Doug Kerr
Well-known member
Datacolor, whom we mostly know as the manufacturer of the Spyder series of monitor and (more recently) printer colorimetric calibration gear, has introduced a camera calibration package, the SpyderCheckr system, comparable in general purpose to the X-Rite Passport system described a while ago in this forum section. It was introduced at this year's Phototokina.
The DPR article on the product is here:
http://www.dpreview.com/news/1009/10092214datacolorsypdercheckr.asp
The centerpiece is a folding color target, comprising 48 color patches (8 of them neutral). The patch panels are reversible and replaceable, and have a gray target (and gray patch row) on the reverse side.
A clever touch is an indicator on the front of one of the panels that is presumably sensitive to ultraviolet light, and changes color to advise when the accumulated UV exposure on your panels is such that they might be expected to have faded enough that the panels should be replaced.
There is also a software package that runs as a plug-in to Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, and Lightroom.
The drill is that we take a shot of the target, and then open the raw file. We manually crop the image to the general span of the target, white-balance color correct it (using one of the neutral patches in the target), and make white- and black-point adjustments based on the black and white patches.
The we ask the primary app to send the image for editing to the SpyderCheckr plugin.
There, we can help the app find the centers of the 48 patches if it hasn't figured that out quite correctly by itself. We then ask it to analyze the file and develop a camera calibration (and Datacolor seems to carefully not call it a profile - well, not often).
It evidently does this in terms corresponding to the slider settings in the "HSL mode" color adjustment panel in Photoshop and related applications.
This suite of settings is apparently then saved as a Photoshop "preset" (that is, settings file) so it can be called up and invoked on actual subject shots.
A video showing the use of the system is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KV7k5_f3eM8w
Best regards,
Doug
The DPR article on the product is here:
http://www.dpreview.com/news/1009/10092214datacolorsypdercheckr.asp
The centerpiece is a folding color target, comprising 48 color patches (8 of them neutral). The patch panels are reversible and replaceable, and have a gray target (and gray patch row) on the reverse side.
A clever touch is an indicator on the front of one of the panels that is presumably sensitive to ultraviolet light, and changes color to advise when the accumulated UV exposure on your panels is such that they might be expected to have faded enough that the panels should be replaced.
There is also a software package that runs as a plug-in to Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, and Lightroom.
The drill is that we take a shot of the target, and then open the raw file. We manually crop the image to the general span of the target, white-balance color correct it (using one of the neutral patches in the target), and make white- and black-point adjustments based on the black and white patches.
The we ask the primary app to send the image for editing to the SpyderCheckr plugin.
There, we can help the app find the centers of the 48 patches if it hasn't figured that out quite correctly by itself. We then ask it to analyze the file and develop a camera calibration (and Datacolor seems to carefully not call it a profile - well, not often).
It evidently does this in terms corresponding to the slider settings in the "HSL mode" color adjustment panel in Photoshop and related applications.
This suite of settings is apparently then saved as a Photoshop "preset" (that is, settings file) so it can be called up and invoked on actual subject shots.
A video showing the use of the system is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KV7k5_f3eM8w
Best regards,
Doug