Monitor Calibration

October 4, 2013

If you plan to make prints, you should calibrate your monitor. It is as simple as that. There is no other way to get an image "looking right" on your monitor, then have a print made and expect it to look like what you expect.

Some people calibrate their monitor with the expectation that it will make their monitor "look better". This is probably a useless exercise, but may have some merit. Just be aware that when you send images to someone else, or put images on the web, you have no control on what other people will see.

I have a Samsung SyncMaster 2253BW monitor (despite the "BW" suffix, it does not just do black and white). This is what they call a 22 inch display. It has a native resolution of 1680 by 1050. It has a dot pitch of 0.282 mm.

Calibration tools

As of this writing, there seem to be two top candidates for calibration tools:

Xrite also offers a less expensive product called the "ColorMunki" that some people say is entirely adequate. Datacolor offers a Spyder4Pro for similar money, some people say it is the same product as the elite and only the software is different.

I have heard some ugly stories about bad customer support from Xrite. The stories are bad enough to sway me towards DataColor despite the fact that the i1 Display Pro is highly recommended. Scott Kelby says that he uses the Spyder4Elite.

A friend loaned me his Eye-one Display LT:

Avoid the software racket with open source

On the topic of software, when you buy one of these gadgets, you are also buying software, or at least the right to use software. There seems to be somewhat of a racket going on here. Each company requires software registration and limits how many computers can be calibrated. This clearly seems like an effort to avoid a group of people buying one calibrator and sharing it (which otherwise might be a fine idea).

A way around this would be to use some of the open source software that is available. This would allow you to buy one of DataColors less expensive packages, get the same hardware you would have gotten by buying a more expensive product, and save money.

If you want to go with the open source software, you should study the subject, then go with the following two packages, installing Argyll first (if the order matters at all).

Read the following:

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Tom's Digital Photography Info / tom@mmto.org