Hi gang-- I have to correct some erroneous information I contributed a couple of weeks ago.
It turns out that OptiCal and the monitor Spyder can only be used as a colorimeter (to measure color temperature and light intensity) of your monitor, NOT your room lights. ColorVision tech support says they don't support the use of OptiCal/Spyder for room lights and I've been getting wacky results in making the attempt so it looks like they're right. I also made a mistake in stating that if you use halogen viewing lights you should adjust your monitor to the same color temperature as those lights. It turns out that to do this you'd have to turn down the blue channel so much that you'd get dingy images and very little tonal gradation (on your monitor) in the blues. These misstatements came from misinterpreting some mentoring I'm getting from an accomplished professional in this field. What's still true is that if you want to be able to compare an image on the screen to a physical print right next to it then the color temperatures of the viewing light and the monitor must be the same, and the brightness of the light reflected off a white paper in your viewing area must be the same as the brightness of your monitor. A new twist on this is that you can still do reasonably good comparisons without having to match color temperature and brightness if you do not have the print viewing area next to your monitor. That is, if the viewing area and the monitor are never both in your field of view at the same time, and if the environment around your monitor is dark enough not to affect you're eyes' interpretation of the colors on the monitor, then you can look at the monitor, "memorize" the color and tone of part of an image, then turn your back on the monitor and examine a print in your viewing area. Apparently it only takes a few seconds for your eyes to adapt from one color temperature to the other. Hope this helps, --bill >>"OptiCal lets you use the Spyder as a Colorimeter! You can use it >>to measure the actual color temperature of your viewing lights be >>they halogen incandescents, high CRI flourescents or whatever, then >>it lets you set your monitor to THAT color temperature rather than >>to one of the generic standards (5,000K or >>6,500K). " -- ====================================================================== Bill Fernandez * User Interface Architect * Bill Fernandez Design (505) 346-3080 * [EMAIL PROTECTED] * http://billfernandez.com ======================================================================