How to calibrate your screen

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Oh nooo, Twitter is down. twitter.com/chrismarquardt that is … so I guess instead of aimlessly wandering about the studio, I better put the unexpected chunk of time to good use and calibrate my monitors.

If you want any sort or certainty that what you see on your screen is what others see on theirs, or that you get a print-out that gets close to the image on your monitor, then screen calibration is the single most important thing you’ll have to think about.

And before you say “but how about the printer and the camera and and and…” – yes, there are other things that make sense (and are even necessary) in a color-managed workflow, but we’ll have to start somewhere. And making sure the colors and contrast of your screen are where they should be is pretty central to the whole complex.

Speaking of complex.. don’t worry, this is much easier than you might think.

Simply explained, calibration is a process in which a measuring device (a colorimeter) looks at your LCD or CRT screen. If there are discrepancies between what the monitor shows and what the colorimeter expects, a corrective table (an ICC profile) will be created in the process to help your monitor show the right colors.

Sounds complicated? This is typically a pretty well automated process. All you’ll have to do is hook up the colorimeter to your computer’s USB port, run some software and follow the on-screen instructions. The whole procedure usually takes less than 5 minutes.

Where to place the monitor?

Before we calibrate, we’ll have to go one step back and look at this very important detail: How we perceive an image on the screen always depends on what is around it in terms of brightness and color.

Is your monitor placed in front of or next to a window? Do you edit at different times of day? Sometimes with incandescent light on in the room? Sometimes with sunlight pouring in through the window? Do you edit at different brightness levels in the room?

If you answered any of those questions with yes, you might want to reconsider the placement of your computer screen. It’s generally better to edit somewhere where the light conditions don’t change too much. Professionals in the photo and print business sometimes even have windowless rooms painted in neutral grey with lights that have a well-defined color temperature and light density at the working place. I’d consider that overkill for most of us, but at least a bit of that will help get more consistent results.

Tips and tricks? Have some black cloth ready!

Even though the actual calibration is an easy process, there are still two minor stumbling blocks, one being the colorimeter’s suction cups that are supposed to hold the device in place during calibration, the other being stray light that can render a measurement invalid. Both are easy to handle.

The problem with suction cups is that they typically don’t stick very well on matte screens. If your screen is glossy, you should be fine. If not, the easiest way to make sure the device stays as close and perpendicular to the screen as possible is to a) tilt the screen back and let gravity help, and b) put a piece of cloth over the screen while calibrating to help hold the device on the screen. Please note: Don’t manually press the device onto the screen during calibration if you calibrate an LCD monitor. If you (carefully) touch an LCD, you might notice temporary changes in color. Not good for calibration.

The problem with stray light is that it might fool the calibration process and end up giving you an ICC profile that has nothing to do with your actual light situation. There are several reasons why stray light can interfere, one is that the colorimeter might not sit well on the screen during calibration, another one is that matte screens might reflect some light coming from the side back into the colorimeter and with some newer screens, for example the 2008 glossy Apple iMacs, there is a bit of a gap between the protective screen and the actual LCD, which might also allow some stray light in. All of those are easily amended by the use of a piece of black cloth and again: gravity. Flip the monitor back and simply drape the cloth over the monitor during calibration. This will help properly hold the colorimeter down on the screen and it’ll keep stray light from all angles out.

Repeat offense

Calibration is not a one-time process. Hardware ages and changes. Many professionals re-calibrate their screens weekly or every other week. For home use I recommend you refresh calibration at least every 2-3 months.

Which colorimeter to buy?

If you’re starting off with managing colors, Pantone’s Huey Pro or Datacolor’s Spyder2express are good choices and they typically range below $100. If you want to go a bit higher, I suggest looking at x-rite’s I1 Display 2.

Visual calibration (or: I have eyes, I don’t need a colorimeter)

Any calibration is better than no calibration. There are utilities on the market (and part of some operating systems) that let you perform visual calibration by moving sliders back and forth until some color fields match. This is better than nothing, but our eye is not a good measuring device. And it’s certainly not calibrated to a standard. Its perception is also easily influenced by what else it sees, so it can almost be expected that a visual calibration will be off in some way. And in fact, most visually calibrated monitors tend to display colors with a much more bluish tint than if a calibration is done with a colorimeter.

Conclusion

Get in on the color management game. It’s never too late, and working without seeing what you should see will in the long run give you inferior results. Not only is it important to make sure your computer screen doesn’t lie to you while you edit images, it’s also an easy and automated process and you can start off at far less than $100. This is a small investment that you will benefit from every single time you edit an image and suddenly see details in the shadows and highlights where you only saw solid black and white before.

Beware of taking this step though. When I first calibrated my screens and subsequently revisited some of my old images, I ended up spending a weekend of re-editing pictures, because all of a sudden I saw flaws that I had never seen before.

Author: Chris Marquardt

Chris Marquardt is an educator and podcaster. He wrote Wide-Angle Photography and is the co-author of The Film Photography Handbook and Absolut analog. He's the host of this podcast and a few others. Chris teaches photography all over the world. He is a regular on the TWiT Network.