Digital Photographer's Software Guide - Bertemes - Net

Chapter 29 ■ Color Management 339
One key feature of the Spyder3 colorimeter is its ability to measure automatically the
ambient light that exists inside the studio and which will affect the way you perceive
colors on your display. The vendor notes that it has the intelligence to distinguish
between true lighting changes and random fluctuations caused by studio flashes or
shadows.
Like Datacolor’s printer-calibration product (Spyder3Print), Spyder3Elite offers unlimited,
user-defined choices for white point and gamma, together with white luminance
and black luminance. With these sophisticated controls, expert users can optimize
shadow detail as well as ensure that the colors displayed will match those on a lightbox
or the intended output device. Non-expert users have plenty of guidance from the wizard-driven
user interface, but there is also an Expert Console that shows all the calibration
parameters and actions within a single window.
As an alternative to typical gamma settings, Spyder3Elite offers a calibration option
called L-Star Technology, which generates tonal response curves for open shadows and
detailed highlights. Some photographers like to work with L* as a monitor gamma rather
than with the more frequently used 1.8, 2.2, or 2.5. This is said to eliminate the compromise
of 2.2 in shadow detail and 1.8 in highlight detail.
Comments
A dramatic improvement on the highly acceptable Spyder2Express, Spyder3Elite uses
a colorimeter that increases light sensitivity 400%, giving much greater accuracy. It is
also more convenient to use, with its fast ReCAL option that allows you to perform
quick re-calibrations more frequently, thus ensuring accuracy before every vital shoot.
Apart from the beauty and precision of the instrument that comes with the package,
perhaps the main appeal of Spyder3Elite is the clever way it caters to both expert
and non-expert users. Today, most photographers are either using or considering the
use of color management, beginning with monitor calibration. Even contributors to
iStockphoto.com are encouraged to use monitor calibration to ensure color accuracy,
for which purpose iStock recommends Spyder3Elite as the ideal tool.
Version: Spyder3Elite (2008)
OS: Windows 2000, XP 32/64, and Vista 32/64; Mac OS X 10.3 or higher
RAM: 128MB
Supported file formats: N/A
Price level: Approx. $280
Address: Datacolor, Digital Color Solutions, 5 Princess Road, Lawrenceville, NJ 08648, United
States
spyder.datacolor.com
www.spyder3.com