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I've been looking at my Mac's display and the colours come out the way I want them, it appears to have a neutral WB and according to the built-in colour calibration utilities, it is calibrated correctly and my printer using the appropriate profiles.

However, there are millions of displays around the world with un-calibrated displays, I've got a few in my own house. So how useful is it to have a calibrated display if your "perfect" colours and brightness levels aren't the same when viewed by somebody else? This is confined to sharing images on the web, the advantages when printing are far more obvious.

Which leads me to wonder, how many of us use have calibrated displays?

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Graham
Flickr

I don't. But i would love to do it. Saw an article last night actually, but was too tirede to read it carefully. And i didn't get to know how you did it.

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No mine isn't, and I'd never really gave it much thought before, but recently had pooter probs and had to use my lappy for a couple of weeks...

When I'd sorted the main PC, I copied over some pics I'd been working with on my lappy - and they looked a LOT different, so it's something that I'd be interested in getting sorted!

Is it software-based calibration with getting them set up correctly?

Well software calibration is pretty basic and relies on the human eye and judgment to decide if what is being displayed is correct or not. Proper calibration involves specialised equipment that you put over your screen and it takes a sample image of the display, this is what the pros or anybody who does it properly would do.

They cost several hundreds of dollars so for me, just software calibration.

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Graham
Flickr

Graham you know, i m calbibrated

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that sounded a bit dodgy actually..

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Not calibrated yet but working on it. If anyone can recommend a good cal kit for under 500usd that would be great. I can't seem to find two reviews of the same product that have similar results. I am also in the market for a new display to hook up to my laptop.

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Nope, but then my main pc is a laptop, so it keeps getting moved into different lighting conditions, so would not really work!

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Ed


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my girlfriends dad told me not to buy the spyder calibration thing, for like 300 or whatever that is. apparently they arnt really worth it unless you spend the big bucks... on the other hand he runs a graphic design and decals/printing company, so his standards are pretty high...

All my department's (Marketing Communications) Apple's are not calibrated. I keep telling them to purchase a calibrator but the Suits upstairs haven't ok'd the expense... very frustrating.

We designers can't print designs with accurate colors without wasting 5-10 sheets for color corrections...

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Daniel

dmdesign
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I sort of calibrated my main monitor, the secondary is really dark.

What I did was use software calibration and my eyes to get as close as I could with that method (all free stuff too).

I then took some sample pics, and put them on the monitor, and held the same pics up next to the monitor on my D90 (from what I hear that display is calibrated) and further tweaked it until the monitor and D90 images looked the same.

About as good as I am going to get right now.

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They could have paid for a cheap calibrator by now lol.



Yeah me too, I used this website. It has all of the tests I was looking for and some others. Someone with a calibrated monitor (and good eyes) should tell us how accurate the test is!

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I recommend everyone who is at least semi-serious about photography to calibrate their monitor - it ain't as expensive as you might think!

for ~100$ you get the Colorvision Spyder2Express (see: http://shop.colourconfidence.com/produc ... cl&xLang=1)

it's VERY easy to use, you insert the CD, pop on the spyder onto your monitor, and the software will do all the rest for you in about 7 minutes. I'm really happy I bought one, since both my Laptop and my Desktop monitor were yellowish (the dektop) and blueish (the laptop) - you can see a "before - after" view after calibrating the display. I was so fed up when I carefully adjusted an image and it just didn't look the same on most other monitors or a print...

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If I get into printing it will be important. But for now I realize that almost nobody calibrates their monitors. This means that anyone viewing my image isn't seeing it as I see it anyway. I think that as long as my monitor is pretty close to correct it will be good enough. But if you do print it's really important to calibrate for your printer or you will be wasting a lot of prints.

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Exactly how I feel! VESA should introduce a standard calibration setting for all monitors out of the box, it doesn't have to be 100% accurate or bound to any particular colour profile but it would mean that everybody without a calibrated monitor is looking at the same image the same way.

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Graham
Flickr