My IT team is often asked about how we calibrate IOStream’s displays and networked printers to achieve true color representation both on-screen and in the hard copy output. Well, the short answer is that we utilize ColorVision’s PrintFIX Pro Suite 2.0 to accomplish this task. This package is composed of the PrintFIX Pro 2.0 software along with the excellent Spyder2 colorimeter device. The PrintFIX Pro suite retails for $649 U.S., but less expensive Spyder2 packages are available (Click HERE to run a price comparison search at PriceGrabber for the Spyder2 Suites and HERE for the PrintFIX Pro Suites).
As IOStream’s employees know, I am a big proponent of running ‘lean and mean’ systems. This means taking advantage of either downloadable tools that can be run from a thumb drive/single executable or taking advantage of web-based applications. Regarding the latter, I wanted to feature two online services that allow for good, basic monitor calibration.
The first of these services is “DisplayCalibration.com“. This tool allows you to:
- Calibrate Brightness And Contrast.
- Calibrate Color Depth.
- Calibrate Screen Resolution.
- Access downloadable versions of the tools if desired.
The second service (and my personal favorite) is the flash-based “Online Monitor Test” sponsored by vanity.dk and flatpanels.dk. The OMT tools can be run directly in 3 different modes:
- An ordinary HTML window.
- A full screen HTML window.
- An executable fullscreen program for any resolution.
- An input lag test to test for input lag if you have 2 monitors connected (You will need a camera to record the counter).
