Datacolor S4CAP100 Spyder Capture Pro (Silver/Black)

It helped make my color photos more accurate. My monitor was "way off" and I was having difficulty getting decent pictures. I spent a lot of time in a photo editing software program trying to adjust then print. This product helped cut down the number of prints made to get an acceptable one so I save on both paper and ink. I decided to call customer service before purchasing, and was quite satisfied with the representative who answered my questions. I recommend it for anyone who is a serious photographer. Their website has some very good articles on color management that one can access without buying the product.

• The charts and cube alone are worth the price. The calibrator is almost a bonus.• Great quality construction (some charts are flimsy/fragile.)• The cube is genius!• All comes in a nice quality carrying case.

Product does what it says but in all honestly it isn't worth the price. If I could I would return it.

This is a comparison of the Datacolor Spyder Capture Pro and the X-Rite i1Display Pro, both of which I had here at the same time. I didn't really use the extra features included in the Spyder Capture Pro case (lens focus calibrating chart, camera profiling), so this is really just a comparison of the i1Display Pro and the Spyder4 Elite package.First, let's compare the physical devices themselves. The Spyder4 device is purposely designed to look like a "spider" (if spiders had 3 legs) to stay in line with the marketing of the name brand. It's a very large device. It's hung from its own USB cable from the top of the monitor, with a counterweight in the back to keep the device in place. It's very large, which can make it difficult to use on the lower sections of the screen during screen uniformity tests. I have a large-ish 27" monitor, and I had to hold the spider in place at a 90 degree angle with my hands during those parts of screen testing. In addition, the position of the cable on the device means that if you have a screen that sits deep in its bezel, it's physically impossible for the Spyder4 to sit flat against the screen on its own unless you can tilt the monitor way back. Even on my screen with relatively shallow bezels, and with a stand that can tilt back 20 degrees, it was often difficult to get it sitting flat on the screen. This can get frustrating.On the other hand, the i1Display Pro is a very small device that can easily fit anywhere on your screen. The setup is mostly the same, where you hang the device from its USB cable over the top of your display, with a counterweight to hold it in place. In this case, the cable is positioned so that it contributes towards holding the device flat against the screen, no matter how deep your panel sits compared to the bezels. I never had any trouble getting it to sit flat against my screen, I didn't even need to resort to tilting the screen. And it sat comfortably flat on its own anywhere on the screen, even at the extreme bottom corners where the Spyder4 could not reach.There are really 2 main performance criteria to consider with these devices: speed and accuracy. I used these devices with their respective software packages, so I'm not sure if they'd work differently in a single profiling software package that supports both of them. However the differences I observed within their own environments were very noticeable. First and foremost, the Spyder4 was clunky and slow, while the i1Display Pro was lightning fast and intuitive. For example, while setting brightness and contrast early on in the profiling process, the Spyder4 would take a reading, ask me to make changes, then wait for me to click the "Update" button to take another reading and update the results. This is slow, tedious and error prone. Meanwhile, the i1Profiler software gave me a constant readout of the screen brightness as I made changes, with results displaying immediately.Also, during the profiling process, the Spyder4 Elite software frequently paused to wait unnecessarily for my input. For example, after setting the brightness properly, there was another button to proceed with profiling. And when it was done profiling, there was another button to "Finish". And these buttons show up half-hidden under the Spyder4 device itself, with no obvious screen prompts to let you know they're there. So if you're away from your desk and just glancing at the screen once in a while, you might not realize that the profiling process is waiting for your input. It's a very frustrating design.On the other hand, the i1Profiler software had no such issues. When there were prompts, they were few and far between, and clearly noticeable from anywhere in the room. Most of the process was very automated. The ability of the software to adjust most monitors automatically makes the process even more quick and straightforward.Patch color reading with the Spyder4 is painfully slow. A patch is displayed, the Spyder4 flashes briefly, then there's an interminable moment before the next patch comes up and the process repeats again. With the i1Display Pro, patch color reading is blazing fast. You can see color patches flying through the display faster than they can be identified by eye. The reading speed for each patch can vary, so I assume the software is waiting for the color to stabilize before accepting the reading from the device. This gives me confidence that the software is performing its job as fast as it can while still being accurate.The end result with the Spyder 4 was disappointing. I always ended up with a magenta cast on my Dell U2317H. This was true with the monitor in both sRGB and wide-gamut modes. On my super-old Asus V242H, I ended up with a blue cast (this is an sRGB CCFL LCD monitor).The i1Display Pro is directly supported by my Dell monitor for hardware calibrating, and results were superb. I was able to add a flawless sRGB preset and a full-gamut preset that covered 99.5% AdobeRGB (plus much, much more beyond). Colors are neutral, whites are white, and shadows are crisp and detailed while still reaching pitch black levels. These settings are stored right in my monitor's LUT, so they're not dependent on a software LUT modification in the video card.I also used the i1Display Pro to calibrate my Asus monitor using software calibration. Results were again superb. My Asus perfectly matches the Dell when I have the latter set to my custom sRGB mode.As far as software features go, I found the Spyder4 Elite software to be kludgy and clunky. It's mostly geared for consumers, with most of the advanced stuff hidden away. Even then, the advanced stuff isn't very configurable. The different package levels of Spyder4 (Basic, Pro, Elite) don't actually have anything to do with the device. They all come with the exact same device. It's just that certain software features are arbitrarily removed from the software as you go down in tiers. This makes the varying cost of each level kinda suspect. I'm pretty sure they're not making a loss on the Basic version, so they must be more than doubling their profits on the Elite version in comparison. It's not like they developed 3 different versions of the software for each level. They just developed the main one, then hacked away at the good stuff for the other levels.(note, as I mentioned above, I had the Capture Pro bundle, which adds a lens focus chart and camera calibration software to the package, thereby increasing the cost even more above and beyond the Spyder4 Elite package)In contrast, the i1Profiler software is incredibly advanced and can do just about anything... but getting it to perform anything beyond the built-in generic tasks is very difficult. You can build your own workflows from scratch, but this tales knowledge and experience and a lot of manual work. Once the workflow is created and saved, you can run it anytime with just a couple of clicks. There are no different levels of this software, no "Pro" vs "Basic". However there are certain features in the software which are enabled/disabled depending on which device you have plugged in. For the i1Display Pro, only the monitor and projector modules are active. You need different devices to calibrate a scanner or printer, etc, all of which gets done in this exact same software.I ended up returning the Spyder4. Results were disappointing, and after I got to try the i1Display Pro, the Spyder4 just paled in comparison. It's like comparing a point-and-shoot camera (Spyder4) with a full-featured DSLR (i1Display Pro).

I am a professional photographer and for years I have been told I needed to purchase the Spyder Capture color monitor calibrator, but just thought I would be spending money on something that really didn't do what they professes. Now that I am sending more work to the printer's via internet I am finding the results just were not what I had on my screen!Now that I have added the product to my inventory and have calibrated the monitor I have no problem with submitting my work via internet and getting the results I had on my screen...The product is easy to work with and I continue to calibrate my screen once a month...Great product - I should have purchased this years ago!

Amazing tool easy to use and does what it says it does

La tienda envió rápido y llegó antes de lo previsto, buen embalaje y servicioEL aparato en si, junto con sus accesorios tiene una buena presentación.la carta de color es efectiva, junto con la herramienta de control de foco.El colorímetro es bastante bueno, pero el software de calibración es malo, es decir, no calibra correctamente ni perfila correctamente.Por suerte funciona bien con el software gratuito de Agry II CMS y saca resultados muy buenos con él.

Jeder, der engagiert fotografiert, sollte sich dieses Teil zulegen. Regelmäßiges Monitor justieren ist unabkömmlich. Sonst ist eine ordentlich Bildbearbeitung reines Hasardeurspielen. Ohne Monitor justieren kann ich mir digitale Bildbearbeitung nicht mehr vorstellen. Erst dann weiss ich, wie die Bilder wirklich hinterher rauskommen.Auch die Farbkarte sollte eingesetzt werden, um den Weissabgelich unter Kontrolle zu bekommen, zumindest wenn man RAW Bilder macht. Erst dann macht das Sinn. Ich stelle die Farbkarte beim Probeshoot ins Bild, mit der Pipette in CameraRAW bringe ich den Weissabgleich dann auf den Punkt.Wenn diese zwei Features ein absolutes Must have sind, nehm ich gerne auch noch die anderen Teile mit - auch wenn die im Vergleich nicht so viel brinegn, jedenfals nach meiner Meinung.

Wery easy to use.Makes different displays looks alike.the software helps you, and are not time consumming.It takes about 8 minutes, then you are ready to do some serius Photoshoping.

Worth every penny.