Spyder 3 Express

Hardware:      Spyder 3 Express   

Company:      DataColor 

Reviewer:      Bill Spence 

Rating:           4 of 5 Stars 

It has happened to every one of us – you spend hours tediously editing a photo in Photoshop to get the hues and color temperature just right, and when you print it, the colors look nothing at all like what is displayed on your computer screen.  Or even worse, you have been hired to create business cards or a color brochure for a client and ordered thousands of them just to have them arrive with the colors off by a bunch, both embarrassing and expensive and your last job for that client.  Why does this happen?  The simple answer is a lack of standards among computer monitors and printers.  Alas, the DataColor Spyder 3 Express is the solution to your woes. 

So first, let’s start by just thinking about why color discrepancies happen in the first place.  There are many manufactures of monitors such as Sony, Samsung, Dell, and NEC to name a few.  Each one of these companies has a different way of constructing their monitors, different standards for building them, and different suppliers of parts.  Once the monitors are built, they want their monitors to have a “WOW factor” that makes them stand out amongst their competitors when put out for display, so they tend to set the brightness too high, the saturation too high, and push the colors toward blue.  In short, they are not interested in how things will look when you edit and print, they just want to sell monitors and adjust them so that they will sell. 

How does this affect your design work?  Well, even though your photos were shot perfectly, when you put them on a monitor that is not properly calibrated, they may look overly blue even though they are not.  Most people don’t know this, so to make them look right, a person adjusts them by eye by raising the yellows and reds to counteract the blue cast of the monitor, so now they look fantastic on the screen.  Alas, when you finally print them, the photos of course look overly yellow and red.  The same thing can happen with contrast, brightness, hue, and saturation. 

So what is the answer?  Calibrate your monitor to an accepted industry standard so that what you are seeing on your screen is what your camera actually shot and what will come out of a properly calibrated printer.  That is where the Spyder 3 Express comes into the picture and does an exceedingly good job. 

The Spyder 3 Express is DataColor’s introductory product for monitor calibration.  Having owned the first version of the Spyder Express, I can tell you that setup and calibration are much more steamlined on the newer Spyder 3 Express and setup is now a breeze.  The program is installed with a disc, you are asked to attach the Spyder to your computer, and calibration is complete within 5 minutes.  It is as simple as that.  A profile is stored on your computer and automatically loaded into your graphics card every time you turn on your computer. 

Now, calibrating your monitor is a great first step, but monitor’s colors often drift over time but don’t worry, the Spyder 3 Express has you covered.  Included in the calibration software is reminder for you to recalibrate your monitor that can be set from anywhere between 1 day and 6 months, so if you forget to recalibrate your monitor occassionally, the Spyder 3 Express will politely remind you. 

To test the calibration, I used the Spyder 3 Express on 2 separate computers and a laptop for comparison, all of which were different brands.  While displaying the same image on all three systems, I can say with confidence that the colors were spot on. 

Now the Spyder 3 Express is intended for monitor calibration only so it will not improve your prints on its own because printers have the same manufacturing differences that monitors have, thus, they need to be calibrated as well.  But you can be confident that anything that you edit on your system will look properly when sent to a printer that has a calibrated printer.  Also, your prints will match your screen exactly using your own personal printer if you are able to obtain a profile for your printer or have it calibrated using a 3^rd party.  It is for this reason that the product only receives 4 stars because it is not a complete calibration system from design to print.  For that, you must look to the Spyder 3 Express’ bigger brothers.  The product line also includes the Spyder 3 Pro, the Spyder 3 Elite, the Spyder 3 Print SR and the Spyder 3 Studio.  These upper echelon products add many more features including multiple display calibration, brightness and luminance controls, and printer profiling.  But if all you need is to design in a properly calibrated environment and you plan on using a professional printing service, or if you have a calibrated profile for your own printer, then the Spyder 3 Express will be all that you will need.  Enjoy! 

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