This is one of my own comments.
In their PR for their latest release, Portrait have said:

"Portrait Displays is pleased to announce the second release of Calman 2021. Get ready for some exciting new features and added Aurora Color Engine support for specific displays!"

Seriously? How bad must the colour engine design be if it only works with specific displays?
A LUT is a LUT - regardless if it is 1D + 3D, 3D only, or 1D+3D+1d, or some other combination.
And LUTs work with any LUT enabled display, LUT Box, or software system...

To be generating LUTs that only work with specific systems shows a serious underlying issue with the generation of the LUTs - and that means serious issues with the 'aurora colour engine'.


Steve

From another ColourSpace user, who started with Calman.
(And who obviously appreciated the effort Ted puts into supporting ColourSpace users.)

"Hello everyone and in particular to "ConnecTEDDD",

Small introduction :
First of all, I apologize for my English because being French and not having particularly studied English...

So here is, a few months ago (it dates back to the beginning of 2021 to be more precise), I decided to start calibrating my LG TV (OLED C9) but without knowing the slightest detail of what a real calibration looked like (I'll explain later why I'm using the term "real calibration").

I'm only writing this experience now because I didn't find the time to do it before, with 2 very young children it's complicated...

The story :
So I started by studying what calibration was by searching here and there on the internet but without really understanding all the technical terms and all the standards on which to base myself.

Basically, it was a bit of gibberish for me but I knew more or less that the purpose of these maneuvers was to obtain an image that most closely resembles its source mounted in a film studio, video games etc. .. That is to say, get as close as possible to the visual director.

In my research, not many solutions were available to me :

Either call a professional but it was really overpriced
Either buy equipment and do it myself

I chose the second solution without really knowing at what price I was going to get away with it but the advantage is that I could calibrate my TV and those of my entourage as I wish.

The rest of these remarks are only personal feelings and are in no way made to denigrate a product or a method ...

While searching, I came across a solution called "CALMAN home for LG" which offered a "miracle" solution and all you needed was a calibration probe.

I told myself that's it, I found what I need !

To shorten it, I was more than disappointed... I will briefly explain why :

I started this program in the hope of discovering the intricacies and methods of calibration.

I came across a program that manages itself on its own... As much to tell you that this program did not help me...

Basically, it's like you're playing a video game but the storyline is playing out on its own. You just need to press start and you see things unfold in front of you without being able to interact or even control anything.

I wasn't sure what to think about it and to be honest I'm not sure it really transcended anything on the rendering of my picture modes. In the end, I was extremely disappointed.

Now we come to the topic (I'll explain later why I'm using the term "real calibration") :

After this experience I did not give up and I continued my research in the hope of finding another solution.

As much to tell you that I was determined !

I didn't want to believe that the calibration was all about this...

So I continued my research and I came across this site Ted's LightSpace CMS Calibration Disk / eeColor / LightSpace - Main Menu (displaycalibrations.com)

I decided to contact the author of the site (known in this forum under the nickname ConnecTeDDD) it is the best thing I could do in this process to find a solution to the calibration done entirely in complete dependence.

So I discovered the "LightSpace/ColourSpace" program and what a pleasant surprise !

I discovered a complete and affordable program both in its price and in the equipment needed for calibration.

To explain everything to you, at this point, I was still light years away from the technical terms of calibration and their application.

But I was able to count on the great sympathy and especially the pedagogy and the patience of ConnecTEDDD who introduced me to these notions.

When I say that he (ConnecTEDDD) was patient and really available I am not exaggerating at all, it lasted almost 3 months because I was trying to find out what I was doing and also because I have 2 small children including one who is born at the start of this enriching encounter with ConnectTEDD.

He made himself available to answer me each time and guide me in the progress of the stages.

In terms of calibration, this guy is an encyclopedia on his own !

I do not go into the details of the whole process but I will come back to it in a second post.

In short, this program "LightSpace/ColourSpace" allowed me to understand what I was doing and towards which visual objectives/standards I should approach in the stages of calibration.

But above all, I was satisfied to be able to manage each step in detail and to have obtained such a satisfactory result !

I recommend this program to all those like me who want to obtain real results and especially to obtain satisfaction for a reasonable cost !

I will come back to the details of the results obtained in a second post but above all I wanted to share this little piece of experience with you and thank ConnecTEDDD who without him, I think I would never have achieved the objective of calibrating."

Ted really is an amazing resource for those learning calibration!

Steve

And another very positive comment from a new ColourSpace user, who swapped from Calman:

Thanks to you too Ted, this is exactly what I was looking for. You guys are a great bunch and I am glad I switched from Calman.

Steve

A comment from another new ex-Calman user:

"Speaking of ColourSpace, as a new user, I have to congratulate you on a job very well done. As a former software developer, I can appreciate all the efforts that went into developing such an awesome application. There is a bit of a learning curve for sure, but it is well worth the effort. Although I am by no means an expert user yet, it has become my go-to calibration tool (I was a CalMAN user) and with ColourSpace and Ted's LightSpace CMS patterns on a PGenerator, I have been getting surprisingly good results with the fairly average PC monitors I have been using for practice. I have an LG C1 TV coming in the next couple of weeks, and I plan on upgrading my projector at some point, so I will definitely be getting my money's worth with your outstanding product!"

We really do appreciate such positive feedback.

Steve

A very short message from a new ColourSpace user, recently upgraded from Calman:

"Happy with the results with your software. Much better then Calman Home for LG. Glad I purchased it."

Steve

Just joined the Colourspace today. I loved the ease of use of Calman as an enthusiast calibrator, however, I agree with the sentiments here. I cant continue to spend hours and hours on an imperfect picture due to using inadequate software. The banding drove me up the wall. Looks like the guides here are robust enough for me to learn something new and start a new journey. I cant wait!!!

From a large EU based electronics supplier that has recently swapped from Calman to ColourSpace for all their in-house and customer calibration services. The comments come from their main 'calibration trainer'.

"One "symptomatic" question came up last week. Symptomatic as in '5 years of Calman' where the user asked how he to do the actual measurements. He was using the RGB Balance graph and asked 'But how do I measure the entire RGB Balance?'. I told him that is how you worked with Calman. Later he had his AHA!-moment and commented. 'Hey - I was finished way faster than I expected!'

ALSO: I've tried the probe matching feature and I had another of those symptomatic moments myself. I was so into the '12 years of Calman' that my brain expected it to work just like Calman where you have to double check and remeasure everything.

Then I found 'the Probe Matching Active'-checkbox and just started laughing! Brain still so stuck in the Calman way.

My Klein K10A tends to deviate on claiming reds to be too saturated. The i1 Pro – mostly – corrected this if you are careful with Calman, like creating the profile at 75% rather than 100%. But I found out that while Calman's probe matching fixes the grayscale readings – still: mostly – it never fully correct how my Klein reads oversaturated reds. More like a halfway between i1 Pro and the Klein uncorrected. So I still had to bring in the i1 Pro for all final gamut measurements.

Not so with ColourSpace. For the first time I had a match right away. And just by checking the box.

This also means that matching the stock of i1D3's will be much faster and way easier than what I could originally comprehend. In Calman it was always up to a 10-15 minutes extra time just double check that the probe matching had the right effect."

Steve

From a post on a different forum:

While one year license of Calman Home for LG I didn´t got good results, Autocal produced nice numbers with low dE´s but more or less artefacts with real material.
LightSpace and later ColourSpace solved that problem and offered great results.

Steve

An independent assessment of the advanced integration of the X-Rite i1Display Pro (including the Calman C6) within ColourSpace compared to Calman, and other calibration systems:

AV Magazine Test x-rite i1 Display Pro aka EODIS3

"The EODIS3 is supported by all major calibration software... For our tests we used... ColourSpace... which - at the moment - manages the probe significantly more efficiently than the 'competition', thanks to an excellent implementation of the official SDK. The verification of the measurement uncertainty was carried out exclusively with this software (ColourSpace)."

Steve

Just a general comment on ColourSpace vs. any other calibration system:

"On another note, I'm watching the movie, Blue Is the Warmest Color that Ted recommended to me on my AWP and skin tones look amazing.

Great how you can run multiple 3d luts on different presets with different AWP and I literally switch between them to find the perfect one. Any AWP and gamma can just be applied after the fact, which is so convenient. CS is such a powerful software. Every other software is a far second."

Steve

These are the kind of comments, left on other 'display' forums, that really say a lot:

"ColourSpace is a phenomenal concept and product. I literally bought HTP a few days after buying Calman Ultimate. I bought HTP after reading about ColourSpace and realizing that Calman has a totally different approach that would seem to produce lower quality results..."

Steve

From a professional calibrator that has only just recently upgraded to ColourSpace from Calman:

"I must admit I thought I was a good calibrator, ColourSpace has sent me straight back to school! This is a good thing."

Steve

Extracts from a recent email discussion with a professional colourist, who has been struggling with Calman:

"After many years of reading your posts on LGG and other boards I've finally decided to drop you an email - because I am really fed up with Calman right now and I'd like to talk to you, where maybe Light Illusion could improve my situation.

In short: I have a small grading studio..., and mostly work for web & television. I still use a Sony PVM-A250, which I bought in 2015, and for clients and additional monitoring I have a Panasonic GZW2004 from 2019. When I got the Panasonic I also bought into the "Calman Universe" to make use of the Panasonic calibration features, back then I had an older xrite pro2 as a probe. My plan was to match the Panasonic and the Sony (the latter with 3d lut from Calman with a LUT box) but the xrite i1Pro2 had many error readings and couldn't deal with the blacks of the OLED properly, as I found out later, when I had a calibrator from southern germany come over with his Yeti to do proper measurements to make sure everything is fine.
Shortly after, I wanted to dive more into calibration, especially I wanted to do it myself, and bought the c6 from spectracal - and yes, I found out a lot of stuff today which wasn't obvious to me more than one year ago, that I maybe shouldn't have bought it, stuff that you pointed out.

...everytime I tried the 3d LUT creation for the Sony PVM I got really annoyed because I just couldn't make it work to get good readings / results. Then they change the types of panels again in new releases, you don't get any updated manuals, and then you have to pay for yearly access (which I just did yesterday, by the way).

Now I've spent the whole day trying again to build a 3D LUT for the Sony, read about it on the web (where you and others wrote about 3d lut creation and perceptual matching) but still, I don't know if am the problem, or if Calman just doesn't want to work the way I want it to work (perceptual match to the whitepoint of the Panasonic, use as new white point target, set sony to native gamut, build lut around that, use lut in lut box ) - I guess the approach is pretty similar to Light Illusion, right?

So, maybe this wasn't that short after all, sorry for that. My question is, which package would be ideal for me to be able to do what I just described - 3D/1D LUT for LUT Boxes, measuring and calibrating my Panasonic or other future TVs, profiling computer monitors. I saw the comparison on your website but I thought it might be easier to get in contact with you directly. Would the c6 still be usable with your Software? Will the CAL be enough or would I have to go for the PRO?"

With ColourSpace CAL I can directly use the plugin inside SCRATCH to fire up patterns on my SDI Monitor, TV (via HDMI) and everything connected to the i/o? And progress with measurements from there on out? That would be really awesome since it's already built inside anyway and I don't plan to purchase additional pattern generators. And, well, the Calman plugin is outdated and NOT supported anymore.

After a short discussion, ColourSpace CAL was purchased, and literally the next day calibration results became what they should have been all along.

Steve

A general comment posted on another calibration forum:

"I was thinking of an options like, "Augment Data" with my greyscale error, as my greyscale has never been as perfect as I like. I am currently reading up on it to be able to perform it correctly. CS blows my mind everytime I find out about a new feature."

It is simple, throwaway comments like this that really make us smile.
It is great to know users appreciate the unrestricted possibilities with ColourSpace.

Steve

From a new ColourSpace user recently swapped from Calman, after completing his first ColourSpace calibration:

"First– WOW - that is so much better how probe matching works with ColourSpace! And now it is obvious that part does not really work with Calman. And I could easily make several 10-points cubes with a 1000 measures + drift in matter of minutes for evaluation of best option going forward. This just blows Calman away on so many levels!"

Not a lot more I can add...

Steve