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We clicked with:
Easy to use
Ambient light sensor
Cheap
Dual monitor support
Shots in the dark:
Nasty suckers
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This is going to be a really short review. Back in December, I reviewed the Pantone Huey and said “If the Huey supported dual screens then I'd buy one tomorrow (actually I'd call Colour Confidence and explain how a freak accident took out their review model…).”
Imagine my delight when those nice chaps at Colour Confidence sent me the Huey Pro. Here's the 3 second review:
“It's like a Huey, but it supports dual screens”.
Since pretty much the only thing I didn't like about the Huey was that it only supported single screens you can probably guess which way this is going.
To save you flicking backwards and forwards, I'm going to repeat the first couple of sections from my Huey review so that you have a complete article.
Intro
Visit a TV shop and take a look at the displays. Chances are that all the different screens will show the same pictures but the colours all look different. Now you know they all started out life the same because the BBC only transmits Eastenders in one colour but they all look different because their colour bias is different. Now that's not too serious (who really cares exactly what shade Dot's hair is this week?) but when you get into digital photography it becomes a little more important.
If my screen looks different from yours then who's right? If we both send a file off to a lab to be printed, will it match yours or mine or neither (because it certainly can't match both). Welcome to the complex world of colour management.
Colour Confidence supply all sorts of devices, programs and gizmos to help you through this maze so we were delighted when they sent us one of their latest (and least expensive) toys to play with the Pantone Huey.
Let me say this right away. If you only ever look at your pictures on your own screen and print them on your printer and aren't too fussy then you don't need a colour calibrator. If you want to show them to other people or print them on “outside” printers (e.g. a lab), or display them on the web or simply get the best possible tonal reproduction then read on. You're going to need some way of calibrating your screen and this is one of the easiest.
What it does
I'm going to start with what it doesn't do. No screen calibrator makes your prints match your screen. I put that in bold because it's the most common misconception about colour calibration.
What a colour calibrator does it match your screen to everyone else's. Pictures on your screen will look very similar to mine. This means when you put something on the web all the people who have calibrated their screens will see pretty well the same thing.
More importantly, your screen will be similar to that used by your lab when they set their printers. It will also be similar to the one used by Canon or Epson or whoever when they write their printer drivers. It doesn't mean your prints will match your screen but unless you calibrate your screen it's pretty unlikely they will.
You might stop and wonder at this point why screens aren't calibrated by the manufacturers and by Microsoft/Apple. The answer is that they are - but not for photography. Most screens and computers are set up for using Microsoft Word since that's what the majority of them are used for. The best settings for showing black text on a white background aren't necessarily the best ones for displaying subtle shades of colour in a photograph.
Also, if you have explored white balance then you will know that tungsten light is a different colour from fluorescent light which is a different colour from sunlight. Unless you have carefully controlled lighting (and pro repro houses do!) then the colours on your screen will shift every time the light changes.
That's where the Huey is so clever. Like most calibrators, it measures the screen and produces an “interference” pattern. If your screen makes things a bit more red than it should then a colour profile effectively says “reduce the red by 4 points” to get the colour it should have been in the first place. But the Huey goes further - it sits on your desk and monitors the light. Every few minutes, it measures the light falling on the monitor and adjusts the screen so that the correct image is displayed. And it does this seamlessly in the background. All you see is that the monitor looks correct regardless of the ambient lighting. At least that's the theory - let's see.
In use
Very, very simple. Drop the CD in the drive, install the software, plug the Huey Pro into a spare USB socket and you're away. Just follow the instructions on the screen.
Follow the instructions and the Huey Pro will take a quick measurement of the ambient light in the room. This is important because room light will affect the colours on your screens - except most calibrators skip this step.
This is pretty much the only value judgement you will have to make when using the Huey. This is good because I'm rubbish at using those “make the box just fade out” sliders you get on manual calibrators like Adobe Gamma. As long as you see all the rings you're fine - if not then Huey will talk you through adjusting contrast and brightness. (Note that due to the magic of the web these pictures may not look correct to you - especially if you need to calibrate your monitor!).
This is the Huey's only weakspot. You are asked to stick the calibrator onto your screen using small suckers. The one time I tried this it fell off part way through - and that gives a really weird calibration! I usually hold it in place. Calibration takes just over a minute so it's not a hardship.
Just over a minute later it's done and you drop the Huey Pro back in its cradle.
Here's the before and after shots (these will look pretty similar over the web - suffice it to say that the before is a lot warmer and less pleasant). Just to show that it's actually done something. If this is the first time you've calibrated your screen then you may find you hate the “after”. Give it a couple of days - then if you flick back to the “before” it's likely to look pretty sickly.
Now you let the Huey do its stuff - leave it on the cradle and throughout the day it will adjust to the ambient light. If I'm going to do some critical work then I will set my lights (blackout blinds and indirect halogen lighting) and then hit the “adjust now” button to make sure everything's up to date.
And here's where the Huey Pro differs from the Huey - to calibrate the other screen, just drag the application over and run through the steps again. Less than 5 minutes to calibrate 2 screens.
Does it work
Yep.
I liked the Huey but it took a lot of fiddling to get the second monitor to match. With the Huey Pro everything worked perfectly and I now have two screens with very similar colours. They are slightly different because one is underneath a window but when I black the room out they look great.
Some words of caution
I tested the Huey Pro on a Mac Pro which will happily let you calibrate two monitors. Not all computers will. If you're on a PC then it depends on the operating system version and how the monitors are wired up (dual head cards are generally OK). Most Macs will support dual screen calibration but iMacs and laptops generally won't.
If you want to calibrate two screens then they should be the same type (both CRT or both LCD) since CRTs and LCDs display shadows and highlights differently. You can get them close but some images will look different on each. Ideally you want monitors from the same manufacturer - my own setup uses two identical monitors.
Conclusion
If you use a dual monitor, don't have any kind of calibrator and want to get accurate colour reproduction at a reasonable price then go and buy a Huey Pro. If all of that is true but you only have one screen then strongly consider the Huey Pro instead of the Huey. It's about £20 more but if you later add a second monitor it saves you buying another device.
