The truth is, most photographers really only need to use one tool of Color Management, but they really do need to use it, and that’s a display calibrator.  You can have the best monitor in the world, but if it’s not calibrated, you’re still shooting in the dark.  The question is, how much of a device do you really need?

We decided to take out the big X-Rite Eye-One Pro and run it up against to Eye-One Display LT, X-Rite’s low-budget display solution and see if there’s much difference.  The Pro version is the standard of the industry, and the Display LT uses a very common calibrator with the standard Eye-One Match software.  As you can see by this screen, the LT does not unlock anything but a basic display option, but it’s the same package it’s big brother uses.  The Pro version unlocks all the options you see here, and does a printer profile that is the standard of the industry.

The test was simple.  Run a basic display calibration on a pretty standard monitor, using both devices.  Here’s what we got:

Eye-One Pro/LT on 24" iMac

Eye-One Pro/LT on Macbook

The results were pretty interesting.  On our 24” iMac, with the nice glossy display, both devices made very similar profiles.  (Forgive me, in the video I say the iMac is running an LED display- of course, it’s not.  It’s a standard LCD.)  When I ran the calibrators on my Macbook, however, there was a pretty significant difference in the blues, especially- the LT unit just couldn’t see the colors.  

I wish I had an explanation for that, but it may be as simple as the Pro is more versatile, and can be used for a broader array of monitor types.  The difference isn’t major, and certainly it’s better to run the LT than nothing at all.  For the basic user, who just needs to run display profiles my vote is the LT is a great choice.