Monitor Profiling and Calibration

[beano500]

So - all you experts - is it necessary?

What does it involve?

[docevi1]

when I used to do it, it involves setting the brightness/contrast and telling the drivers which colour on a card best matches those on the screen.

The only real need is for when you are printing to match what is on the screen to the printer, past that there is little point imo.

[stringer_m]

It's necessary if you are preparing work for printing otherwise what you see on the screen will probably not be what subsequently prints out.

I guess there are 2 primary options on a PC:

Assuming you are using Adobe Photoshop - use the Adobe Gamma program (in your Control Panel) follow the instructions in the wizard. Not 100% accurate but better than nothing at all

Buy a hardware calibration device like Colorvision Spyder - these are more accurate but they are also more expensive

[ehasler]

docevi1 said:

when I used to do it, it involves setting the brightness/contrast and telling the drivers which colour on a card best matches those on the screen. The only real need is for when you are printing to match what is on the screen to the printer, past that there is little point imo.

There are other reasons for doing it too.

If you are serious about image editing, then it's pretty much key to making sure that what you see on your screen matches what others see.

E.g., if I edit a photo on my PC (with calibrated and profiled screen), and send it to someone who hasn't calibrated/profiled their screen, then they may see different colours. If we both calibrate/profile our screens then we should see the same image (taking into account differences between different output technologies).

Doing it by eye is possible, but it's impossible to get an accurate result, so really you need something like the Colorvision Spyder which isn't expensive, and is a doddle to use.

[_Dobbo_]

What does colorvision spider actually do? I have fairly limited controls on my monitor at home, so does the spider actually operate at a software level or does it require manual calibration of the monitor?

Ta!

[ehasler]

It does two things:

1) Calibrate

The software guides you to set the monitor to the optimum settings (brightness, contrast and individual R, G and B gain settings if available).

2) Profile

Once calibrated, the software then displays a number of different colours on the screen which the spyder reads, and it then creates a software profile which adjusts the colour display of the monitor so that a particular colour is displayed in a set way.