lcd screen color calibration pricelist

Using one of the best monitor calibrator tools is a must for anyone working in visual design. Whether you create digital art, graphic design, photography or video, an accurate, uniform screen is one of the most important tools of the trade. Monitors and laptop screens vary dramatically, and even the same screen will fluctuate over time. Regular calibration is essential to make sure you"re seeing your work the way it really looks.

Without this, it"s easy to end up creating work that looks too dark or has overly saturated colours when you see it on another screen or printed out. This is true even of very good monitors and laptops – most need calibration when they come out of the box and will change over time. Ambient lighting also affects how your work looks on a screen, and some of the best monitor calibrators can take this into account.

Some monitors – usually expensive screens designed for professional – come with their own calibrators. For all others, you"ll want one of the best monitor calibrator tools, which can be bought online individually or in bundles with other tools. These are physical devices that you place on your screen to check its brightness, contrast and colour coverage and accuracy. Some downloadable tools claim to be able to calibrate these things, but they can"t actually "see" your screen like the best monitor calibrators can.

You can learn more about the importance of monitor calibration at the bottom of this guide. As for which tools to use, there are really two main brands: Datacolor"s Spyder X range and Calibrite"s ColorChecker (Wacom has a calibrator for its own drawing tablets too). Both Datacolor and Calibrite offer several models: a standard option, a more pro model with extra features and finally studio packages that can also calibrate printers. They also have bundles that include other tools, often mainly geared towards photography.

We"ve selected the best monitor calibrator tools at different price points based on our own reviewers" experiences using them, their specs, the types of screens they can calibrate and useful extra features like ambient light detection and multi-screen calibration. As well as using these tools to calibrate their own monitors, our reviewers also regularly use them to test displays when we write our monitor reviews (read more about how we test and review).

Datacolor is one of the best-known brands when it comes to monitor calibration, and it"s followed up its Spyder5 range of monitor calibrators with SpyderX, which we"ve found to improve on nearly every aspect of the previous models. SpyderX monitor calibrators use a new lens-based sensor system that makes calibration faster while also increasing accuracy so you can be even more confident in your screen"s colour accuracy. If you calibrate your monitors regularly (and we recommend you do), the faster calibration can save you quite a bit of time in the long run.

Previously named X-Rite i1 Display Pro, the brilliant Calibrite ColorChecker Display Pro is a monitor calibrator that offers a whole lot of features and options, although you do pay for them. The naming gets a bit confusing here because Datacolor"s SpyderX Pro (above) is its standard calibrator tool, whereas Calibrite reserves the "Pro" tag for this, the second model up in its range, above the cheaper ColorChecker Display but below the slightly more expensive ColorChecker Display Plus.

This monitor calibrator allows you to use your profile across multiple displays (either on the same machine or network) as well as assess the ambient light in your workspace to set your monitor up for best results. A technology called Flare Correct will measure and adjust your display profile for reduced contrast ratios caused by glare on your screen. Video colour standards are also incorporated, so video editors can set up their display for best results, too.

If you"re a professional who has the budget, and space, for the SpyderX Studio, then this is one of the best purchases you can make. It comes with the SpyderX Elite monitor colorimeter (see number six below), as well as a SpyderPrint spectrocolorimeter for checking prints and the SpyderCube, which can be used to calibrate Raw images.

At the top of the Calibrite ColorChecker range is Calibrite ColorChecker Display Plus. We only place it lower on our list because of the price, since it"s more than what many people will need. However, while it"s more expensive, this is the calibrator to go for if you need to deal with super-bright displays. Calibrite"s other calibrators handle up to 1,000 nits while this will manage up to 2,000 nits. It also offers slightly better measurement for darker tones.

Datacolor also has an enhanced model of its SpyderX calibrator that we put at number one in our list. The Spyder X Pro will cover most people"s needs but we found this SpyderX Elite colorimeter does offer some extra features that will be useful for some. It looks identical to its cheaper sibling, but this model can calibrate your monitor not only to conform to a typical 2.2 gamma and 6500 K white point, but also to colour space standards like sRGB, Adobe RGB, NTSC and Rec 709.

This isn"t a general-purpose display calibrator unlike all the others here. Instead it"s designed specifically for use with Wacom"s own Cintiq pen displays (and not all of them, so be sure to check if yours is compatible). If you do use a compatible Wacom Cintiq tablet, then the Wacom Colour Manager is the best monitor calibrator we can recommend to ensure the accuracy of your screen. It"s fairly expensive – comparable to the Calibrite Display Pro at number 2 above, but it"s a specialist tool for a very particular task.What is a monitor calibrator tool?Monitor calibration involves measuring and adjusting the colours on your computer monitor to meet a set standard. The best monitor calibrator tools include two components to do that: hardware and software. The hardware takes the form of a sprectocolorimiter or colorimeter, which measures your monitor and records colour values, brightness and contrast, as well as other variables. The software takes that data and builds a colour profile for your monitor.What"s the purpose of a monitor calibrator tool?The monitor you use and the setting where you locate it can have a big impact on how your work looks. Every screen displays images differently, so the colours you see on a phone screen, your monitor or a client"s monitor will vary. That"s because the internal workings of every screen are different (before you factor in the screen settings and ambient light conditions).

This is a big deal for anyone who works in visual arts and design. Most computer screens give a vibrant, dynamic picture, but this isn’t always the best for editing your photos, for example. If you edit images on a monitor that hasn’t been calibrated, you may end up exporting pictures that look oversaturated, muted or have an obvious colour cast when you see them on another screen or on a printed support.

It doesn’t matter which colour space you select on your camera or how you adjust Photoshop’s settings – if the screen has a warm cast or a cool blue cast and isn’t showing you an accurate picture, then any edits you make may be subtly or substantially out.

So which version represents the “true” colour? And will printed materials look like they do on your screen? This is where the best monitor calibrators come in. Technically known as colorimeters, they look at your screen and detect any discrepancies, taking account of how your display actually looks in your office space, whether that"s at home, in a co-working space or from a dedicated workspace.

They can then program your computer then programmed to compensate for the colour inaccuracy of your monitor. Calibrating your monitor also means looking after yourself because it helps reduce eye strain during intensive work sessions.How do I choose the best monitor calibrator for me?How much you need to spend on a monitor calibrator depends to an extent on what you need it to calibrate and what you use your screen for, but there are several features to consider

Screen types:Monitors use different types of technology, and that can affect their colours, so you want a calibration tool that can account for things like LED backlighting. Most of the tools we"ve included in our guide to the best monitor calibrators can be used on any monitor or laptop, and also on projectors, but always double-check the tool you"re going to buy.

If you print your work, you can also calibrate your printer to ensure its colours are also the best they can be. For that, you’ll need a calibrator designed for printer profiling, such as the Datacolor SpyderX Studio at number 3 or Calibrite ColorChecker Display Plus at number 5 in our list above.

Ambient light detection: look for this feature for customised calibration that adapts to compensate for the surrounding ambient light in your room or office.

Speed: how fast your monitor calibration tool works might not seem so important, but if you calibrate your monitor as often as your should, then you"ll be grateful for a fast device. Most options will actually remind you when it"s time for your to calibrate your screen again.

Other features:More advanced features to look out for on monitor calibrators are conformity with the best-known colour standards and screen calibration, which ensures you see the same colours across a multi-monitor setup.How often should I calibrate my monitor?All monitors change in colour, contrast, and brightness as they age. Because of this, the majority of the best calibration software suggests you calibrate your monitor (or monitors) every 2-6 weeks. With the monitor calibrators we"ve listed above, the process only takes around two minutes per monitor.

LCD monitors don’t age or change as quickly as older CRT technology, but you still want to rest assured that colours on your screen are accurate so even an LCD should be calibrated every six months at the very least. For a detailed look at how monitor calibration tools work, see our article on how to calibrate your monitor.

The best monitor calibrator is a must-buy for anyone working in photography. Because when you"re viewing and editing your shots on screen, you don"t want your eyes to be misled.

Most computer screens give a vibrant, dynamic picture, but this isn’t always the best for editing your photos. If you edit images on a monitor that hasn’t been calibrated, you may end up sharing pictures that are unintentionally oversaturated, too muted or have an obvious color cast.

It doesn’t matter which color space you select on your camera, or how you adjust Photoshop’s settings – if the screen has a warm cast or a cool blue cast and isn’t showing you an accurate picture, then any edits you make may be subtly or substantially out.

To ensure your computer monitor is displaying colors accurately, it pays to regularly calibrate its brightness, contrast and color. To do this, you need a monitor calibrator, aka a monitor calibration tool or a colorimeter. You simply place it on your screen and fire a selection of colors at it. The device will detect any discrepancies, and your computer can then programmed to compensate for them.

No amount of calibration can make a mediocre monitor into a dream display. But by using a calibrator, you’ll at least know that your monitor is performing at its best. Read on, as we list the best monitor callibrators available today.

SpyderX is the successor to Datacolor’s popular Spyder5 monitor calibrator series. It uses a brand new lens-based sensor system rather than the old honeycomb baffle on the Spyder5. The result is a claimed increase in calibration accuracy, especially in the lightest and darkest image regions, and a sub-2-minute calibration time, making this the fastest Spyder calibrator ever. In our hands the Spyder X Pro calibrated our test monitor in a staggering 1 minute 15 seconds. Given monitor calibration isn"t a once-only procedure (you should calibration roughly once a month to ensure consistent color accuracy), such a noticeable time saving is very handy indeed.

Available in Pro and Elite flavors, both SpyderX versions offer features like ambient light monitoring and multi-monitor support. The Elite (number four on our list) adds projector profiling, pro-orientated advanced calibration options, and its video color space targets are useful for video editing, but for most photographers we reckon the Pro edition offers the best bang per buck.

You usually need separate devices to calibrate a monitor and printer, but the ColorChecker Studio packs both functions into a single tool. Consequently it’s no surprise that this all-in-one device is bigger than a typical monitor calibrator, and it comes with a case to hold it on your screen during operation.

Monitor calibration is quick and easy, as is the printer profiling procedure. You don’t need to pause on every individual color patch on the two A4 test prints: just slide along each row of patches and the device automatically does its thing. Like monitor profiling, a custom profile is then saved, and you select this rather than using your printer’s default settings the next time you print.

The Elite version of the SpyderX colorimeter may look identical to its cheaper Pro sibling (above), but fire up the Elite’s software and you get a host of extra features.

The most valuable is arguably the ability to calibrate your monitor not just to conform to a typical 2.2 gamma and 6500 K white point, but also to color space standards like sRGB, Adobe RGB, NTSC and Rec 709.

Given that they use the same hardware, it’s no surprise that the Elite manages a very similar sub-two-minute calibration time to the SpyderX Pro. Both versions maintain excellent calibration accuracy scores with negligible Delta-E variation.

The SpyderX Studio is actually a large collection of gear. The calibration kit consists of the SpyderX Elite monitor colorimeter, a separate SpyderPrint spectrocolorimeter for assessing printed output, and a small SpyderCube to help set the white balance, exposure, black level and brightness when shooting Raw images.

The monitor calibration hardware and software, and the resulting color accuracy, are identical to the SpyderX Elite. Printer calibration requires you to print at least one sheet of color patches, which you scan using the SpyderPrint and a plastic ruler guide.

When it comes to the best monitor callibrators, speed is important; because to ensure consistently accurate color accuracy, calibration at least once a month is advisable. The ColorChecker Display Pro is targeted at image quality purists who want top-notch calibration as quickly as possible.

The ColorChecker Display Pro is designed to be a comprehensive monitor calibration tool; to this end, its calibration software is crammed with features. There are also extensive options for setting a range of desired brightness, gamma and white point.

The ColorChecker Display Plus is Calibrite"s top-of-the-range model, and as such the most expensive. It"s specifically aimed at professional filmmakers, editors, colourists and photographers using super-bright HD and HDR monitors.

Otherwise, though, there"s not much difference from the Calibrite ColorChecker Display Pro. So to choose between them really is a case of weighing up the extra cost and the usefulness of these specific features.

SpeedMonitor output fluctuates, so you’ll need to periodically recalibrate. Most colorimeters will get the job done in a few minutes and remind you when another checkup is due.

Ambient light detectionSome calibrators can measure surrounding ambient light and adjust monitor brightness to compensate. Useful when comparing printed images with on-screen equivalents.

Monitor typesThe tech inside your monitor will affect how it displays colors, hence a calibration device that can accommodate subtleties like LED backlighting should produce more accurate results.

Advanced featuresFancier options can calibrate color to conform to color standards, match color output across multiple screens, or calibrate a projector.

Disappointed by your monitor’s image quality? You might be able to improve it through monitor calibration. Learning to calibrate your monitor will make the most of its potential, and while you can purchase expensive tools for this task, you can often achieve a noticeable improvement without them.

Windows and MacOS have very basic built-in calibration utilities. They’re limited and won’t help you understand how your monitor works, but they’re a good place to start.

The calibration utilities in Windows 10 and MacOS are only a start. They will help you work out serious problems with your calibration, like an incorrect contrast setting or wildly terrible display gamma value. They’re more focused on providing a usable image than an enjoyable one, however. You can do more.

Before we get started, let’s bust a popular myth about calibration: there is no such thing as a perfect monitor or a perfect calibration. Image quality is subjective and, for most people, the goal of calibration should be improving perceived quality on the monitor you own.

You don’t need to target these standards. In fact, precisely targeting a standard is impossible without a calibration tool. Still, you’ll want to be aware of these standards as you calibrate your monitor because they’ll impact how certain monitor settings work. Also, many monitors have settings meant to target them.

Nearly all monitors sold in the last decade have a backlit LCD display. This means they have a LCD panel with a light behind it. The light shines through the LCD to produce an image (otherwise, it’d look like the Gameboy Color).

All monitors have a contrast setting, but it rarely does what you’d expect. Turning the contrast up to its maximum setting can actually reduce the contrast ratio by bumping up the monitor’s deepest black level. It also can crush color and shadow detail.

To calibrate contrast, visit the Lagom LCD contrast test image. An ideal contrast setting will let you see all color bars from 1 to 32. This can be a real challenge for an LCD monitor, especially on the dark end of the image, so you may have to settle for a lack of visible difference in that area.

On the other hand, setting the contrast too high will cause colors at the high end of the spectrum to bleed into one. This problem is avoidable on a modern LCD monitor by turning down the contrast which, in most cases, is set to a high level by default.

You need a calibration tool to precisely adjust gamma, but you can make improvements using the Lagom LCD gamma test image. As its instructions say, you’ll want to sit back from your monitor (about five or six feet away) and look at the color bars, each of which is made up of several bands. You’ll see a point on each bar where the bands start to blend together. The gamma value indicated where this occurs is your monitor’s approximate gamma value.

Your monitor may include gamma settings in its on-screen control menu. Less expensive monitors will have a selection of vaguely labeled viewing modes, like “office” or “gaming,” with their own prebaked settings. You can flip through these while viewing the Lagom LCD gamma test image to see if they improve the gamma.

What you need to know: Color temperature is controlled by the color temperature or white point setting on your monitor. Look for a value of 6500K if available. Otherwise, open a blank white image or document and flip through the available color temperature options. Pick the one that looks best to you.

Color temperature describes how the color of your monitor skews between a “warm” or “cool” character. Lower temperatures provide a warmer look, which skews towards red and orange, while higher temperatures provide a cooler look, which skews towards blue and cyan. The term white point is often used interchangeably with color temperature.

Color temperature values are described as a literal temperature in degrees Kelvin which, frankly, is pretty weird if you’re not familiar with display technology (and still a little weird if you are). But don’t worry. Changing your color temperature won’t start a house fire or even warm the room.

As with gamma, there’s no absolute “correct” color temperature. It’s even more variable because perceived color temperature can change significantly depending on viewing conditions. But, also like gamma, most image standards have settled on a generally agreed ideal value which, in this case, is a white point of 6500K.

No test image can help you target a specific white point. You need a calibration tool for that. However, most monitors will have several color temperature settings that you can flip through in the monitor’s on-screen menu.

Less expensive monitors will use vague values, such as “warm” and “cool,” while more expensive monitors will provide precise color temperature adjustments, such as “5500K” or “6500K.” MacOS includes color temperature adjustment as part of its default display calibration.

Outside of standards, color temperature is rather subjective. A truly out-of-whack gamma value can destroy detail, making dark scenes in movies unwatchable and dark levels in games unplayable. Color temperature problems are less severe. Even a very odd white point setting (like, say, 10000K) is usable, though most people perceive it as having a harsh, clinical look.

So, how do you dial in color temperature without a calibration tool? I find it’s best to view a blank white screen, such as a new image or document, and then flip through the available color temperature settings. This will help you settle on a setting that fits your preferences.

What you need to know: Look for an sRGB mode if your monitor doesn’t support a wide color gamut, or a DCI-P3 mode if your monitor does. This may lock your monitor’s brightness to a lower level than you prefer, however.

A monitor’s color gamut is the range of colors that it can display. Even the best monitors can’t display every possible color in the universe. This is not only because of limitations in monitor technology but also limitations in how computers handle color data.

A color gamut is described in reference to a specific standard like sRGB or DCI-P3. You’ll also see the term “wide gamut” used by monitors. This means the monitor supports a color gamut wider than the sRGB standard which, relative to other standards, is narrow. Most wide gamut monitors support DCI-P3 and Rec. 709.

There’s a big problem with color gamut on most monitors, however. The color gamut associated with a standard is often tied to other aspects of the standard you might not prefer, like gamma and brightness.

In the end, color gamut isn’t a very useful part of monitor calibration for most people. Try the sRGB or DCI-P3 modes, if available, but be prepared for disappointment if those modes lock your monitor’s brightness and gamma.

If you want to take calibration to the next level, however, you need a calibration tool. A calibration tool has a sensor that can judge whether your monitor’s image conforms to accepted standards like sRGB and DCI-P3. This is especially important for color accuracy. There’s no way to gauge color accuracy with the naked eye.

Datacolor’s SpyderX Pro is my preferred calibration tool. The SpyderX is extremely fast and simple to use, which is important, as calibration can become confusing and time consuming. The SpyderX Pro is great for most people and priced at a relatively affordable $170. X-Rite’s i1Display Studio is another good option, though I haven’t used the latest model. It’s also priced at $170Remove non-product link.

If you do buy a tool, you can throw most of the advice in this guide out the window. Calibration tools come with software you’ll use with the tool and, after calibration, will load a custom display profile.

A monitor calibration tool has become less important as monitor quality has improved. I’ve reviewed monitors for over a decade, so I’ve witnessed this progress first hand. Today’s monitors are more likely than ever to have acceptable contrast, gamma, and color out of the box. Most ship at a default brightness that’s too high, but that’s an easy fix.

Even content creators may not need a calibration tool. Calibration is often considered a must for professionals, but the definition of professional is not what it used to be. Tens of thousands of self-employed creators make excellent content without ever touching a calibration tool. These creators don’t have to conform to any standard aside from what they think looks great. It’s true some creators have a reputation for remarkable image quality and slick editing, but most just use whatever they have at hand.

Here at Imaging Resource, a lot rides on our judgement of image quality in the cameras we review, so we pay particular attention to monitor calibration and our viewing environments, to avoid introducing even the slightest bias into our evaluations.

It goes without saying that an organization like Imaging Resource needs to keep its monitors carefully calibrated, but what about our readers? Bottom line, it doesn"t matter who you are, if you care about your images, you need to care about the condition of your monitor(s). The good news is, monitor calibration is fairly easy, and even a modest investment can pay off big in image quality. If you"d like to read about the monitor calibrator we use here at IR, you can check out our original Datacolor Spyder3 Elite review.

So how do you know whether your monitor is showing all it should be? To really tell, you need to calibrate it, but there are a couple of simple things to check that"ll tell you just how badly a calibration is needed. The test images below will quickly tell you how badly out of adjustment your monitor is. (Note that we said "how badly," not "if:" Unless you"re using a very high end display, it"s a pretty safe assumption that an uncalibrated monitor is significantly out of kilter.)

In a dimly-lit room, an excellent monitor would let you see the boundary between the central row and the "5" block. A good monitor may not go that far, but should let you see the difference between the "15" block and pure black. Many monitors may only show separation in the 30 block, and quite a few may show no blocks at all. If you can"t visually separate at least the "20" and preferably the "15" block from the background, your monitor needs adjustment and calibration. (Do note here though, that room lighting can have a very pronounced effect on how far you can see into the shadows. You may want to adjust your room lighting before you decide that your monitor has shadow problems.)

If we want equal increments in pixel value to produce equal increases in perceived brightness, we need to tweak the way the monitor translates pixel numbers into brightness onscreen. Engineers call the input/output curve that does this a gamma curve, but you and I can just think of it as contrast, since that"s what changes in gamma tend to look like to our eyes. Higher gamma numbers mean higher contrast, lower numbers mean less contrast. The sRGB standard used in most computer displays calls for a gamma setting of 2.2.

So how do you tell whether your monitor is set to the correct gamma level of 2.2? It"s actually pretty easy. If your monitor is adjusted properly, the pattern below will appear as all the same shade of grey when you view it at some distance from the screen, or if you just throw your eyes out of focus at a closer viewing distance.

So, if you don"t see a uniform grey when you look at the image above, your display"s gamma setting is off. Fixing this really requires a display calibrator, the "contrast" control on LCDs doesn"t actually control the gamma.

We"re working on an overview of the various monitor calibration systems currently being sold, to help our readers see where they fit into the overall market, as well as reviews of some of the more popular solutions. Given our forever-behind status on the camera reviews that are the bread and butter of what we do here though, we won"t make any promises as to just when we"ll manage to get any of this posted. :-(

Here"s a chart showing the different Datacolor products, explaining the differences between them, to help you decide which version would suit you best.

If you can afford it, the Datacolor Spyder3 Elite gives the most flexibility and bang for the buck, and is what we use here. If you only use a single monitor, and don"t expect to add a second (or third) though, the Spyder3 Pro would be a good choice. The Spyder2 Express is very inexpensive, but we frankly think that most of our readers would be happier with at least the Spyder3 Pro version. Of course, if you"re content with the limitations of the Spyder2 Express (single monitor, sRGB only, no white-point pre-tweaking), we certainly won"t stand in your way.

* L-Star technology is Licensed Property of INTEGRATED COLOR SOLUTIONS INC., Patent No.: 7,075,552 and No. 6,937,249. �2007 Datacolor. Datacolor and other Datacolor product trademarks are the property of Datacolor. All rights reserved.

ColorVision"s Spyder 2 Pro product is the one that we eventually settled on for in-house use here at Imaging Resource. It consistently did a good job calibrating the monitors we tried it with, seemed less prone to getting lost in the weeds with difficult-to-calibrate monitors, and also provides a good capability for matching multiple monitors to a common standard. No product is ever perfect, but we found the Spyder2PRO to be better than most and it offers a flexibility found in few other monitor calibration solutions. (It"s worth noting though, that we found it almost impossible to precisely match CRTs to LCDs with any of the solutions we tried, and the Spyder2PRO ran with the rest of the pack in that respect.)

Our "reviews" of monitor calibration systems aren"t reviews in quite the same sense that our camera reviews are. This is because, by their nature, we have no objective, absolute way to evaluate the quality of the calibrations the calibrators generate. All we can do is make subjective comparisons between how the screens look. While that has a little value, we"re more than a bit leery of advising our readers based on purely subjective data. We"ll make some references to calibration quality at the end of each review, but suggest that you take these comments with a large grain of salt. Unless we say that a calibrator is just out-and-out unsuitable, we recommend that you base your purchase decisions more on the features you need, what you can discern about ease of use from our write-ups, and on price.

CorrectionOnce the software knows how the display is behaving, it loads correction curves into the video card (or sometimes the monitor itself), to produce a smooth tone curve and neutral greys. This step also adjusts the monitor to the gamma setting and color temperature that you want. (The sRGB standard uses gamma 2.2 and a white point of 6500K.)

ProfilingWith the display producing smooth tones and neutral greys, the software can create a color profile describing the display"s color characteristics. Programs like Adobe Photoshop can use display profiles to compensate for the known quirks of a display device, and insure accurate color rendering.

The review below goes into quite a lot of detail on the calibration process, and our observations about it. Reading all that, you might come to the conclusion that monitor calibration is a long, involved process. Nothing could be further from the truth, it"s actually quite straightforward, and takes only about 10 minutes for a full calibration. We hope to bring you a video soon, showing the process so you can see how easy it is.

When calibrating a monitor, the first thing you have to do is to make sure that the sensor head is only seeing light from the display. The Spyder2 sensor is pretty well-shielded against ambient light, but it"s still a good idea to dim the room lights, and make sure there"s not bright light from an adjacent window splashing on the screen near the sensor.

When calibrating a CRT screen, the Spyder2PRO is just stuck to the screen face via its attached suction cups. For LCD monitors, a baffle/filter assembly is attached to the front of the device. This presents soft felt pads to the face of the LCD, rather than suction cups, and the filter helps the sensor measure the colors from LCD panels more accurately. The photo above shows the underside of the sensor, with the LCD baffle/filter next to it.

If the selected monitor was previously calibrated with the Spyder2PRO, the software will display the last settings used, the date of calibration, the name of the profile, and the settings for Gamma, white point color temperature, Luminance Mode (more on this later), and the targeted Black and White Luminance values. It will also show whether you performed a Grey Balanced calibration or not, and whether you have the Ambient Light Compensation enabled. (More on these later as well.)

You can choose whether to continue with the previous settings, or to change them first. If you"re just doing your weekly/monthly/whatever recalibration check, you"d leave these settings the same. For the sake of illustration here though, we"ll suppose that we want to change the settings, so we can step through all the option screens.

Different display types have different adjustment options, and also place different demands on the calibration software. This screen is where you tell the software what type of display you"re working with. (Note that the Spyder2PRO can handle projectors, as well as LCDs and CRTs.)

Note that calibrating LCDs is one area that really separates the different calibration systems from each other. Thanks to years of standardization, the phosphor colors used in CRT monitors are quite consistent from manufacturer to manufacturer. (There are a small number of different "standard" phosphor sets used, but within a given phosphor type, the color spectra tend to be very consistent.) For whatever reason, the color sets of LCDs were never standardized to the same degree. This means that accurate color calibration of LCDs requires much more detailed measurements of the color spectra of the red, green, and blue pixels. Low-end calibrators have only three sensors (red, green, and blue), and so are less able to measure and characterize subtle color differences between different LCD panels. The Spyder2PRO uses a 7-channel "spectrocolorimeter" that measures display performance in seven different color bands. This greatly improves its accuracy when calibrating LCD displays.

The Grey Balanced Calibration checkbox is really only relevant for calibrating projectors, as some projectors will yield better results if you have this turned off. For LCDs and CRTs though, you"ll definitely want this enabled to provide the most accurate and color-neutral greyscale.

This screen basically tells the software what you want your monitor calibrated to. A number of presets are available, but if you"re like the vast majority of users, the "2.2-6500" preset is the one you"ll want to use. These are the gamma and white point values for the sRGB color standard. (Note: Don"t use the "sRGB" preset though, as that preset limits white luminance (brightness) to only 80 cd/m2, which would give you a rather dim screen.)

Real expert users can elect to create their own target setup, varying the gamma, tone curve (you can even edit the tone curves manually for each color channel, which might be helpful in matching the display to the characteristics of a non-color-managed photographic output device), white point (in either degrees Kelvin or actual CIE color coordinates), enable ambient light compensation, select luminance modes (measured or visual) and plug in specific values for white and black luminance if you"re using measured mode.

This is a feature that seems to be sweeping the monitor calibration world of late, but it"s one I don"t personally favor. The idea is to have the Spyder"s sensor look at the ambient light in the room, after which the software will make recommendations for how to change your target settings so the display will look right to your eyes, given all the light bouncing around the room. I guess that"s OK if you have no options available for controlling the light levels in your work area, but if you"re doing critical color work, it"s crazy not to try to control the ambient lighting. Ideally, you want lighting that"s on the dim side of normal relative to typical office illumination, and that approximates the 6500 Kelvin of your monitor screen. That will help you see the full tonal range of the images, and avoid having your color perception skewed by an overall color cast in the room lighting. My strong advice is to leave the Ambient Light Compensation option disabled, and to just make sure that you have a reasonable light level in your workplace.

Your options here are Measured or Visual. If you"re concerned about matching multiple monitors to each other, you"ll want to use Measured, as it lets you set the black and white brightness levels of all your displays to the same values. If you"re just working with a single screen, select Visual, as this will let you crank up the brightness of your display to whatever it"s capable of (or whatever is reasonable for your working environment, see the sidebar above right).

(Sorry, I missed grabbing a screenshot for this one.) If you"re matching multiple monitors, this is where you"d plug in the white and black luminance values you"re aiming for. In this case, we"ll leave them blank, since I"m not going to actually go into the details of multiple-monitor matching in this overview.

Different displays have different controls available, this is the first of two screens where we tell the software what controls we have available to twiddle, so it"ll know what adjustment steps to guide you through. My Apple Cinema Display has no brightness or contrast adjustments, only an overall brightness control that adjusts the backlight -- so I"ve only clicked on the "Backlight" checkbox.

Here, the goal is to set the white luminance (overall brightness) to the highest level at which you can still see four white squares below the numbers. My Cinema Display tends to wash out the brightest highlights, regardless of the backlight setting, so there are only three distinct white levels visible on it at this stage anyway. I therefore just set the brightness to a level that"s comfortable for my office environment. (Actually, I set it to a level that"s comfortable, but that also can be matched by the old CRT that"s the middle of my three displays.) If we were actually going through the full multi-monitor calibration workflow, this would just be a coarse adjustment that would be refined later through actual measurements by the Spyder2. If you"re not matching specific luminance levels with other displays though, this is the last point at which you"ll actually adjust the luminance.

If I"d told the Spyder2PRO software that I was calibrating a display with separate contrast, brightness, and backlight adjustments, this step might involve manipulating one or more of those controls as well. If the display had a contrast control, we"d see the same screen as above, only with the directive to adjust the contrast as appropriate. If the display had a separate brightness control, we"d get a second screen showing a series of very dark blocks, with the instruction to adjust the brightness level until we could just make out all four blocks.

It"s important to note that ColorVision recommends leaving your display"s controls at the manufacturer"s default settings unless you need to correct an obvious problem. I"ve found this doubly true with LCD panels: At least with lower-end screens, if I fiddle too much with the controls at this stage of the calibration process, the display can end up operating so far from its nominal condition that it can be very hard to establish a good calibration for it.

Since suction cups won"t work on most LCD screens, the Spyder2 needs some other means of holding the sensor at the right position on the screen. Like a number of other calibrators, the Spyder2 comes with a small counterweight attached to its cable. On the Spyder, this weight is permanently attached, surrounding the cable, and slides up and down with moderate force. (I"d strongly recommend grabbing the cable next to the weight when you"re sliding it, so as to not put excess force on the cable"s attachment to the sensor puck or USB connector.) I liked this arrangement better than ones where the weight can be removed, as I found those harder to slide without pulling the weight loose. (This way, the weight will never get lost, either.)

Alright, we"re ready to calibrate! As noted above, if you"re calibrating an LCD, make sure the LCD filter is attached to the sensor head, drape the weight down the back of the screen, and position the sensor head on the screen where indicated. A useful tip: Tilt your LCD screen so it"s angled back at the top a little bit. This will help ensure good contact between the sensor and the face of the display.

For CRTs, you"ll use the sensor head without the LCD baffle, and just stick its suction cups to the screen face. You"ll want to make sure that they"re clean, as any dust on the suction cups can cause them to lose their grip in the middle of the calibration sequence. Unlike some other devices we tested though, the Spyder"s suction cups hold well if they"re even moderately clean.

16) Reading black and white points, multiple color swatches.The software will now start the calibration process, beginning with measurement of the black and white points, followed by a series of color swatches across the full range of brightness levels.

I"m actually calibrating an LCD that has no color controls, but the photo above shows you the screen you"ll get if you tell the Spyder2 that your display has separate R, G, and B adjustments. On most LCDs, you"ll do best to avoid these, but on high-end LCD monitors and CRTs, the RGB adjustments shown here let you set the white point very precisely, leaving less work for the calibrator to do, which generally results in a better profile.

It probably goes without saying, but for the calibration to remain valid, you need to leave the display controls at their current settings. DON"T use other apps like Adobe Gamma to fiddle with the video card settings, as that will invalidate the calibration you just did. Repeat calibrations periodically, to insure that your displays are always accurate. There"s some debate about how frequently you should recalibrate. Some obsessive types insist on recalibrating every day, other people go months between calibrations. The most effective approach is probably somewhere between these extremes, perhaps once/week for CRT displays, once/month for LCDs.

As noted at the outset, the ColorVision Spyder2PRO is the calibration solution that we settled on for use here at Imaging Resource after looking at a wide variety of solutions. We found that it did an excellent job of calibrating our monitors, handled multiple screens well, allowed us to calibrate multiple monitors on the same computer to a common standard, and seemed somewhat less prone to generating "wacky" calibrations when faced with difficult monitors. (Particularly with lower-end LCDs, some systems we tested would occasionally produce obviously wild-looking results with a given monitor, but then come back and generate a decent-looking calibration on the next run.) We also found the Spyder2PRO to be the most consistent from run to run, when we performed multiple calibrations on the same monitor. This gave us greater confidence in the accuracy of its calibrations. Bottom line, the ColorVision Spyder2PRO is a convenient, flexible and consistent system for display calibration, a solid answer for monitor calibration.

Imaging Resource has set up a deal for our readers with ColorVision, letting you buy a ColorVision Spyder2PRO at reduced prices. Your purchases through this link help support this site.

If you can afford it, the ColorVision Spyder2PRO gives the most flexibility and bang for the buck, and is what we use here. If you only use a single monitor, and don"t expect to add a second (or third), the Spyder2 Suite would be a good choice. The Spyder2 Express is very inexpensive, but we frankly think that most of our readers would be happier with at least the Suite version.

- The color and brightness uniformity of the screen is never perfect and will vary across the screen area. However, the color sensor is only measuring and adjusting the center of the screen.

- The color sensor used to measure the displays perceives color slightly differently than the human eye. Colors on two different displays that the sensor measures as being identical in value, may be visually different to the human eye.

- The color of the LCD displays will vary slightly with viewing angle. So when viewing a video wall, each display will be viewed from a different angle which causes color shifts.

- The colors on the LCD screen can be temporarily distorted by any pressure applied to the screen. applying too much pressure to the color sensor during calibration can cause inaccurate color matching.

In order to try and improve the color matching between displays after they have all been calibrated, first try recalibrating the worst matching display(s). If this does not improve the matching, then use the Visual Trim feature to make minor changes to the display visually.

Monitor calibration is an important task for photographers. A properly calibrated monitor will accurately show you the colors in your images, so when you share or print them, you have done everything you can to ensure the final photo is seen as you intended.

First, and perhaps the major reason, is that color calibration and color management is a complex topic with a lot of terminology. As a result, it can be very easy to get lost in the details when trying to configure your own monitor for photo editing, and to end up with bad results. Trust me, I have been down this road.

Finally, there is a big difference when it comes to the ambient lighting conditions in the places we work. Different light situations result in our eyes perceiving colors differently, making monitor calibration challenging, even for those of us with great vision.

However, if you want the images you are producing to be as accurate to life as possible, then color management is something you are going to have to get on top of. To help out, I’ve put together this guide that covers how to calibrate a monitor, as well as an explanation of some of the terminology involved.

I will preface this post with the statement that monitor calibration and color management is a complicated topic. If you do a search for how to calibrate your monitor online, you will unearth thousands of web pages and forum posts discussing the topic of monitor calibration.

I will try to keep this guide as easy to follow as possible. As a result, there may be some simplification. The goal of this post is to help people get more accurate images, rather than trying to cover the entire topic of color management. Let’s get started.

Your monitor or screen likely has some controls that let you change how it looks. This will apply for any of your devices, whether it is your desktop computer monitor, laptop screen, smartphone device, tablet, or external monitor.

The controls will vary depending on the type of screen, but in general they will allow to you change things like the brightness of the screen, and perhaps other things like the saturation and contrast.

The controls on an external monitor will likely be similar to those you might find on a TV, and are usually accessed via a button. No doubt you are aware that you can change things like contrast, brightness and color on your TV, and this changes how the image looks. This is the same for a computer monitor, and to some extent, other device screens.

There are also other ways you can control how your screen looks. These settings are normally configured and controlled through the operating system on your device, which might be Windows, iOS, Android, or Linux. Adjusting these settings is known as color management. Basically, you are adjusting how different colors appear on your screen.

The operating system reads the color management setup on your computer, and instructs the graphics processing chip inside your computer to send specific instructions to the display. The display then renders the colors, adjusting the saturation, color intensity, and brightness accordingly.

Generally, calibrating your monitor and color management are two tasks that go hand in hand, and the terms are often used interchangeably. The end goal is the same, to get your monitor to accurately display colors.

Well, the main reason is for consistency. Let’s think of a photo for a moment. If a monitor is correctly calibrated, when you look at the photo you took on the screen, it should match fairly closely to what the scene looked like when you took the photo.

Once you edit the photo, of course it will likely look different to the original, depending on the adjustments you make. However, when you come to share your image, either digitally or physically, you want to be sure that what other people see matches the image on your screen.

If you plan on printing your images, then having a correctly calibrated monitor is particularly important, so you know that the printed image will look as it does on your screen. It can be very disappointing to spend time editing an image and find out that the printed result doesn’t match what you see on screen.

If you are selling your photos, perhaps as a wedding photographer, landscape photographer or event photographer, having print images that match how they look on screen is critical. The person buying the shot will want what they buy to match your vision.

For sharing to the web, or other digital mediums, color management is still important, although perhaps not quite so much. The reason for this is that you can’t control other people’s screens. If your screen is set up correctly, but someone else has their saturation set to a high level for example, your image will appear more saturated to them.

Now, for a lot of people this may not be very important. If you are a hobbyist photographer or blogger that mainly looks at and share your photos online, you may not care very much. But if you are someone who prints a lot of photos or if you want to sell your photos, then monitor calibration and color management are much more important.

Before diving into the details of how to calibrate your screen, I want to cover some terminology that you will encounter when it comes to display technology and color management.

I will try not to get too bogged down in the nitty gritty, but it is definitely important to at least have a high level idea of some of these concepts if you want to understand how color calibration works.

A color space is a way to order and define colors, across a variety of applications. For example, a commonly known color space in many industries is the Pantone Color Matching System. This has a huge number of standardized colors, each of which has an individual number.

A system like this means that different manufacturers can create products entirely separately from each other, and know that if they pick the same Pantone color, the final products will be the same color. The Pantone system, for instance, is commonly used by fashion designers, cosmetics companies, interior designers, graphic designers, and paint companies.

In the world of display technology, modern displays use a color space based on the RGB color model. A color model is simply a means of describing how a color is made.

RGB stands for Red Green Blue, and this indicates that every color displayed on a screen is made up of these three colors in varying intensities. It is what is known as an additive color model, because these three colors are added together to make the final color.

If you looked very closely at your display, you would see that it is made up of pixels. Each pixel is composed of three little colored lights, a red light, a green light, and a blue light. These lights are referred to as channels.

To define each color a screen can display, a number between 0 and 255 is assigned to each of these three channels. 0 means none of that color, 255 means all of that color. For example, red is denoted as RGB (255, 0 ,0). This means to show this color, the monitor must show 100% of the red light, and 0% of the green and blue light.

White combines all three colors, RGB (255 ,255, 255), and at the other end of the spectrum you get black by the complete absence of all three, RGB (0, 0, 0).

Between black and white, and using the RGB system, a monitor can display over 16 million colors! This is because each color it creates can be represented by up to 256 intensities of red, green and blue. If you multiply each of these together, 256*256*256, you end up with over 16 million possible color combinations. Here are some examples:

So RGB is a color model. Let’s get back to color spaces. In the world of display technology there are a number of color spaces based upon the RGB color model which are commonly in use. The two most common of these are the sRGB color space and the Adobe RGB color space. The default color space that the majority of devices in the world use is sRGB.

Both of these color spaces use the same underlying concept, in that each possible color they are able to display is made up of red, green, and blue and each of those is available on a scale from 0 to 255.

However, Adobe RGB spreads the color space out more than sRGB. As a result, it can display a wider range of colors. This range is known as the color gamut, which we will cover in the next section.

What this means in practice is that the same RGB values produce a different color in sRGB compared to Adobe RGB. So for example, RGB (227, 30, 16) refers to a different color in sRGB compared to Adobe RGB. This is why it is so important to know the color space, as it directly affects the final colors that are displayed on the monitor, as it is converting all these numbers into actual colors on the screen.

The above image is two halves of the same image, to demonstrate how colors can change when there’s a mismatch between profiles. You can see in the left hand side of the image above that the sky is much less saturated, and the red and yellows are more muted. This commonly happens when an AdobeRGB image (on the left) is loaded into an application that is expecting an sRGB image (on the right).

This is because the browser is reading the AdobeRGB colors in the image, each one represented by codes like RGB (123, 130, 101), but actually displaying them as sRGB colors.

It is important to know what color space you are working in, and what color space you are targeting. If you are using a wide gamut monitor, you will likely be working in Adobe RGB, or another wide gamut color space.

This all should work fine, as you can convert images between color profiles. The issues start to arise if you save an image in one color profile, but they are opened as another color profile. This is when you start to see mismatches like the image above.

In color, a gamut indicates the width of colors that a color space contains. We will be using sRGB and Adobe RGB for comparison here. It’s worth noting that as they are both based on the RGB color model, they both have the capability to display around 16 million colors, with 256 values available for each of the three colors.

The above diagram approximately shows all the colors that the human eye can see. Now, let us compare this to the sRGB color space and the Adobe RGB color space.

As you can see from the above image, the Adobe RGB color space (black triangle) covers a wider amount of colors, particularly in the greens, than the sRGB color space (white triangle).

Again, I want to point out that both color spaces contain the same number of colors. It’s just that the colors in Adobe RGB are spread out more, so the difference between each color is wider.

A wide gamut monitor is designed specifically for content creation tasks where color accuracy is important, such as photo and video editing. A wide gamut monitor will normally be able to display 100% of the Adobe RGB gamut, which contains 100% of sRGB.

When you save an image, the color profile is saved as a part of it. This is so that when you open the image with an image viewer or a web browser, it knows what the colors should be.

When it comes to saving an image, you can think of a color profile a bit like a legend to a map—the map only makes sense if you know what the symbols mean, and the legend does that.

A color profile only works if the application you are opening the image in supports color management. This didn’t used to be the case, especially with web browsers. Thankfully these days the majority of programs and software products do support color management, including most web browsers such as Chrome and Safari.

However, some operating systems such as Windows 10, do not support color management in their native apps. So parts of the interface may appear oversaturated on a wide gamut color managed monitor, even after calibration.

This is because if an application doesn’t support color management, then it will usually assume the image uses the standard sRGB profile. This can result in strange results on a wide gamut monitor.

As mentioned at the start of this section, displays also have a color profile, which indicates the range of colors that the monitor can display. Some monitors can only display the sRGB gamut, whilst others can display wider gamuts such as Adobe RGB.

The color profile for the monitor is usually stored as a file, and referenced by your computers operating system or graphics card. It allows the computer to know what the monitor is capable of, and to output the correct information to the monitor so it displays the correct colors. Monitor color profiles are usually saved as small files with the .ICC extension.

A monitor or display will come with a color profile that your computer will use by default in most cases. Alternatively, the operating system you use will have a standard color profile which it will use as a fall back.

However, a better solution to either of the above options is to create your own ICC profile to match your monitor. You can do this either using software calibration tools, or by using a device known as a hardware colorimeter. More on this in the section below on how to calibrate your monitor.

OK, we’re onto the easier parts now. The majority of monitors and screens on the market have a brightness control, which allows you to change the intensity of the light coming from the display.

If you are trying to work somewhere where there is a lot of light, you will likely need to increase the screen brightness so you can see the screen properly. This is because in a well lit environment your eyes adjust to the ambient brightness, and make the screen seem dark. So you have to increase the brightness.

It is worth bearing in mind that the brightness of a screen does impact how colors appear. In addition, if you edit your photos on a bright screen, you might incorrectly adjust the image brightness. The result is that your printed images come out too dark.

When you adjust the brightness of a screen, it equally affects all the colors on the screen. This can result in black areas becoming grey and washed out, which is undesirable. Decreasing the brightness has the opposite effect – blacks become more black, but white starts to become grey.

Brightness and gamma controls are independent of each other. Whilst most monitors have a brightness correction, few have gamma controls. However, you can usually control gamma via your computer, and this is usually done with a software or hardware calibration tool. More on this in the section on calibrating your monitor.

Saturation is a control that many devices and displays offer us, and it affects how colors look. Increasing the saturation results in colors appearing brighter and more vibrant, whereas lowering saturation results in colors appearing duller.

If you’ve ever bought a light bulb, you will have noticed that they can come in a huge variety of “white” colors. These are basically different white points.

When calibrating a monitor, you can choose a white point. This will allow you to choose what sort of white you want, from a warmer yellow white tone through to a cooler blue white tone. The white tone will vary depending on your surroundings. If you are working in an environment with cooler lighting, you will want a cooler white point, as otherwise your screen might appear too yellow to your eyes.

Conversely, if you have more warm lights in your working environment, you will want a warmer white point, as otherwise the screen may appear too blue to your eyes.

For photo editing, a white point of between 5,000 K and 6,500 K will usually work best, depending on your monitor and ambient lighting conditions. Most calibration tools will recommend 6,500 K, which is the standard if you are working in perfect conditions. However, I find that this makes my monitor look too blue, so I personally use 5,000 K.

Ok, we’ve done all the terminology. Hopefully it all made sense or you at least have a general idea of some of the reasons why monitor calibration is important. Let’s now look at how to actually calibrate your screen.

If you are using a laptop or desktop with an external screen, you have two main options for calibrating it, which are to use the software that it comes with or to use a hardware device known as a colorimeter.

If you have a smartphone or tablet, most of these do not allow for complex color calibration, although they might allow you to adjust saturation and other features. My advice would be to properly calibrate your monitor first, and then adjust any settings on your smartphone you can to make images look similar.

If you have a Mac or Windows PC, then you will be able to use the built in software to calibrate your monitor. The process is similar for both platforms. Basically you launch the color management tool on each platform, and will be taken through a number screens where you can calibrate your monitor.

On Mac, go to System Preferences -> Displays, and then click the Color tab. This will show a list of profiles, and to the right will be an option to Calibrate. To start calibrating, choose this Calibrate option, which will launch the calibration tool.

On Windows, just type “Color Management” into the start menu, and choose the “Advanced” tab. Then, in the section titled “Display Calibration”, press “Calibrate Display”.

I will walk you through what this looks like on Windows with some screenshots to give you an idea of what this looks like. The process is very similar on an Apple device.