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Dave's Favorites: Calibrate Your Monitor With a Spyder

Have you ever fine-tuned the brightness and color of a picture on your computer display only to discover that, when printed, it looked totally different than what you expected? That's the risk you run when you use a monitor that's not properly calibrated.

The fact is that every monitor is a bit different. Yours doesn't really know how to display your digital images. So when you adjust a picture so that it looks great on screen, you may be wreaking havoc with its printed appearance.

ColorVision's $169 Spyder is a combination of software and hardware you can use to set your monitor so that it shows you your digital images just as they'll look in print. It includes a USB colorimeter that fixes your monitor automatically, eliminating the need to fiddle with color settings manually.

Using the Spyder is a snap. The software starts by walking you through basic calibration steps, like adjusting the brightness, contrast, and color temperature of the display.

The real magic happens when you snap the Spyder hardware onto the front of the screen. (It connects to both LCD and CRT monitors). A totally automated calibration system performs a battery of tests and adjusts the display. When it's done, you save your monitor's color profile in a file that you can use in your favorite image editing program. After you're done, put the Spyder back in its box for a few months. You'll want to recalibrate your display a few times a year, or whenever you notice the color starting to drift.

The Spyder is impressive. When I tried it, the entire calibration process took about 10 minutes. The difference was dramatic: Previously, my monitor was too bright and had too much blue; now, it's spot on.

Do you absolutely need a calibration tool like the Spyder? Probably not. Most people never make any monitor adjustments at all and live full and happy lives. But if you're a perfectionist hounded by the desire to match what you see on the screen with what comes out of your printer, you owe it to yourself to check out Spyder.