Product Reviews

Screen profiling is something every designer should do, yet very few actually get around to it. Datacolor is out to change that by tempting more of us into creating accurate profiles of our screens with the new Spyder3. A pro-level display calibration and profiling device, it can be used with projectors as well as LCD and CRT screens. And it's happy to deal with multiple displays.

The bundled Spyder3Elite software offers two workflow methods - Expert and Assisted. The latter makes the setup process very easy, although you may feel a tad patronised at times.

Quibbles aside, it was simple to get to the point of creating a fresh profile for our first display. Once the software begins the process of displaying precise colour values and measuring them via the Spyder3, you have time for a quick coffee - it took five minutes to run through on our test machine. This is longer than some other profiling devices but where good results require many precise measurements, speed isn't the best evaluation criterion.

However, if you've already made a Spyder3 profile, you can check it periodically to see if you need to run a complete profile rebuild. This takes just one minute (as the software can't easily be interrupted once started, this is particularly

Spyder3Elite can go as far as working actively to achieve as close a match as possible with multiple screens - even ones on different computers. You can also set the hardware and software to monitor (no pun intended) your display and alert you if it drifts too far from the Spyder Certification profiled standard.

This, along with the user-driven ability to check the current profile, is a boon for users who need to be confident that their displays are profiled accurately but aren't so keen on running a five-minute profile rebuild every week or so if it isn't necessary. Grey-balanced calibration is an optional part of the Spyder3 measuring process, something that is useful in normal circumstances but may be worth disabling when checking DLP projectors, as the software notes.

The Spyder3 hardware can check ambient light levels when you create or update your monitor profile, and the software can then make adjustments based on the results. If the light level is particularly high - and we found that a well-lit office triggered this - you'll be advised that the level is 'not recommended' and that a monitor hood or similar could help.

When testing our MacBook Pro. we found that the maximum brightness of the display couldn't reach the Spyder3-recommended level, making accurate profiles difficult to achieve in that bright environment. But this didn't prevent the profile from being created, so we regard this as a useful technical warning rather than any kind of failing.

The device calibration and ICC profiles that this hardware and software team delivers are very good, and definitely worth using if you want pro-level results and don't mind the wait.

We suspect that minor software updates for the Spyder3Elite software might be in the pipeline - but the features and functionality are still very good.