Problems calibrating Macbook 15" with Spyder2- Help!

[nougatt]

I've been using a spyder2 to calibrate my macbook. Everything looks great until the last step of "verifying colors" when suddenly the greys and whites in my windows (like the title bar for firefox etc) turn very visibly red tinted. I've tried this in total darkness, in daylight, under fake lighting and still the same turnout.
Has this happened to anyone else? Anyone have any tips for using this calibration system? I only have the express software and it doesnt seem to have alot of options.
When I calibrate the same screen using the spyder on my Windows partition, the colors look great. But when I import that color profile to the mac partition and boot up with OSX, the colors look awful.

When I use the regular color profiler or supercal, all my whites turn blue.
I'm confused.

Thanks

 

[Westside guy]

- Make sure you've downloaded any updates to the software you're using.

- I'd suggest leaving ambient light detection off, and doing the calibration in as dark a room as possible.

- When/If you are asked about your available screen controls, be sure the only one you should choose for a MacBook screen is "backlight control". You don't have brightness, contrast, or RGB controls.

- When/If you're asked about screen gamma, be sure you're choosing "2.2".

- As a side note: Make sure you're running under an account with administrator access (the software requires it, unfortunately).

I have the Spyder2Pro rather than the Express; but it's worked fine for me.

 

[tribe3]

-

- When/If you're asked about screen gamma, be sure you're choosing "2.2".

2.2 Television gamma sure looks better but isn't Mac native 1.8 Standard gamma?

After owning a spyder2 for about 2 years I really don't know if it's any good... I seem to get more accurate colors calibrating with the simple options on "Displays" > "System preferences"

At least I already know how my prints are going to come out by eyeballing it rather than using a monitor custom ICC profile

 

[mrkgoo]

I know exactly what you are talking about, because I have a Spyder2 and a MacBook Pro 15" (LED).

Short answer: - it's probably correct.

Long answer: - when I first got it and calibrated, I complained for quite some time about how it was excessively pink, particularly in the greys and whites. The LED screens are actually very green, thus the calibration bringing things up to red/magenta. It is possible there is a lower sensitivity when measuring these shades, but actually, I think it is very accurate. Your eye is very subjective. Give about 10-30 seconds staring at nearly any colour profile, no matter how bad it is, you will start to feel it is 'normal'. The thing with the red tint is that you are probably very used to most LCDs being tinted blue or even green, but just not noticing, making your screen look very red in comparison. Try just using it for a few days, and deciding if it really is that much of an issue. I fretted a long time about it, but decided it was probably right (skin tones in photos looked much much better), and if I ever change back or even look at uncalibrated screens, I find them a bit too green or blue.

On a side note, the orientation of the spyder2 can matter. If you ever notice, the MBP screen changes colours when tilted back and forth or side to side. When calibrated more to the pink side, the back/forth changing is exacerbated, but reduced for side to side changes. I don't know why this is, but it will be something to do with LCD technology - it's probably a reason why things are calibrated by default more to the green side to minimise the apparent changes in the back/forward tilting. Thus the orientation of the spyder2 can be important. I've noticed that if you calibrate your screen sideways (ie have your computer on it's side while hanging the spyder2 from either the left or right can calibrate it ever so slightly to the greener side for greys.

In the end, I gave in and just lived with it, and I don't even notice it now, but I enjoy much better skin tones.

 

[Westside guy]

2.2 Television gamma sure looks better but isn't Mac native 1.8 Standard gamma?

You're right that the Mac's standard gamma has been 1.8 - and there's been a LOT of discussion about that.

The web's standard color space is sRGB IEC61966-2.1, which (as I understand it) assumes a gamma value of 2.2. This is also, I believe, the gamma value that most printers ("printers" as in professional print shops) use. Apple Aperture's help documents also tell you to use gamma 2.2 and a white point of 6500K unless you have a specific reason not to.

The Spyder calibration software also defaults to a gamma of 2.2.

I calibrate my monitors to a gamma of 2.2 and white point of 6500K. When I work with my photos, I use the Adobe RGB color space - but I convert them to sRGB when outputting for the web or printing.

 

[Xonkman]

Set to native

If you set your monitor to the default settings for the MBP of gama 2.2 and whitespace native (which is 6507K on most 15 inch MBP) in the spyder2 current settings dialogue you'll get a much more neutral accurate color space after the spyder calibration. For some reason that I've yet to figure out if you put in 6500K instead of Native (6507K) you get far too much red after calibration. I calibrate my MBP using native and my Cintiq using 6500K and they come out looking almost exactly the same aside from the dimmer luminance of the cintiq. Hope this helps.