blackbody
• gamma 2.2 relative
• display mode LCD White LED

Everything else is default.

All three displays are pretty close to each other in terms of color, after calibration. The Acer laptop and the Acer LCD are ever so slightly more yellow than the MacBook Pro; the difference is tiny, I only notice it clearly if all displays are next to each other.

Years ago I bought a LaCie blue eye 2, which I used to calibrate an older IPS monitor (using the LaCie app), with excellent results. The settings I used were: 6500K, 2.2 gamma, 120 cd/m2. I used that rig to process many digital photos with Lightroom and Raw Therapee. Those photos look great on all displays.

I feel (though I could be wrong) that the tint on the MacBook Pro is closer to what I used to have on the old LCD calibrated with LaCie.

My questions are:

• what could cause the differences I see between the SpyderX Pro app on the MacBook and DisplayCAL on Win10?
• there are so many options in DisplayCAL – what’s the combination of settings that’s closest to the combo 6500K / 2.2 gamma / 120 cd/m2 on apps that don’t offer all those different configuration options?

SpyderX Pro on Amazon  
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[Vincent]

-macOS color management engine is faulty & buggy, so you need a solution of compromise between accuracy and macos bugs that causes artifacts on screen. Hence default settings for DisplayCAL on macOS.
One of the things you may have to give up is D65 white and use native white. It’s Apple’s fault.

-you assumed that device measures in a different way, but that is not the only option. ArgyllCMS can measure the same as Datacolor app, but the two apps compute different calibrations due to at least one knowing the faulty macos color managementengine. Also user configuration may add additional differences.

-your device is not accurate and cannot be software upgraded to newer backlights without owning an spectrophotometer. If you can, return it for refund and get an accurate device like an i1displaypro.

-even with an accurate device your two screens would need an accurate correction for colorimeter. If you had an i1displaypro you can use community or bundled cotrrections to solve this, but with Spyderx you are extremely limited to the few generic ones “in device” and suffer innacuracies.

-if using whatever device & corrections displays do not match then use “visual wite point editor” using one display as reference.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by Vincent.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by Vincent.

[Florin Andrei]

Lesson learned – do more research next time. 🙂

Alright, thanks for the advice, I’m returning the SpyderX and I just purchased an X-Rite i1Display Pro. I’ll redo the calibration when the new sensor arrives.

[Vincent]

Keep in mind that even with a super accurate device

-macOS imposes some limitations regarding profile types, unless you do not care about some UI artifacts in Apple’s apps or Finder menus (Adobe apps will work OK becase tehy use their own engine). This holds until they fix their buggy OS which seems not to be in the near future.

-if there is no suitable & accurate correction for a backlight technology in one of your displays you still need visual whitepoint approach to get a whitepoint match between screens.

i1displaypro solves speed, low light accuracy and “future proof”-ness with Xrite spectral corrections and community database, but those 2 issues I wrote above remain as a possibility.

[Florin Andrei]

I’ve returned the SpyderX and received the X-Rite i1Display Pro. I did a quick test. Just with out of the box settings, no optimizations, but aiming for the same 6500/2.2/120 point, the X-Rite seems to converge on a slightly less yellow tinge, seems more “neutral”, whatever that means. The difference is very tiny, only visible when comparing monitors side by side. The results also seem a bit more consistent between different screens – but again, this effect is super-tiny.

All of the above is true for both Win10 and Mac hosts.

I just wish the X-Rite had a flatter shape – stability seems a bit sketchy. But that’s nitpicking.

Okay, time for me to start reading up on how to extract all performance from the X-Rite. I’m sure there’s a ton of tweaks. This will probably take a while, and lots of iterations. Sounds fun.

Thanks a lot for your help!

• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by Florin Andrei.

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