Pantone/GretagMacbeth Huey

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1 Page 1 of 5 _GRAPHIC_TABLETS_>_BRAND: Wacom, Acer, Aiptek, Corel, Mace, Pacon, Toshiba PRICE: Under $40, $40 - $100, $100 - $250, $250 - $700, Over $700 for Creative Pros in Business Media Departments HOME FREE! Subscribe to CM Newsletter DMO microportals tutorial finder review seeker Career Center SEARCH FORUM view posts forum list NEWS SECTIONS GRAPHICS ANIMATION VIDEO PRESENTATION WEB STORIES MOST VIEWED RECOMMENDED FEATURES REVIEWS TUTORIALS EDITORIALS CONSUMER ELECTRONICS DMN NEWSWIRE HOTLINKS FOR VENDORS DMN LINKS DMN SUPPLEMENTS presentation production animation CLASSIFIEDS SHOPPER MEDIA KIT CONTACT WEBMASTER PRODUCT REVIEW: PAGE (1) OF 2-01/17/06 Pantone/GretagMacbeth Huey Monitor calibration and ambient light compensation system By Dave Nagel ARTICLE PRINT PAGE Summary: The Huey is one of the first products of the new collaboration between Pantone and GretagMacbeth, two companies well known for their efforts to bring accurate color to the desktop. The Huey is something of a milestone in color accuracy in that it offers both consistent calibration for any type of monitor and constant monitoring of ambient light, adjusting the colors on the display to complement current lighting conditions. And it comes in at an irresistible price of $89, leaving no excuse for anyone to keep working with bad color. Manufacturer: Pantone/GretagMacbeth ( Platform: Mac OS X and Windows Price: $89 Users: At this price point, the Huey is targeted toward home users, but it's also great for graphic designers, amateur photographers and essentially anyone else who works in the visual arts. Recommendation: Strong Buy For those just getting into digital imaging, color management can be a confusing issue. But let me try to simplify it. Different devices all handle color differently. The picture you see on your camera 's LCD is going to look different from the same picture displayed on your computer monitor, which is going to look extremely different from how the picture looks when it comes out of your printer. But there are ways to minimize these differences, thus saving you money on the ridiculously expensive ink you would otherwise waste whenever you print something that comes out wrong. The way to minimize the bulk of your color problems is by calibrating your monitor with one of the calibration tools on the market. And for beginners--and even professional users in many cases--a good solution for this is the brand new Huey from Pantone/GretagMacbeth. Pantone ColorPlus Color Calibrator Pantone/ColorVision Spyder Pro with OptiCAL Color Correction for Digital Video Practical Color Correction More Related Stories Huey Hog Helicopter Die-Cast Collectible This licensed, 1:40 scale replica gives you an up-... From: $25 BLACK DIAMOND Huey 100-Liter Duffle Black Diamond took technology from its haul bags t... From: $120 BLACK DIAMOND Huey Duffle Available in two huge sizes, 100 and 150 L, the Bl... From: $110 The Huey, introduced just this week, is one of the first products of the new collaboration between Pantone and GretagMacbeth, two companies well known for their efforts to bring accurate color to the desktop. The Huey is something of a milestone in color accuracy in that it offers both consistent calibration for any type of monitor and constant monitoring of ambient light, adjusting the colors on the display to complement current lighting conditions. What's more, it comes in at an irresistible price of $89, leaving no excuse for anyone to keep working with bad color. For those of you who are unsure as to why you'd need to calibrate your monitor at all, let me give you a little background.

2 ttp:// Page 2 of 5 1/17/2006 A little background for beginners One of the perceptions is that when you buy a new printer, a new camera, a new monitor and a new computer, all of these things will somehow just work together in perfect harmony. But that's almost never the case. Tons of factors--from the color profile in your camera to the type of paper you use to print out your photo--in some way impact the color workflow. But perhaps the one factor that's the most significant in this workflow is the way your monitor displays color. And, in general, the one thing you can count on about your monitor is that it's displaying color wrong. Here's what I mean by that. Your camera, computer and printer are all more or less communicating color to one another through a color management system, such as Apple's ColorSync on the Mac. ColorSync compares the properties of your various devices and passes color information on down the line--from camera to image editing software to page layout software to the printer. However, there's a weak point in this flow of information. ColorSync can only pass correct information to a printer if it has correct information to begin with. But no two monitors display color in the same way, so what you're seeing on screen is probably not what your computer assumes you're seeing. Something that looks pale green on your screen may come out yellow in the final print for the simple reason that what ColorSync understands as yellow is displaying incorrectly as pale green on your screen. Even if you have two monitors that are the same model, variations that occur in manufacturing and/or handling can cause differences in the displays. And even if your monitor is factory-calibrated, it doesn't mean it's going to be calibrated when it gets to you. And it certainly doesn't mean it's going to stay calibrated. Your display's color drifts over time, which means that, if left unattended, it's going to lose whatever fidelity it had when it came from the factory. And we're not talking about years here. We're talking about weeks for a monitor to drift out of its properly calibrated state. Usually this drift is imperceptible, which, in fact, makes it even more dangerous for the simple reason that it's hard for you to know when you're working with bad color and when you're not. And that's why all professional designers and photographers use monitor calibrators. Mind you, they don't rely solely on their perfectly calibrated displays; they'll also shell out tons of cash on match prints to make sure their prints are going to come out right. But it all starts with a properly calibrated monitor. Now, if you're not a professional designer or photographer, obviously you have less to lose than those folks if one of your family photos comes out too dark or too orange or whatever. But the costs do add up, and they add up quickly. Remember, in many cases, the replacement ink for your printer is more expensive than the printer itself. And each time you make a bad print, you're throwing away a couple dollars in ink and photo-quality paper. And that means that very quickly you're going to justify the price of a calibration device that will help you minimize wasted ink and paper. All of this is very simplified, of course, but the basic message is that if what you see on screen is inaccurate (which it is), then what you get out of your printer is going to be inaccurate as well. A calibrator is going to help make your monitor more accurate, and that, in turn, is going to give you prints that more closely resemble what you see on screen. The Huey calbration system: hardware and software Now, one of the latest additions to the field of color calibration tools on the market is the new Huey from Pantone/GretagMacbeth. This is a consumerlevel calibrator, but don't let this monicker fool you. The Huey is the descendant of GretagMacbeth's professional tools, packaged in a dinky form factor and driven by a simple, wizard-like calibration utility. The principal differences between this calibrator and the higher-end models also introduced by Pantone/GretagMacbeth this week (Eye-One Display LT and Eye-One Display 2) are in the software. In terms of hardware, the Huey comes with a USB-based colorimeter, a USB cable extender and a stand. The colorimeter itself is distinguished from previous Pantone-branded colorimeters in several respects. First, it's dinky, measuring about four inches in length and bearing the girth of a felt-tip marker. And it weighs almost nothing. On the back of the unit, you'll find the sensors that are used in the calibration of your monitor, as well as eight tiny suction cups for holding the device in place during calibration. The colorimeter can be used on LCD and CRT displays with no additional hardware (such as a baffle) required. On the front of the display are the LEDs that indicate activity and that are also used to measure the level of ambient light in the work area. The stand holds the Huey when it's not being used to calibrate a display. In this stand, the Huey can be positioned and angled to match the position and angle of your display--helpful, of course, if you intend to leave the Huey plugged in all the time so that it's continuously measuring ambient light and adjusting your display accordingly.

3 Page 3 of 5 This is, by the way, the first consumer-level colorimeter I've seen with a built-in ambient light sensor, and I think it's a fantastic addition to the product. Using the software provided (which we'll get to below), you can set the Huey to measure ambient light from anything from every 10 seconds to every four hours. (You can also shut this off entirely, if desired). Whenever it takes a reading, Huey will adjust the display so that the colors you perceive on screen remain fairly consistent regardless of lighting conditions. Incidentally, Huey is powered through the USB bus, so there are no batteries or power cables to worry about.

4 Page 1 of 7 _TVs_>_BRAND: Sharp, Samsung, Toshiba, Sony, Panasonic, Phillips, All SCREEN: Under 20in, in., in., in., in., Over 60 in for Creative Pros in Business Media Departments HOME FREE! Subscribe to CM Newsletter DMO microportals tutorial finder review seeker Career Center ARTICLE PRINT PAGE PRODUCT REVIEW: PAGE (2) OF 2-01/17/06 Pantone/GretagMacbeth Huey Monitor calibration and ambient light compensation system In terms of software, I think this has to be absolutely the most simple calibration system ever devised--which, of course, is great news for those just getting into digital imaging and who don't have the knowledge to work with more sophisticated, customizable software. Pantone ColorPlus Color Calibrator Pantone/ColorVision Spyder Pro with OptiCAL Color Correction for Digital Video Practical Color Correction More Related Stories SEARCH FORUM view posts forum list NEWS SECTIONS GRAPHICS ANIMATION VIDEO PRESENTATION WEB STORIES MOST VIEWED RECOMMENDED FEATURES REVIEWS TUTORIALS EDITORIALS CONSUMER ELECTRONICS DMN NEWSWIRE HOTLINKS FOR VENDORS DMN LINKS DMN SUPPLEMENTS presentation production animation CLASSIFIEDS SHOPPER MEDIA KIT CONTACT WEBMASTER The first thing I loved about this software was that there was no installer (at least not in the Mac OS X version). As in the good old days of Macintosh software, installation of the Huey's calibration utility (also called "Huey," by the way) was a simple matter of dragging it from the CD and dropping it into my Applications folder. There were no drivers to install, no passwords to enter, no restart required. Just copy it onto your hard drive, and you're good to go. When you launch the software, you instantly go into calibration mode. Here's how it works, beginning to end. Step 1: You select your display ( LCD or CRT). Huey Hog Helicopter Die-Cast Collectible This licensed, 1:40 scale replica gives you an up-... From: $25 BLACK DIAMOND Huey 100-Liter Duffle Black Diamond took technology from its haul bags t... From: $120 BLACK DIAMOND Huey Duffle Available in two huge sizes, 100 and 150 L, the Bl... From: $110 Step 2: Huey takes a measurement of the light in the room.

5 Page 2 of 7 Step 3: This display comes up, indicating that you should stick the Huey onto your screen over the image of the Huey. You don't have to be precise about this; just get it in that general area. Once you do this and hit the "Next" button, Huey will begin running tests to determine how your monitor displays color. You just sit back and wait for a couple minutes while the system works.

6 Page 3 of 7 Step 4: The software tells you to stick your Huey back in its stand so that it can measure ambient light continuously. Step 5: You set the preferences for the type of work you do. And that's it. Without any interaction from you, Huey has placed a new color profile for your monitor in your computer's color settings and activated it.

7 Page 4 of 7 Once your calibration is complete, you can go in and re-calibrate, if you think it's necessary at a certain point, or you can wait for the software to remind you when it's time for another calibration. You can also go into System Preferences, click on the Huey icon and make changes to the frequency with which Huey checks the ambient light, settings for the type of work you do, etc. (Remember I said there were no drivers to install? How'd that System Preference pane get there, eh? Pretty sneaky.)

8 Page 5 of 7 The bottom line Monitor calibration is a must for anybody who works in the visual arts in any capacity. Whether you're a professional photographer or designer or just some guy who wants to get better prints out of his digital photos, a properly calibrated monitor is crucial to your color workflow. And the new Panton/GretagMacbeth Huey is a great way to go. It is the best value I've ever seen in a color calibration system. It produces excellent, consistent results; it's simple to use; and it even gives you ambient light compensation. All of this in an $89 package. Wow. Seriously, wow. This is a no-brainer Strong Buy recommendation from me. Of course, if you need more customizable software and a system that supports more than one monitor, you'll need to bump up to one for the new Eye- One models, which sell for $169 to $249.