Ready to buy w/budget: Pantone Huey Pro?

[srptopdog]

Seems the Pantone Huey Pro gets vg reviews. As many people, I'm working on a budget (100 bucks approx). Any other ideas? I'm running windows XP.

thanks, grinners -

srptopdog
www.perlavision.com

[dwayne_bradley]

I have a Huey Pro and it has worked well for me. I didn't realize how off the color on my iMac was until I used it! It even worked wonderful on an old CRT monitor that I have hooked up to my iMac as a second monitor and the color on that old beast was visibly horrible before.

Just my $0.02.

Dwayne

[Mr. 2H2O]

I use Spyder 2 Suite on my WinXP rig...I bought it used from a photog off Ebay for less than $60 delivered. Prints are pretty much exactly what I see on screen.

- Mike

[srptopdog]

Thank you both for the suggestions. I went with the Huey Pro, although I was looking at the Spyder closely too.

Wow - was my monitor off out of whack (um... technical term). In fact, it took me a short while to become comfortable with the correction. At very first, everything looked a touch pink, but I don't see that hue now, however.

I think (based on what I've read on this forum), most monitors seem to display more green and blue than a 'balanced' display.

It feels good to have a decent baseline to work from. Now I have some image tweaking to do!

Best Regards,

srptopdog ~
www.perlavision.com


Seems the Pantone Huey Pro gets vg reviews. As many people, I'm working on a budget (100 bucks approx). Any other ideas? I'm running windows XP.

thanks, grinners -

srptopdog
www.perlavision.com (http://www.perlavision.com)

[DavidTO]

I stopped using my Huey. It couldn't get my two monitors to look the same. I do better with the built-in calibration in OSX (the squint your eyes kind). I know, it's sub-optimal. But that tells you how much I don't like my Huey. POS, IMO. I'd be interested in trying something better, but I always end up with something that has a higher priority in my spending. :dunno

[D'Buggs]

I'm using one. Seems like the next best thing to a glass of good whisky!

I haven't tried setting up monitor 2 yet... but I'm thinking that unless the monitors are of the same type/class, you'd get one looking 'off' no matter what. ie; IPS with IPS.


I tried living with a TN moniter on Huey adjustments.... Just didn't work out because of all the fading/shifting. And that fault is of the TV itself - Unless your sitted EXACTLY the same way as it was calibrated,,,, with the same tilt of your head and holding a beer at the precise level as the 'old' on was, in the same hand, it looked off..... It always looked off.

WTS, I'm sure there's better colour mgmt out there too! But for now, I'm content.

[srptopdog]

I think it's probably too soon for me to tell how satisfied I will be with my Huey Pro in the long run how. I haven't any prints yet since I started using it a few days ago.

I am suspecting though, that we get what we pay for. For now, I am going to hold with the Huey and gain more knowledge/experience. Hopefully the Huey will serve me acceptably well until I'm ready and able to make a much larger investment for a monitor and for calibration.

peace -

srptopdog


I'm using one. Seems like the next best thing to a glass of good whisky!

I haven't tried setting up monitor 2 yet... but I'm thinking that unless the monitors are of the same type/class, you'd get one looking 'off' no matter what. ie; IPS with IPS.


I tried living with a TN moniter on Huey adjustments.... Just didn't work out because of all the fading/shifting. And that fault is of the TV itself - Unless your sitted EXACTLY the same way as it was calibrated,,,, with the same tilt of your head and holding a beer at the precise level as the 'old' on was, in the same hand, it looked off..... It always looked off.

WTS, I'm sure there's better colour mgmt out there too! But for now, I'm content.

[tijoseph]

I bought the Huey Pro, hooked it up and said no way is this right... I trusted it though, ordered some prints from Miller's both original files like I had sent, and their color corrected ones. They matched almost exactly. i now trust my huey.

[Village Idiot]

I use the Spyder 3. The new features make it better than the 2.

Anyways, Monitors themselves play a huge roll in how the images look and the Calibration.

I have a 22" LG that has absolutely horrible viewing angles. Fortunately, I ordered a 30" HP LCD with an IPS display. Unfortunately, it's sitting in the corner of my parents house waiting for a mini displayport to dual link dvi adapter to arrive. I didn't even want it sitting in my house if I couldn't use it. Besides, I'm living on limited space.

[D'Buggs]

FWIW.


Since my last post in this thread, the Dept. Manager of 'my electronics store and I, did a little test. We put Huey Pro and Spyder3, head to head on an Apple display.

We both easily concluded that for price, Huey excelled. Flipping the machine back and forth between the two yeilded little, if any, discernable difference.... He (store mgr) was actuallly dumb-founded because of the near twice price difference 'tween the two.

[rutt]

I've tried Huey a couple of times over 3 years with the same experience. When it works, it works well. But it miscalibrates on some common displays, giving results which just don't match what it does with other displays (hence David's experience.) So if you are lucky and don't use it on one of those, great, you saved some $$$. But if not, you wasted your $$$. Pantone is very helpful in a nonhelpful sort of way. They'll talk to you, replace it, walk you through the steps, suggest that you don't use a USB hub. All to no effect.

I've tried the Spyders and they work better, but not perfectly; it still miscalibrates some monitors. So far my best experience was with Eye-One which works with all monitors so far, including ones that the other two blow. Second best, squinty built in Apple calibration (like David uses.)

Calibration is worse than no calibration if it's not 100% reliable.

[cmason]

Just a quick comment: one thing that draws me to the Eye One is that not only does it seem to be the most reliable, it also can be used to calibrate your new LCD TV. If you think it important for a computer monitor, it is just as important for the even more expensive HDTV.

Check this out:

http://www.curtpalme.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10457