Spyder5Elite calibration tutorial for desktop screens: Parts 6-10
Part 6: Lights out
At this point, if you haven’t already, turn off the lights or pull the blinds, or whatever. You don’t need your calibration compromised by light sneaking in, so for your safest result, make your room as dark as possible.
Part 7: Calibration
Tilt the screen back, and use the counterweight on the cord to hang the sensor over the back, so it’s positioned roughly on the diagram on the screen.
Click "Next" to begin the calibration process.
Brightness
The device will take a minute to read black, red, green, blue and white. Then it will pause here:
During my testing, I found that sometimes the software stopped to ask me to put the brightness up to maximum; but other times it didn’t. I confess I don’t understand why. Anyway, do it if it asks you to.
I trust this will be self-explanatory. After reading the message window and pressing OK to close it, you look at the brightness bar, then use the buttons on your monitor to adjust its brightness up or down as needed to get the white bar in the green zone. Each time you tweak your screen’s brightness, press the "Update" button to refresh the reading.
Somewhat surprisingly, I was able to hit exactly 80 with my screen. Don’t worry if you can’t do that – as long as you’re within the green zone, you’re fine.
Once your brightness is good, press "Continue".
Profiling
For the next five or so minutes, the device will read a range of colours:
NOTE: Please wiggle your mouse every minute or so while calibrating. It’s probably completely unnecessary, but do it anyway. The last thing you need is for your screen to dim itself from lack of activity after a minute or two – that throws the whole calibration into a cocked hat, believe me. Of course, don’t let the mouse pointer go underneath the device – just keep it at the side.
Once the Spyder has taken all its measurements, remove it from the screen, and press "Finish":
Part 8: Lights up
Turn your lights back on, or open the blinds, or whatever.
Part 9: Save the profile
Now it’s time to give your profile a name. Your naming convention isn’t vital, and you can do whatever you like, but I find that it’s easiest just to stick with the default (the name of your screen):
Please don’t name your profile with the date, or the month, or a number, or anything like that. There’s no need. It’s better to stick to the same profile name each month, so it simply overwrites the old one. There’s no benefit to cluttering your system with out-of-date profiles.
Recalibration reminder
For most people, monthly recalibration is quite adequate. You’d only choose a shorter timeframe if you were (a) a raging nerd, or (b) worried that your screen might be dying:
Once saved, you’ll get this enthusiastic message:
Then you can press "Next".
Part 10: Analysis
Here, Datacolor gives us a grid of images to assess the calibration. It’s a completely pointless grid, because we don’t have those prints, do we? To assess the calibration, we need images that we can compare to prints. So immediately press the "Open Custom" button:
The moment of truth has arrived. It’s time to see how your calibration went.