That $40 color calibration tool I bought off Amazon actually saved my prints from looking like garbage

I spent $40 on a cheap Spyder knockoff and after tweaking my monitor settings, my test prints finally matched the screen instead of coming out all muddy and dark, has anyone else had their local print shop call them out on bad color?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_piper7d ago

I had a different experience with those cheap Amazon calibrators... picked one up for around the same price and ran it three times, got three different results each time. My prints actually got worse, colors started looking oversaturated and weird. I think the problem is those knockoffs don't have a proper sensor that can read dark tones right, so they just guess in the shadows. Ended up borrowing a friend's i1Display and it made a huge difference, that first one was just giving me false confidence. Maybe yours works fine, but for me it just felt like throwing money at a problem without actually fixing it.

miles_jackson97d ago

bro same thing happened to me i grabbed a random $35 calibrator off amazon after my prints came back looking like a different photo entirely. local print shop dude literally pulled me aside and was like "uh your monitor might be lying to you" lol. honestly just running the calibration fixed everything, now my test prints actually match what i see on screen. such a game changer for the price.