Thank you John. Much appreciated.

I think most all monitor calibrated with Spyder, or in my case Huey will always seem less bright. It's worth noting that most monitors are best looking out of the factory (sometimes even preset) to be very hot. Also if you had to do quality control at the set-top player (DVD or Blu-ray) -you will note that most connected TV screens are programmed by the factory to be hot with menu presets for the customer.

Spyder needs a white reference point that is not 255. Correct Gamma is not how your monitor was delivered. Both will seem less bright, so don't do your work in a brightly lit room (or a dark one either).

The Spyder software is simple and limited.

You can try dispcalgui. Once you really know how to use it, results will be much better.
http://dispcalgui.hoech.net/

With dispcalgui, you can set the white level (mine is set to 100 cd/m², even if I could set it to a much higher level)

This software has so much possibilities - you will get confused at the beginning, but learning it will pay later.

If you try it, do not forget to first load the calibration of your sensor. There are plenty webpages that explain how to perform a good icc profile.
It can also generate one icc profile per monitor, like your Spyder 4 pro software. (Spyder 4 express is limited to one monitor)

And be careful, using large / high quality profiles can take several hours, so first sart with fast settings...

Of course, using dispcalgui under Linux, Windows or Osx will give you same results. I do not know why, but calibrating and profiling under linux is 20% faster.
Once your profiles are generated, you can copy them on all your os partitions -> same colors under Linux, Windows and your hackintosh !

you will get confused at the beginning

You can say that again. I tried it, and have no idea if my monitor is calibrated now!

I tried it, and have no idea if my monitor is calibrated now!

Great. Put it down for now, and don't look at it again for three weeks.

What pixel-peepers will never recognize, is that they eyes (and thus visual relativity), become hypervigilant over extended periods. Which means they're usually wrong after 1st calibration. An interim cross check can be done with Calibrize or Adobe Gamma.

Getting good at this stuff requires a lot of repetition, like putting or shooting free-throws.

It’s not the first. I have calibrated many monitors before. When I moved to my current apartment, I misplaced my Spyder 3. I found it today. I used it with its own software. It looked good, just everything was darker. I saw this thread, and decided to try that software DiDequ mentioned. Now things are not dark, and everything looks good, but it is very close to what it was before the calibration.

What I meant by saying I had no idea whether it was calibrated, is that I see no way of turning the new profile off and back on to compare the calibration with no calibration. With the Spyder profile I could do that, with this one I cannot. Or at least do not know how.

So yes, the software is confusing.

Yeah, I too got confused by alternative Spyder software, and went back to stock. I learned screen calibration with analog sensitomters, along with all the foibles of naked vision.

And this morning I got my answer, and it ain’t pretty! 😞 After the boot up, the background image looked non-calibrated at first, then it changed and looked pretty good. But then a message from the alternative software popped up stating something about the calibrating data being too large to fit into my video card, and now some images look excellent, while others are covered with a red haze. Very strange.

I don’t have time to deal with it this morning, but should have some time in the early afternoon.

Oh, well, I ended up restoring my system to before I installed either the Spyder software or the alternative software, then did the manual calibration Windows 10 offers, and, well, everything was already good, so no further calibration was necessary.

And just for comparison, Spyder 3 software produced a calibration expressed by these curves:

DisplayCAL, on the other hand, produced a much more subtle result:

Both produced using the same Spyder 3 device.

At this point, I have both of these profiles installed. I switch to the first one when watching TV (yes, I do that on my computer), when on YouTube, and when in Vegas. I switch to the more subtle one for everything else.

I also had to change a registry value because when using the top one, my cursor appears pink (the complementary color of what that calibration changes white to). That is because the cursor is produced in the video hardware and so, by default, the calibration is not applied to it. Changing HKCU\Control Panel\Mouse\MouseTrails from its default value of 0 (zero) to -1 (negative one) forces the calibration to apply to the cursor as well. And it does so without actually producing any mouse trails.

Well, I have been trying to convince myself that the Spyder software calibration was the right one. It did make all TV shows look more proper, but it was a bit too cold for me.

So, I have read up on the theory of ICC profiles and realized they are based on early morning/late evening light conditions. Armed with that knowledge, I have just fired up the Spyder software and asked it to recalibrate. The new calibration curve is similar to the old one (the first one in my above message) in the highlights but is quite different in the shadows:

And it looks better!

more user calibrator input. I had an older XRite iPro something, and replaced it with the latest Spyder5. it does fine, but SEEMED a little warm to me (reds) compared to my older one. So, also bought the latest Xrite i1 display pro, and did a quick comparo. they were darn near identical - on a Samsung U28E590D. And the resulting color curves applied were almost strait lines. I DID manually turn the "BLUE" down a few notches during calibration, as instructed by the software, and the brightness. Went down to D65 white, gamma 2.2. Still seemed more red than I am used to but I trust it. Not a fan boi, but if I had to recommend one, I'd say the X-rite systems felt a little more accurate to me. And some pixel peeping professional calibration reviews said the Spyder was not as accurate in the lowest darks. Like 98% ratther than 100. Something you would probably never SEE. So, really both work great.

ALSO, for kicks, I tried calibrating to a BRIGHTER white level than standard - as allowed and defined in the calibration software. It was nicely brighter, but strangely less red than the less bright white. Not sure how that worked out, but eventually, I redid it for normal white, as the brighter version seemed more bright/harsh for editing in a dim room.

I also enjoy cross testing with the AVSHD709 free series of tools INSIDE Vegas and on nearby TVs so I know it all looks the same.

Sure, there are better monitors out there for thousands more, but I feel these tools not only get us in the ball park, but also put us on the pitcher's mound. Whether we a good pitchers is a whole other story. :D

The final validating step is a reference media of real world material that contains subtle memory colors - - like your kids face or subdued scenery. But wait a couple of weeks after calibrating - - your brain's burn-in needs to heal itself.

Just FYI, I have just created an ICC profile to make the monitor (any monitor) uncalibrated. I have installed it on my system so I can switch to it occasionally, just to compare how bad an uncalibrated monitor is. 😏

If anyone wants to try it, you can download Uncalibrated.zip from this web page (it is currently the only thing on that page, but that will change in time).