Monitor calibration

[Guy Roberts]

This has to be an old chestnut, but how many of you calibrate your monitors and find it useful?
i used to but I ended up getting an Apple to replace my pc (a whole other story of frustration) and as a coincidence the calibration device died at the same time and I haven't replaced it.
I have now decided to make prints of my preferred shots as a sort of portfolio/archive and would like to do the best I can, so I am considering buying a calibrator. I have downloaded the icc profile for my printer and paper, but wondered if calibration made a noticeable difference.
Guy

[dh202]

check out the post I just replied to on the photo forum... and see if you see the difference, and whether you feel it's usefull?

http://forum.fourthirdsphoto.com/thr...621#post638621

[Daniel Bradley]

If you have a good monitor, it is definitely worth calibrating. Some cheapies are so far off they can't really be improved enough to make a difference. I have an HP ZR24w IPS, which has been carefully calibrated with an eye-one match tool. My wife has her computer downstairs and is using an older Samsung SyncMaster (sinkfaster!) 23" tft, and no mater ho hard I try to calibrate it with the same tool, pictures that look great on mine look like crap on hers.

David, as to the pictures on your linked post, I would vote for something in between. The OP's version is a bit cool, but yours looks somewhat overcooked and less natural. The original lighting is better. A slight change in the WB is all it needs.

[Big Greg]

Yes, it's important to have a good monitor (at least an IPS panel) and to calibrate it.

[Guy Roberts]

If you have a good monitor, it is definitely worth calibrating.

I have an iMac 21.5 non retina display.
Worth the effort?

[Daniel Bradley]

That is an IPS display and in my opinion definitely worth calibrating. The best way is with a tool, though there are ways of doing it without and coming pretty close. I would think the Apple OS would have calibration software built in.
Calibration only really becomes critical when high quality printing is involved, and a monitor should then be adjusted to the profile of the printer. Sure, it is nice to have pictures look better, but you never know what they are going to look like on some other monitor, and lets face it, the number of people who take the trouble to calibrate their monitors is small indeed!
I have mine calibrated simply because I enjoy seeing pictures on this monitor, and pictures from a better printing shop I use are VERY close to how they look on the monitor, even though I don't go to the trouble of loading the profile from the printers. How they look on someone else's monitor doesn't concern me unless they say something about color balance on their crap monitor.... except my wife, of course! We have a nice old Apple 24" Cinema IPS monitor sitting up here not being used but I have yet been able to convince her to switch. Aaaahhh, yeeesss.....

[Guy Roberts]

Thanks Daniel. I have calibrated using Apple's software. I have posted a couple of shots over on the photos section previously. If you wouldn't mind having a look and letting me know if you see anything wrong, I would be grateful.

[Daniel Bradley]

Guy,
From what I have seen I wouldn't say there is anything wrong. Everyone has their own way of processing images, so I can't know for sure what your intentions were, but just in general they look fine. I don't see any bad color shift that would indicate bad or non-existent calibration.

[Guy Roberts]

Thank you Daniel.

[Godfrey]

This has to be an old chestnut, but how many of you calibrate your monitors and find it useful?
i used to but I ended up getting an Apple to replace my pc (a whole other story of frustration) and as a coincidence the calibration device died at the same time and I haven't replaced it.
I have now decided to make prints of my preferred shots as a sort of portfolio/archive and would like to do the best I can, so I am considering buying a calibrator. I have downloaded the icc profile for my printer and paper, but wondered if calibration made a noticeable difference.

The point of calibrating and profiling a display is to provide a level of consistency and repeatability on the display when making adjustments across different systems and when printing to different printers. The OS X software display calibration utility is perfectly acceptable to get a display into an acceptable calibration ballpark for most uses, but if you're going to be critical about color specifications and want to make the best possible prints it might prove insufficiently accurate. If you calibrate your display to known targets and profile it and do all your adjustments based on that reference, if/when you need to replace the display or the computer system (which eventually will happen) and calibrate it to the same targets, you'll know that your photos will look right to a very high level of confidence. Colorimeters are much more sensitive to small variations in color spec than the eye is.

I use an Xrite i1 Display Pro nowadays, which replaced the Eye One Display 2 that I'd been using since 2004. My Thunderbolt Display 27" doesn't drift all that much or all that often, but when I need to go to another site and use their systems, I carry the colorimeter and software along with me and calibrate the system I'm going to work on. Then my photos open into the editing environment and look identical to what they looked like on my home system. I've found using a color-managed system like this has saved me a good deal of time and money on ink and paper.

If you're only going to use one system and printer, and if you are confident that you can make your adjustments consistently, and you are getting the right look on your prints, then save the money and just do what you've been doing.