Is this a color correct photograph? How do you know?

Some recent hardware and software upgrades to my computer system has meant that I’ve had a buy new monitor calibration tools. I made mention of this on Facebook and it inspired a small discussion. It became apparent to me that there is still a lot of ignorance and misunderstanding about monitor calibration. Some people have told me that as long as the monitor is set at its factory defaults the colors will be okay. Others have said as long as the RGB colorspace of the photograph remains constant from camera to monitor to print, everything will be fine. I previously introduced monitor calibration so let’s revisit some of that and expand upon it a bit.

Monitor calibration is an essential first step in color management. It doesn’t matter what you do later in terms of print profiles and color spaces, without a properly calibrated monitor your photos won’t be color accurate. If you have any plans at all to print your work, or to license it in any way, monitor calibration is a step that you must take. Colors can be described as device dependent, in that what you see as blue (for example) on one monitor might appear as a different shade of blue on another. Calibrating the monitor ensures that the blue will display the same across all calibrated devices.

Each and every monitor is different. Go to a computer store, buy two monitors of the exact same make and model, bring them home, plug them in and they’ll be different. Have a properly calibrated monitor today, and in a few days or weeks, the color will have shifted slightly and it won’t be the same. Despite what some may believe, or wish, the only way you can ensure accurate colors is to routinely calibrate your monitor.

Calibrating a monitor with X-Rite's iOne Display 2

To calibrate your monitor, there are a few things you need to do. First of all, I should emphasize that you cannot accurately calibrate the screen by looking at it. That means you will need to buy some calibration hardware. The two most commonly available options are the Eye One from X-Rite and the Spyder 3 from Datacolor. Once you’ve got that, you’re halfway there. You’ll want to set your white point to 6500K (D65) and gamma to 2.2 and then let the calibration tool do its thing. There’ll be a series of onscreen instructions to follow and the whole process shouldn’t take more than 5-10 minutes. Before you start the process, it’s a good idea to let the screen warm up for a half hour or so. Upon finishing, you can set a reminder period in the software so that you don’t forget to recalibrate. It’s a good idea to get into the habit of regularly recalibrating as colors do shift over time. To get a very rough idea of how accurate your monitor currently is, you should see 20 different shades in the following graphic.

If you can't see all 20 bars you definitely need to calibrate your screen.

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