Spyder2 and Corel X5

[Gary Hair]

Tony,
I am going to be running Spyder2 to calibrate my monitor and would like any advise you might have to make sure that X5 and Spyder2 play well together? I do dye sublimation and really need to see a true representation of what I'm about to print. I know it will never be exact, but the closer the better.

Thanks!
Gary

[Mark Giese]

I will preface this by saying this can get very involved, and if you want to jump in with both feet i suggest finding a copy of "Real World Color Management, 2Edition Fraser, Murphy, Bunting. That will be the long version.

Short Version: Spyder calibrates and creates monitor profiles. These have NOTHING to do with the calibration of your output device, which may or may not be capable of profiling. To verify this, search for a color wheel image, and print a copy out to your device, or a color laser printer. Now, on your monitor, push the button to open up the menu, and find the color settings (usually have to drill down a couple of menus) pick one, red, green, or blue, and drop the color to zero. (remember the setting) Now, print that same color wheel.... your monitor sure is whacked. There is no difference in the output when you compare both prints.

Screen calibration goes hand in hand with output device calibration, and profiling, and that becomes far more complex than simply profiling your monitor. Some output devices do not permit loading of profiles.

Then, you have to consider the color space you are working in, I.E. ProPhoto RGB, Adobe RGB 1998, sRGB, ColorMatch RGB, U.S. Web Coated SWOP v2, CMYK, etc. The space of the gamut can affect your output. This is a whole other topic, but related to what you want to accomplish with monitor calibration.

calibrating your monitor without output device calibration will at least get you closer to knowing what to expect when you send the output to the device, but that depends on how awake you are, have you had your coffee yet, and is it a Monday morning or Friday afternoon and you are headed to the lake..., but really it is no different than where you are at now. You have a known color on your monitor, and the output is different.

I use a dual monitor setup, side by side, fed by the same video card which is capable of loading profiles for each monitor. The monitors are by the same manufacturer, but a different model, and I have spent hours trying to match the profiles, close, but no cigar. I have concluded that close is acceptable for how I utilize the setup.

There should be no sandbox issues between Spyder and Corel, two very separate things. Once you have calibrated the monitor, you could open corel, illustrator, photoshop, photopaint, painter, excel, word, whatever, and they will work just as they always have... only the monitor color has changed.

I hope this helps, and hasn't confused the issue.

Mark

[Gary Hair]

Mark,
Thanks for all of the info, it is appreciated! The printer I use, and the dyes for sublimation, have a color profile and printer driver so you can get some semblance of consistency. It works pretty well, colors are fairly consistent on various substrates. The bigger issue, and the reason for me to use Spyder, is to get the monitor to display that color as true as possible. It worked fine with X3 and X4 but I wondered how it would work with X5. I have seen enough differences in X5 so far that I was worried. fortunately, I have a different computer running my dye sublimation and can set it up for that process and the laser vs. dye sub won't matter. The laser is purely monochrome but the driver uses colors to control speed and power, that's another problem altogether.

Thanks again!

Gary