Thinkpads Forum

I am asking this for a friend of mine who is a student in the digital arts department here. He owns a 14" T43 and is using it with an external LCD monitor. He needs to buy a screen calibrator and he is thinking of buying the Spyder2 Express ($79, he cannot afford the expensive versions). The item url is below:
http://www.colorvision.com/product-mc-s2e.php

If he uses this to calibrate his external LCD, will it affect his laptop LCD when he uses the laptop alone? Doesn't spyder load the monitor profile at boot? If so, how can you use it with both the laptop and LCD monitors?

This is his (and my) first attempt at using specialized hardware/software for monitor calibration, so if anyone knows the answer to this question please post your answer here.

Rather than trying to answer the question, I would like to point your attention to a few of the many threads having discussed the issue of color calibration (or color management) on ThinkPads and/or external displays. See e.g. the thread Color settings and in particular note jjlists123’s post of Wed Aug 24, 2005:

jjlists123 wrote:Windows does not use custom ICC profiles on the desktop, unlike the Mac.
"color aware" software (Photoshop) *will* use the custom profiles to tweak the display while within Photoshop... but that's it.

Setting a custom ICC or ICM file in Windows does not affect what you see on the desktop.

and maybe also these threads:

Display identification and profile selection

Color profile problem

ATI Color Management

recommendation for color management

T42 calibration using Adobe Gamma

Has anyone color profiled/calibrated their display?

Also, I suggest that you search this forum for all posts by user WPWoodJr – he has shared a wealth of information on color calibration.... he is absolutely an expert in that field!

I once had my T42 (15” FlexView/IPS display by IDTech) calibrated by a professional person who used a (professional!) GretagMacbeth Eye-One Match colorimeter. The software would install a program which would import the icc-profile at each boot; the .icc profile was hence not invoked via Windows XP. My experience was, that the color-profiled display was very, very little different from the native, not-calibrated display – owing to the high quality of the IDTech panel, I guess (the same has been claimed by others).

There are a number of free and useful tools you could start off with, e.g. Abobe Gamma Calibration (it is somewhere on the net!), Microsoft Color Control Panel Applet for Windows XP, QuickGamma, and perhaps also WiziWYG (if you can still find it - used to be freely available, but I can't find it on the net right now). You can also play with these links:

Display gamma estimation applet

Adobe Gamma Control Panel Recommended Settings

How to use the "Gamagic" test patterns

... and if interested in the background, this is a good, easy reference:

Setting Up Your Monitor for Color Management

I know that this was not exactly the answer you asked for, but nonetheless I hope the above may be of some use!

Best regards,

Johan

Great reply above... I would also add that using either hardware profiles (Windows) or Presentation Director (Thinkpad) you can run a specific program/profile when docked vs. undocked.

I don't bother with any profile when undocked since my T61 display is really not up to decent color work. When docked I run a profile mamager, which loads the profile for my NEC 21" IPS display on which I do my photo editing.

Johan, thanks for your very detailed reply. there is so much information there.

pipspeak wrote: I don't bother with any profile when undocked since my T61 display is really not up to decent color work. When docked I run a profile mamager, which loads the profile for my NEC 21" IPS display on which I do my photo editing.

Can you please tell me what profile manager program you are using?