Free-standing software for Spyder2express puck?

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Posted By
Freeagent
Jul 18, 2008
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341
Replies
7
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Closed
I have a Spyder2express, which btw works fine on both my vista 64 desktop and my vista 32 laptop.

But on the main desktop system I have two 20 inch LCD’s, and there’s no dual monitor support on this edition of the Spyder. In the old XP days I was able to trick it by calibrating each monitor as the only one, and with both later connected it would then load both profiles. This no longer works in Vista, so I’m left with only the main monitor calibrated.

I’ll just get the Spyder3PRO or something if I have to, but I was wondering if there exists some downloadable software (with dual-monitor support) that will work with the puck I already have?

The OS is Vista Business 64, and the video card is an nVidia 8500 with one DVI and one VGA output.
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Charlie_Choc
Jul 18, 2008
I have Spyder2Suite which also lacks dual monitor support, but I calibrate each of my monitors separately using personalize/display settings to set each monitor as the only one under Vista 32 Ultimate, and it works fine when I set them both back as active.
—
Charlie…
http://www.chocphoto.com
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Daryl_Pritchard
Jul 18, 2008
Freeagent,

As Charlie said, Vista handles 2 monitor profiles easily. You only need to remove any gamma loaders from the Vista Startup folder, if any exist there. Then, establish your profile associations for each monitor via the Color Management dialog of Display Settings > Advanced Settings. Perhaps you’ve missed the fact that within that dialog you can independently set a default profile for each monitor, by simply changing the current monitor indicated in the Device field?

You can verify you have two profiles loaded by using the handy DisplayProfile utility that is available from Xrite, dragging the tool between your two displays and watching how it shows the active profile for the display upon which it resides. < http://www.xrite.com/product_overview.aspx?ID=757&Action =Support&SoftwareID=539>

Regards,

Daryl
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Freeagent
Jul 18, 2008
I tried it again as Charlie described, and this time it actually worked. I’ve tried that before, and what happened then was that a profile would be loaded into each monitor, but one or the other would be consistently "broken" with the characteristic straw-yellow overlay. But that was a few video cards ago, and maybe the sequence matters. I now did the second monitor first; then the main.

Anyway, it’s good to have it working, so thanks both of you, and Daryl for the link. I’ll try that out. 🙂
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Freeagent
Jul 24, 2008
Still not happy. It turns out that the very same profile is loaded for both monitors – the profile for whichever monitor was last calibrated goes to both. The Spyder splash screen identifies each monitor correctly, but it’s the same profile. The DisplayProfile utility also shows just one profile for both monitors, and when I go to Spool/drivers/color there’s only one Spyder2express profile.

This probably wouldn’t matter so much if both monitors were the same model and from the same production run, but mine aren’t. Same make, but one is a newer model, and the non-calibrated responses are clearly different.

One workaround is to rename the icm file for each instance and let Vista handle default loading, bypassing the Spyder software. But that makes recalibration rather cumbersome.

In any case, I found what I was originally looking for:

< http://www.integrated-color.com/cedpro/coloreyesdisplay.html>
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Charlie_Choc
Jul 24, 2008
Still not happy.

That’s interesting. It works fine for me – I have 2 different brand monitors even, but the correct profile gets loaded for each one. Maybe it works for the Spyder2 Suite since, even though it doesn’t have dual monitor support, it does allow saving the profiles as different names.
—
Charlie…
http://www.chocphoto.com
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Freeagent
Jul 24, 2008
it does allow saving the profiles as different names

Yes, that’s probably it.

I’ll try the ColorEyes and see how that goes.
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Freeagent
Jul 24, 2008
I just downloaded the ColorEyes tryout, and after a little quarrel with Vista about unsigned drivers I finally managed to get it to run. It’s great, just what I needed. The two monitors are completely indistinguishable, and the calibration process itself seems more accurate than with the Spyder.

Well worth $175.

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