Calman vs PsyCalibrator

Calman is paid color-calibration software for improving display accuracy in production, broadcast, and home-viewing workflows. Calman Professional targets film studios, broadcasters, post-production facilities, display manufacturers, and content creators. Studio provides automated SDR and HDR calibration, ICC profiling, 1D/3D-LUT creation, and display-validation wizards. Ultimate adds customizable workflows, advanced reporting, automated calibration, multi-display environments, and Design Mode. Calman Home is a simplified product for supported TVs, using a laptop, colorimeter, and reference video source. Hardware support includes displays, colorimeters, spectroradiometers, and video test-pattern generators from multiple manufacturers. Calman Ready support depends on the display manufacturer and may vary by model. Professional and Home downloads are for Windows, with requirements specifying Windows 7 or later; Patterns for Mac is also listed. The Home Software Bundle costs $449, paid once, and the Professional Software Bundle costs $1,399, paid once. Licenses include one year of updates and technical support.

PsyCalibrator is a free, open-source package for measuring display luminance and color and calibrating gamma. It uses a Spyder5, SpyderX, or SpyderX2 instrument and returns measurements as CIE 1931 xyY coordinates. Its correction workflow adjusts the relationship between RGB intensity and luminance to be linear, for grayscale or individual color channels. The fitting process incorporates Mcalibrator2 and uses cubic spline interpolation as its main method. Users can apply correction through a color lookup table and restore the display to its uncorrected state. PsyCalibrator supports Windows, macOS, and Linux and includes multi-monitor calibration. Its research workflow requires MATLAB or GNU Octave, Psychtoolbox, and a supported Spyder instrument. The tutorial says Windows users need a photometer driver; Linux and Mac users do not. SpyderX and SpyderX2 can use built-in Windows 10 or 11 drivers with Psychtoolbox 3.0.19 or later. For more accurate measurements, the tutorial recommends keeping ambient light steady and using a sensor area smaller than the target stimulus.