What is a quality, effective, less than $1000 monitor, scanner, printer calibration system?

Tex

Hi, I have the Pantone Colorvision Spyder for calibrating the monitor - it seems to do a darn good job.

I have heard that scanners are really self callibrated and the important thing is the monitor, but that might be a rumor...

I also have printer profiling software that came with the Spyder, you print a file with no adjustment, then scan it and the software builds a profile - I am fairly happy with the results I am getting already so I havn't played with it too much yet.

I seem to remember the Spyder package being around $400

Good Luck, Roger

Hi Tex, I also have the Colorvision Spyder and Optical software for profiling my monitor. It works very well, I've been using it about 5 months and have no complaints.

I use Profile Prism software, www.ddisoftware.com, to profile the scanner and printer. It works well if you have a reasonably good scanner as it relies on the scanner for generating the printer profiles. I have created many profiles for the different papers that I use to print.

You should do a lot of research before purchasing profiling software for your work flow. Color calibration can be a real can of worms. In my experience, if you get a good monitor profile to use in your work flow it makes the output color matching a lot easier. The same is true of all your image sources like your camera and scanner.

I have found that if my work flow is dead on, I can output to my Epson 2200 using Epson papers without the use a color profile for printing. Non Epson papers usually will require a good printer profile because of the different color papers.

Kevin,

I like a guy that likes to calibrate and NOT embed profiles! I've been working that way for a long time.

Anyhow, Roger, etc., I wouldn't expect that ALL scanners are self-calibrating. Some will require some manual give and take. My advice would be to read the manufacturer suggestions.

You can calibrate and build an ICC profile for Elements and Photoshop using Adobe Gamma or the Apple calibration utility. AG is installed with several Adobe products and will create your ICC profile which will help you get the best previews on screen.

http://www.adobe.com/support/techguides/color/gamma/main.html

That help?