Monitor colour calibrators

Hello,

I am getting a new Mac pro next week and a D200 camera. I have been reading quite a bit about using photoshop etc and have been told that I really need to buy a screen calibrator.

My question in everyones experience how much do you actually need to spend to get a usable device and which is best to buy I have seen a Spyder 2 for about £60 or £100 including the printer calibration. Is this good? What about the huey?

If possible I would like to be able to calibrate the sceen for my windoze box too but if the best device doesn't have this option it is not the end of the world.

At school, we use the Spyder but the teacher said there was better options available for pros. He didn't mention any brands though.

I use and recommend the Spyder2Pro. It has achieved wonderful results on my Mac, against my Viewsonic VP2130b monitor. Absolutely recommended.

hueys are sold in Apple stores for $80 USD. I have no experience with them or any other ones, however.

Another hand up for the Spyder2Pro, have used it for the last year on my old windows box and now on my Macbook Pro. A bit more expensive than the standard Spyder, but I think its ability to measure ambient room light is a pretty important feature which the cheaper versions don't have, you can find a quick comparison here.

thanks for your post. What advantage is the ability to read ambient room light?

In a dark room you obviously need a monitor that throws out less brightness and in a very bright room your monitor's brightness has to be cranked all the way up.

But I dunno if that is good or bad, this ability to read ambient light: if you are using your computer in a room with a window, the amount of ambient light varies from hour to hour... I guess it is a good feature if you are using your computer in a closed room like in a basement (where the ambient light is constant) or something.