How to cheat the single monitor limit on a Spyder2express monitor calibrator on OS X

January 31st, 2010 § 3 comments § permalink

11230815 When I purchased the Spyder2express, I managed to miss that it didn’t work with multiple monitors. At the time I was only calibrating an iMac so it didn’t really matter, but when I upgraded, I resigned to only calibrate the main monitor. Recently I came across this little trick to easily calibrate multiple monitors with this gimped software.

The trick is simple. The Spyder Calibrates your main monitor. In OS X, your main monitor is whatever monitor you have placed your menubar on. In the case of my machine I have 3 monitors and the 3rd is obviously connected to a 2nd video card that has a totally different color tone than the other. With a little trickery, I was able to calibrate them easily, here’s how:

1.) Install the software and calibrate your main display (the current one with the menubar on it.)

2.) Open the Display Preferences, Color Tab, and select “Open Profile” to edit the Spyder2Express profile that was created. Click on the “Localized Description Settings” and change the name in all 3 boxes. I chose to name mine after Pacman Ghosts and label the monitors accordingly to keep things straight.

3.) After you have renamed the color profile in the ColorSync Utility, do a “Save As” and save it the same as the description you chose.

4.) Open the display preferences again, and move the menu bar to another monitor.

5.) Restart the Spyder2Express software and begin again at step 1.

6.) Repeat until you have calibrated all of your monitors!

It’s too easy. Enjoy.