I need a calibration thing... what is cheap and effective?

[Sean Dempsey]

After a disaster with green tinted wedding prints this weekend, its time for a calibration device.

Whats cheap and effective? The spyder thing?

[Asylum Steve]

Sean,

A lot of good advice being thrown around in this recent thread:

Monitor Calibrators which one recommended

[Sean Dempsey]

Wow, I is dumb. Dumb as hell.

I don't need a calibrator, my printouts are fine when I SELECT THE RIGHT INK AND PAPER PROFILE.

I wasted about 10 sheets of 13x19 semigloss because instead of selecting "PK/Semigloss" in the profile, I was picking Adobe RGB... and that's never gonna work.

Prints are looking good now. I am gonna return to the classroom so I can continue playing with my blocks =D

[Asylum Steve]

I only use Adobe Gamma to roughly "calibrate" my monitor, and my prints so far (Epson 2200) have matched my screen quite well. However, I play a lot of attention to my color and printer settings...

I'm all for sophisticated color calibraiton software, but I think sometimes too much is made of that when perhaps we should be worrying more about our shooting and other photoshop editing skills. To me an expensive calibration tool is not a top priority.

Besides, hardly any of my work employs "accurate" color. Guess I'm lucky that way...