MicrostockGroup

They're still £80+ even on there !  Maybe u could drop one out of the plane as u go over ! ;-)

Or maybe bring with u and send to me from Austria, so no customs problems or our VAT !!?
Just kidding ! ;-)  but thanks for the offer :-)
 

I think Spyder is not Pantone, the company is Colorvision. And then you need to know the version of the Spyder also. Spyder 2 is older, but sold still for the express version, and Spyder 3 is the new one. I bought a Spyder 2 express. The software is not good, but you can use coloreyes trial version which is very good.
in my opinion this is not good - where did you find it?

I've noticed this difference in appearance of images on each site...all my images are done with a calibrated monitor and using Adobe RGB profile...I think each site has it's own file processing standards...which are inconsistent with each other.

I've heard that the best approach is to assign each image the sRGB profile then they will look more consistent across the micro sites...does anyone do this?

I used to upload adobeRGB ("aRGB" for brevity) to IS and sRGB to everyone else.

Then someone here (I think) a few months ago mentioned they upload aRGB to all sites.

I started doing that recently. It's easier not needing to create separate versions. They look different on some sites, but it isn't a big deal. (As mentioned here already, I noticed even the sRGB images looked different on some sites.)

123RF (I think it was them; if not, then BigStock) even suggest UL'ing in aRGB in their contributor's instructions. As does IS, of course.

Most sites do seem to (and should) convert aRGB to sRGB for proper displaying in non-color-managed browsers (e.g., IE).

It's not a good idea to upload AdobeRGB files. You can't assume that a customer or a viewer will treat your AdobeRGB files properly. Use sRGB instead to avoid problems with over or undersaturated colors in the image. Some stocks even specify it explicitly. This rule also applies to all images shown on the web.

let me add my 5c+5c+5c+5c+5c = 1 quarter to the topic:

5c. If you post your images on the web , print and especially sell you images you need to be sure that the others will see your colors exactly as you plan them. That's why you need to calibrate your monitor and use color management aware software.

5c. Even if you can't get your hands on the hardware calibrator, you can use a free software one. It is a part of Windows 7 and Mac OSX. Win XP users can get QuickGamma. The quality of such calibration is up to your eyes. I did that before. It's pain in the butt, but better than nothing. Finally I gave up and bought Spyder2.

5c. Be sure to use color-managed (CM) software. Photoshop is CM, MS Paint is not.
Use CM web browsers: Safari or Firefox >=3.5. Bad news for all-in-one Opera guys and Chrome speed junkies, they are not for photographers. Check Gary Ballard's CM tutorial, if you don't know what I'm taking about.

5c. When you post your photos on the web make sure they are in sRGB and have sRGB profile embedded. That's the best we can do for our non-CM fellas to save them from seeing the saturation problems. This is the rule, by the way. The same holds for your microstock portfolio, unless the stock mentions its color space requirements explicitly.

5c. Finally, if you are a proud owner of a multi-monitor setup on a Windows system, be sure you color management works fine on both monitors. Because if you don't have a separate video card per monitor, most probably it does not. Long story short, make sure you edit and proof images on you main (in windows terms) screen.

The short answer, calibrate both, rely on the main monitor.

It all depends on your setup. Some advanced video cards can work as two separate cards, but these are rare and I never tested one myself.
On Win XP I don't think it's even possible to calibrate the monitors to different gammas. Here is a simple test: assign a profile to you secondary monitor. Then assign a different profile to your main monitor, doing that will change gamma on both screens, instead of main only.

On Win 7 I was able to assigned different profiles to different monitors. It might be fine with non color managed applications, but not for the applications that use ICC profiles, like Photoshop. From my tests, Photoshop relied only on the main monitor profile to convert colors, which makes running it on your secondary monitor useless.

I recently purchased the Huey-Pro calibration tool and must admit it gives much better results then the Colorvision spyder 2 pro.  I'm working with a HP LP2475w (S-IPS panel) monitor.

Like Lisa mentioned before on for the Huey, smooth color gradients and more accurate colors where the Colorvision would saturate the colors more.

For comparison and review on both devices :

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/pantone_huey.htm
http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/spyder2express.htm

And for the monitor :

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/hp_lp2475w.htm

Regards,

Patrick H.

Like i said, i use the Huey pro hardware with its own software and it does a better job than the Spyder 2 pro.

Patrick.

I know I was singing the praises of the Huey earlier, but it seems to have gone bad or something. 

Tried calibrating my monitor with my new computer and the picture came out greenish.  Did it several times always with the same result. 

I also tried calibrating a new monitor with my old computer - the one the Huey had worked on.  That also came out looking green.

After some research, turns out that there is a hardware issues with the Hueys.  They have a tendency to give a magenta or greenish cast. 

Don't know why it worked for me in the beginning and now stopped...?

After reading a boatload of reviews I ended up getting the Eye-One Display 2.  Hopefully will have better luck with that. 

My monitor is quite good even without calibration, but I will feel a lot more comfortable editing images when I know it's properly calibrated.

I bought a Huey recently and it seems fine (more or less as I had it, to be honest) No sign of any cast though !?