I have had my 27" over a year now, never calibrated (never heard of this) so from the responses I am thinking I should calibrate? But, how do you do that?
In the display settings/Color tab or better if you have a calibrator tool, but they are kind of expensive.
I calibrated mine right out of the box.
Calibration is really only needed for certain professions.I have had my 27" over a year now, never calibrated (never heard of this) so from the responses I am thinking I should calibrate? But, how do you do that?
In the display settings/Color tab or better if you have a calibrator tool, but they are kind of expensive.
Calibration is really only needed for certain professions.
Are you just browsing the web, playing games, sending emails and viewing photos? If yes, then you don't really need to calibrate.
Are you a graphic designer? photographer? web designer? publishing items for professional use? If yes, then calibration should happen often.
Just my .02c.
How do you know that the factory settings are more accurate than an i1d3 produces? Judging by eye? Unless you're measuring with a spectrophotometer or a better colorimeter than either of the two you listed, what you say doesn't make any sense. A color calibration performed with a accurate colorimeter is always going to be more accurate than "eyeballing" it. That's the whole point -- the devices are using objective measurements to verify accuracy. Just because you think something looks too magenta or too blue doesn't mean it's inaccurate, it just means that, subjectively, you don't like it. Any number of things could cause it to look bad to you (ambient lighting, personnel preferences, etc). Eyeballs are notoriously inaccurate calibration tools. If I want accuracy, I'd go with a decent colorimeter any day.The factory calibration of the new iMac, Retina MacBook Pro and iPhone 5 is much more accurate than a DataColor Spyder 4 or X-Rite iDisplay Pro from my experience. I have since sold both calibration tools since even in an artificially controlled D65/6500K environment they have produced terribly magenta or cyan tinted profiles.
I have not seen results of gamut percentage for the new iMac yet but both the Retina MacBook Pro and iPhone 5 produce 99% of the gamut of sRGB and therefor you see the slightest difference when changing from their factory profile to sRGB.
And since Apple keeps a very uniform calibration between all the products in their ecosystem you would literally be one in a million viewing your images with a different more 'accurate' profile. As a amateur photographer I'd rather have my photos look good to every other iOS/Mac user in the world instead of just me.
You also must also consider how much those 'pros' on the datacolor and x-rite websites got payed to say they use the respective products.
From the stated calibrators I have used they have produced a magenta hue that anyone would notice as too prominent. Taking your eyes away from a screen and then having everything still way too magenta when you return day after day is not accurate. Yes, our eyes are not machines and they do fluctuate. But it doesn't matter how optically accurate a screen is when everyone looking at it is saying "why is everything so purple?"
I'm only going off the calibrators I've used, more expensive units most likely yield better results. Though I'd be very surprised if a $162 unit like the Spyder gave better results than the spectroradiometer Apple uses.
I've used these products on my old Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro, 3rd gen MacBook Air and Retina MacBook Pro, being super uptight about recalibrating about every 2 weeks. And now in retrospective my photos have turned out looking a lot better across more screens just sticking to the default profile. In other words I wouldn't recommend any of the calibrators I've used
Apple says all of the new iMacs are factory-calibrated with state-of-art spectroradiometers. But I actually can't say for sure since here in Russia I haven't seen a new iMac atm.
@WrrN: what is the OP? Many say calibration is best. Having used the two mentioned calibrators I have had more luck with photo color consistency from Camera to Computer to Printer using Apple's built in .icc profile than the calibrators.
Another example in my experience was putting both to equal calibration settings (D65) and getting the following:
Spyder: Strong magenta hue
X-Rite: Strong cyan hue
So which one is more accurate? Theoretically they should be identical. At this point it's your own eye that will do the deciding, and the Apple 'Color LCD' .icc appeared most balanced.