Display Calibration 101: Step-By-Step With Datacolor's Spyder4Elite

Spyder4Elite How-To: Overview

Now you should see patterns being displayed underneath the Spyder4 sensor. Unless you picked the Native brightness option on the Choose Settings screen, the calibration will pause somewhere towards the beginning of the process, and you’ll be asked to adjust your monitor’s brightness control until it reaches within four percent of your chosen brightness level.

The Target brightness setting is displayed in the upper right-hand corner, directly above the Current reading. If the current reading is higher than the target setting, lower the brightness control on your monitor. Alternatively, if the current level is lower than the target, raise the brightness.

After making an adjustment, click Update and check the new current reading against the target. If necessary, repeat this process until you come as close to the target setting as your monitor’s brightness control will allow. When done, click Next to continue the calibration process.

When the status bar has filled up and the screen reads Measuring Completed, you can remove the Spyder4 senor from the screen and click Finish.

Save

Now that the calibration process is complete, you can choose to name and save your calibrated monitor profile, as well as set up regular recalibration reminders.

When you're finished, click Save and then Next.

View Calibration: SpyderProof

With your work saved, you can compare your monitor’s calibrated and uncalibrated state using the SpyderProof utility. The Switch button in the lower right-hand side of the Spyder4 screen changes between calibrated and uncalibrated modes.

The checkerboard of images provides a good cross-section of typical content. The difference in white balance can be easily seen in the four black and white pics in the lower right.

View Calibration: SpyderTune

The SpyderTune button in the upper right-hand corner switches between the SpyderProof and SpyderTune utilities.

In SpyderTune, you can tweak the white point, gamma, and brightness using on-screen sliders to the right of the checkerboard demo. You can immediately see the effect of these adjustments on the output. If you don’t care for any of you own adjustments, simply click Reset to go back to the calibrated settings. If you do want to commit any changes, just click Save.

When done making any post-calibration adjustments, click Next.