When I first saw Pantone’s Huey Pro at the Photo Marketing Association show last March, I was impressed. For whatever reason it took me six months to actually order one. It arrived yesterday and sat on my desk until a little while ago. From the time I took it out of the box until I had my monitor calibrated, it took less than ten minutes.
The software was quite simple to follow. It ask a few questions about what I saw, measured the light in my office and then ask me to stick the Huey on the monitor. Colors flashed on the screen for 2-3 minutes as it measured the color values. Another question or two and it was done. It automatically plugged the profile into Windows and then I simply had to tell CorelDRAW to use the profile. Honestly, it couldn’t have been much easier.
Now the true test of color calibration is to get all of your devices calibrated and to do some test prints to make sure the monitor and prints are as close as possible. That will take me a bit longer than ten minutes.
If you need to calibrate your monitor, you can’t go wrong with the Huey Pro. It is easy to use, doesn’t take much time and costs less than $100 at Amazon.
Have you used a Huey? What are your thoughts?
I haven’t use the Huey but do use the Monaco Hardware device and included ez scan profiler along with print profiler at somewheres about 3 to 400.00.
Monaco device lets one profile to a color temp. Standards are 5000, 6500, for graphics & 9500 for Web. I prefer 6500 as I find 5000 too dark.
The EZ scan software includes a special IT8 calibration card you read with the scanner and a profile is created. Generally it works, though I did have a scanner it wouldn’t completely fix until I had the scanner light replaced.
Previously I used a free scanner software LCMS from http://www.coloraid.de/ and IT8 targets from
http://www.targets.coloraid.de/
Again it works but I much prefer a hardware monitor profiler. Fortunately too our latest unit a Xerox Docucolor 240 includes built in scanner calibration.
The Monaco software with ez scan software also had a printer profiler but I never found it as accurate as using the SWOP simulation & calibration procedures built into the EFI Fiery equipped color copiers we’ve owned.
For those trying the Huey I would download the LCMS system for Windows at http://www.littlecms.com/downloads.htm
After all a calibrated monitor is no good without a calibrated scanner and printer.
Ken Graham
CommunityPrinters.com