Color Vision Color Plus

[mcneguy]

I wanted to buy a Spyder to calibrate my monitor because I am sick of wasting paper on improper colors and I went off in search of a Spyder as the price has dropped to under $150. I couldn't find one anywhere, lots of Spyder Pros' but no Spyders. I was pointed to the Color Plus which is their entry level model at $99. According to ColorVision, it is basically the same as the Spyder with no Mac support. I don't have a Mac, never will, don't care so I bought one.

I haven't used it yet but I was wondering if anyone has.

Thanks

[BDM]

I just got a Spyder. It came as a package with my new Epson 2200. The software I got with it is Photocal. And I think that is where the differences lie.

There appear to be two different programs: Photocal and Optical. The latter is a lot more expensive. But the Spyder itself appears to be the same instrument I believe the item you mentioned is yet another program (possibly Photocal without MAC support).

But you may wish to check out the Colorvision web site. They have all the products listed with some pretty good explanations.

Bruce

[Jesper]

There used to be two products: Spyder (with PhotoCAL) and Spyder PRO (with OptiCAL). The device was indeed the same, only the software was different. If you just want to calibrate your monitor, PhotoCAL is sufficient. I have a Spyder with PhotoCAL. The more expensive software, OptiCAL, contains more advanced functions if you'd like to tweak things yourself.

Now ColorVision (http://www.colorvision.com/) has ColorPlus, as you noticed - looks like they have discovered that there are a lot of home users who'd like to match colors between their monitor and printer and who don't want to spend lots of money.

It looks like the Spyder device that comes with ColorPlus is exactly the same thing as what came with the older packages.

[jray]

I'm not real impressed with the ColorPlus package. There seems to be no way for it to deal with monitors that have varying gamma levels between the RGB channels. I've tried it on three monitors so far and will add at least one more tonight.

I'll post my results in the following thread:

http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/90006

[Jesper]

I've read some posts on other forums, and it looks like a lot of people had trouble with the software that comes with ColorPlus. ColorVision has an update available on their website, ColorPlus 1.0.1 (http://www.colorvision.com/sup_dl-upgrades.shtml), that solves those problems.

Too bad that they didn't test their software better. :roll:

[jray]

My tests 'are' based upon the latest software. BTW, they now have version 1.0.1-2 available.

http://www.colorvision.com/press/ColorPlus/