hey guys welcome or welcome back thanks so much
for joining me today today we are going to calibrate our monitors
so like i've just said basically in today's video we are going to calibrate our screen
i'm going to show you how to do this how i do this i mean i feel like i get it right but
i'm ready to be told that i'm wrong if required but anyway we're going to calibrate our screen the
way that i do it and make sure our pictures look beautiful the main time that i've mentioned this
product was in the christmas gifts video where i think this was gift number five i think and i
introduced it so i'm just gonna kind of go back in time to november to introduce what this product is
and what it looks like before we kick off gift number five is the spyder x elite there is also
the spyder x pro available both are absolutely fine they're in the same range this one just can
do more monitors or something but most people just need the spyder x pro the spyder x pro retails for
159 pounds i believe at the moment so this is a colour calibration device you use it to calibrate
your screen i calibrate my screen every month and this does the job for me they work on both windows
and macintosh devices and personally i would never edit a picture on an uncalibrated screen it's just
not a good plan at all ever it looks like this out of the box so you can see why it's called a spyder
because it looks like a small bug and you plug it in and put it on your screen and it calibrates it
so i guess it's time to go through the calibration method obviously by now you will have downloaded
the drivers and the software from the data colour website then you plug in your spyder to
the computer with the usb connection and then you go ahead and start the program so basically
all you need to do is find the program on your computer now it will look something like that
when it opens it looks like this so basically my computer has been saying for the last few days i
need to recal my screen i'm just actually going to do a full new calibration so before you even
begin if this is your first time you need to do a couple of other things so let's go ahead and open
up our system preferences if you're on a mac on a windows find the relevant similar thing
and we're wanting to go into displays within displays there is the brightness section
you want to make sure that that is not checked we do not want automatically adjust
brightness to be checked we want to be able to manually adjust the brightness of the screen
on the colour section here there should be no profile down here just leave it on the standard
imac one you guys should have hopefully hopefully seen a shift there in the profile so then make
sure night shift is always off so don't let it get warm because that's not going to help anybody
erm yeah so just make sure it looks good so on macbooks macbook pros and the newer
imacs there is also true tone so you need to make sure that true tone is turned off too so basically
anything controlling automatic brightness changes automatic colour changes automatic
anything changes turn them all off they all need to be off before we begin when you've
done all of that we then go through the wizard so within the spyder suite you will have a wizard it
will look something like this erm basically we do want to calibrate the displays we do also
need to check that we've done our startup things which basically are to make sure that you're in a
dimly lit i would say room so make sure you're not in bright sunlight
make sure you've let your screen warm up make sure you've turned everything that's
automatic off and then plug your spyder into the computer itself when that is done you click next
and then you select what type of backlight is in your computer now just read the descriptions down
here because you will find what it is basically for me i'm on a imac erm a 2019 i think
5k retina imac so i'm in this wide led section just select the type of monitor you're working on
now just on this section if you do have other options ignore them just go for
the step-by-step assistant and when we're in here you will have these options now
i've just reset my profile so this isn't going to be a recal i need to do a full calibration so
that's kind of this section you'll notice as i'm hovering over stuff there is like a little
helpy thing at this side you can read those if you want to that's fine erm i would personally suggest
leaving the gamma at 2.2 i would also suggest leaving the white point at 6500 kelvin there
and the brightness this is up to you i've done the recommended but i'm going for do not just
at the moment to be fair because i can't ever match the recommended so when you've done that
you click next so at this point you will then put your spyder over the area on the screen
so to do that you basically just open up the spyder and you pop it over your screen
so at this stage i would definitely suggest tilting your screen backwards if you can because
that spyder needs to have a really good connection with the screen
make sure that you move the counterweight up and down the wire to make sure that
you've got a good connection there and when you're happy you just click next
then the spyder and the software goes through essentially a load of set of colours so it will
check the brightness first and then it will go through all of the other things that it needs
to go through you may be prompted to change the brightness of your screen do that if you need
to and then just let the program run whilst the program's running don't turn on any lights in the
room try not to you know do anything that's going to affect the colour that's falling onto the screen
around that spyder area and just let it run through this little process
when the process is finished you'll be prompted to remove the spyder from the screen and click
finish so you know follow the instructions guys do those things then it will ask you to
name and save your profile i usually don't let the one be on the end i will take the one out of
there and just leave it as this and then click save on that the recal i would always leave it
a month anyway that's fine and then click next so this is where basically you get to see the change
in the the colours that you've got there so erm basically on this so
that is the uncalibrated view that is the calibrated view that is the uncalibrated view
that is the calibrated view so try and look at the black and white pictures because you'll get
the best reference of the change that's been involved there and also look at the blue sky
on the little building picture because the blue sky will show a big change
if you're still unsure about whether that's done anything or not why not open a custom
image so i would definitely suggest opening up a custom image when you're testing your print
labs to make sure that your prints match your pictures so let's go find a picture to open
so i've gone ahead and chosen this picture here so we're going to then just press the switch
button to switch so that's after calibration that's before calibration after calibration
before calibration so you can see that on my particular monitor the
calibration has removed a lot of the contrast that was added in there
and also it has muted some of the colours a little bit now i personally know that for my print lab
i need to fine tune so what i need to do is just push the white point more towards the green
because i know when i print it i need my pictures to be slightly more magenta
so i know that that is the right thing for me however if it's this is the first time you've
done it and you don't have a print lab just leave the white point slap bang in the middle so when
you've done that guys that's kind of it really you just click next it shows you your gamut
so it shows you erm the different gamuts that that are available on there we need to make sure that
we're pretty much 100 of srgb which is fine and then we click quit and that's it jobs are good
if you're interested in getting hands on this particular product then there will be a link in
the description below please go through that link because i might get some pennies if you do buy it
but again as always i only recommend things that i actually use and love and i've used
spyders for a bazillion years and they are awesome if this video has been helpful for
you please do press the subscribe button and hit the bell icon the bell icon will help you
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sometimes more than that if i feel like it i'll see you all again really really really soon