Lee L
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A few months back I saw a post on the internet about a colorimeter designed and made available by Richard Hughes in the UK for computer monitor calibration. It's called the ColorHug, and the web page is at Hughski - ColorHug. The ColorHug is assembled, calibrated, and shipped by Richard and his wife. In order to calibrate a monitor, one uses the CD sent with the ColorHug or downloads an .iso file to burn a newer version on CD or DVD. The CD contains a live boot version of Fedora linux (the free version of Red Hat linux). The colorimeter is delivered with a USB cable with a mini-USB that plugs into the colorimeter, and the colorimeter itself is much smaller than any commercial unit I've seen. As soon as the colorimeter is plugged into the computer, the Gnome color management software on the running live CD starts up and prompts the user through starting the calibration process. There are three options for calibration to different accuracies, with more color patches and a longer process for higher accuracy. The system is designed to be open source, and color profiles made with the included CD software are designed to be used under any OS. But the combined ColorHug hardware and software package doesn't require a specific operating system or a specific version of an operating system to be installed to produce a valid monitor profile. The software on the live CD runs only from the CD, and doesn't install itself on the computer, nor does it write to the computer's hard drive or other storage without user input.
I had some trouble with the ColorHug live disk on my desktop computer not recognizing my LaCie 724 monitor, which is an LED backlit high gamut display capable of 123% of Adobe RGB. This may be because of the Nvidia display card. Nvidia is notoriously uncommunicative and difficult when it comes to linux, and their proprietary binary drivers have prevented me from calibrating my monitor on this computer before now because they don't correctly support XRandR in the linux display chain.
So I decided to try calibrating the LaCie 724 monitor with my HP 8440p laptop's DisplayPort output. I booted the supplied Fedora live CD and the monitor was correctly recognized right away. The color management software started automatically when I plugged in the ColorHug and I chose the highest accuracy calibration, which is supposed to take about 20 minutes and uses the largest set of color patches to calibrate. I didn't time the process. The website says that the ColorHug reads 200 sample colors in 2 minutes, so it's possible that the 20 minute process could read up to 2000 color patches, although I haven't seen anything to confirm a number.
I saved the resulting .icc profile to an SD card in the laptop and then moved over to the desktop computer and used System|Preferences|Color Profiles in the Gnome desktop I use to install the new ColorHug profile for the LaCie 724 as the default. I am very pleased with the results.
There are no drivers available for the ColorHug under MS Windows or OS X, but current versions of Fedora linux have the software used to profile the ColorHug installed. If you're running MS Windows or Apple, you'll find that the same process of copying over the profile from the live Fedora CD will work as well. The live Fedora CD will work on nearly all MS Windows compatible computers, but not on Apple hardware. You could, however, plug the monitor into any computer that will boot the live Fedora CD supplied and then save and copy the monitor profile to wherever it's needed. So the ColorHug is not 'linux only' hardware.
The ColorHug can also be used to calibrate digital projectors.
One of the difficulties involved in using a high gamut monitor is that colors can appear extremely bright and over-saturated compared to a display that has a more limited gamut if the display isn't properly calibrated. The ColorHug profile cures those problems, and colors appear far more natural that many of the digital day-glo colors we often see in digital photography.
The ColorHug is currently 60 plus reasonable shipping and handling (listed on the website by shipping destination). I paid a bit less because I ordered early and was place on the waiting list when early adopters were being sought. This is still an excellent price based on what other similarly capable colorimeters cost.
The ColorHug is produced in batches, 10 batches of 100 so far, I believe, so it may be sold out or you may need to put your email address on a mailing list, which is what I did. After a wait of a few months, I received an email asking me to confirm my order and arrange payment. I received the ColorHug in the US midwest within a week of that date.
I'm very pleased with the ColorHug so far, even with the minor inconvenience apparently caused by proprietary Nvidia drivers and hardware. The ColorHug comes with a 5 year warranty, and I received prompt and helpful advice from Richard via email when I had the initial problems with the Nvidia hardware and monitor recognition. It's far better for me to have a device of this kind with native linux support than to have a colorimeter manufacturer tell me I need to install MS Windows just to calibrate my monitor, and at a cost several times that of the ColorHug hardware itself. It's also nice to have monitor calibration independent of any specific operating system.
Lee
I had some trouble with the ColorHug live disk on my desktop computer not recognizing my LaCie 724 monitor, which is an LED backlit high gamut display capable of 123% of Adobe RGB. This may be because of the Nvidia display card. Nvidia is notoriously uncommunicative and difficult when it comes to linux, and their proprietary binary drivers have prevented me from calibrating my monitor on this computer before now because they don't correctly support XRandR in the linux display chain.
So I decided to try calibrating the LaCie 724 monitor with my HP 8440p laptop's DisplayPort output. I booted the supplied Fedora live CD and the monitor was correctly recognized right away. The color management software started automatically when I plugged in the ColorHug and I chose the highest accuracy calibration, which is supposed to take about 20 minutes and uses the largest set of color patches to calibrate. I didn't time the process. The website says that the ColorHug reads 200 sample colors in 2 minutes, so it's possible that the 20 minute process could read up to 2000 color patches, although I haven't seen anything to confirm a number.
I saved the resulting .icc profile to an SD card in the laptop and then moved over to the desktop computer and used System|Preferences|Color Profiles in the Gnome desktop I use to install the new ColorHug profile for the LaCie 724 as the default. I am very pleased with the results.
There are no drivers available for the ColorHug under MS Windows or OS X, but current versions of Fedora linux have the software used to profile the ColorHug installed. If you're running MS Windows or Apple, you'll find that the same process of copying over the profile from the live Fedora CD will work as well. The live Fedora CD will work on nearly all MS Windows compatible computers, but not on Apple hardware. You could, however, plug the monitor into any computer that will boot the live Fedora CD supplied and then save and copy the monitor profile to wherever it's needed. So the ColorHug is not 'linux only' hardware.
The ColorHug can also be used to calibrate digital projectors.
One of the difficulties involved in using a high gamut monitor is that colors can appear extremely bright and over-saturated compared to a display that has a more limited gamut if the display isn't properly calibrated. The ColorHug profile cures those problems, and colors appear far more natural that many of the digital day-glo colors we often see in digital photography.
The ColorHug is currently 60 plus reasonable shipping and handling (listed on the website by shipping destination). I paid a bit less because I ordered early and was place on the waiting list when early adopters were being sought. This is still an excellent price based on what other similarly capable colorimeters cost.
The ColorHug is produced in batches, 10 batches of 100 so far, I believe, so it may be sold out or you may need to put your email address on a mailing list, which is what I did. After a wait of a few months, I received an email asking me to confirm my order and arrange payment. I received the ColorHug in the US midwest within a week of that date.
I'm very pleased with the ColorHug so far, even with the minor inconvenience apparently caused by proprietary Nvidia drivers and hardware. The ColorHug comes with a 5 year warranty, and I received prompt and helpful advice from Richard via email when I had the initial problems with the Nvidia hardware and monitor recognition. It's far better for me to have a device of this kind with native linux support than to have a colorimeter manufacturer tell me I need to install MS Windows just to calibrate my monitor, and at a cost several times that of the ColorHug hardware itself. It's also nice to have monitor calibration independent of any specific operating system.
Lee