The Need for Monitor Calibration

You've purchased a cracking digital camera, carefully made sure that the exposure was accurate, the white balance correctly chosen, and you've even put your photograph through Photoshop to create a wonderful image. On the monitor, it looks amazing. So you decide to print it, so that you can proudly display your masterpiece on the wall. But, when the postman pops it through the letterbox, or you collect it from the printers, it simply doesn't look like your awesome creation. It's muddy, underexposed and the tones are all wrong.

What has happened?

Could be that your monitor was lying to you. What appeared lovely and bright was merely because your monitor's brightness was up far too much. And if the white point is wrong, you can tweek as much as you want but they simply won't look the same when you print them.

Now for a spot of monitor calibration.

You can get a little basic calibration done with some test pics, plenty of which can be freely located on the internet. They will assist you in achieving a moderately close match but if you require accurate calibration, with dependable and dependable results, you need to look at monitor calibration hardware.

Several manufacturers fabricate such systems, including Datacolor, with their Spyder 3 supplied in Express, Pro and Elite versions; Pantone, who make the Huey color calibration kit and X-Rite, with their Eye-One units. Which one you ought to select is a question of research - choose what you need from your calibrator, how critical it is for you and, naturally, how much you are inclined to cough up.

All these units will, to varying degrees, enable you to calibrate your monitor very precisely, simply at the press of a button, carrying out a range of checks and more often than not making profiles for various lighting conditions.

Don't let yourself be caught out by a cheating monitor any more!

Find out more about the various monitor calibrators on the market, and full reviews, at this monitor calibration site.