Finally calibrated my monitor!
For a long time, I felt that buying a monitor calibrator was something that I should do, but it wasn’t crucial. When I made my recent decision to focus more on print photography than on stock, I decided that it was now necessary to get a monitor calibrator. I decided to go with the Spyder 3 Elite
When I first installed it I received an error – spyder3.cpp 297 65550 (0×10004). I am currently running Windows Vista 64 bit and I figured they probably didn’t test against that. However their web site states that it is compatible, so I downloaded the 3.0.4 version of the software (3.0.1 is in the box) and I still had some problems. Then I realized that the older version was still running, so I made sure that I was running the new version and the error went away. I then had problems getting the suction cup to stay but like the software says if you wet the suction cup slightly it sticks much better. Finally, the software had a hard time recognizing the device. To fix this, I just unplugged the USB cable and plugged it back in and then it recognized it.
After all that, the monitor calibrator did make a difference with my monitor. The before and after shots definitely showed and improvement. More important, I opened a shot that I created before I calibrated my monitor and I fixed it.