How to Calibrate Your Monitor If You Know Nothing About Calibrating Your Monitor

She looked like an alien. All that was going through my head was,

“Oh ****.”

“But the photo looked perfect on my computer.”

“But I had checked, double checked.”

But, but, but it didn’t matter.

It was the final print, and her skin tones had a hideous greenish hue that just wasn’t supposed to be there.

It was one of my first times printing my works and as it turns out...

I had been working on an uncalibrated monitor for years.

Embarrassing.

It was minor enough to be overlooked by the editor and the magazine, but I couldn’t let it happen again. Since then, I learned to color calibrate my devices to make my prints look just like my photos when I finish editing them.

As a visual maker, it’s so important for viewers to see our art as we want them to see it (and avoid potential embarrassing mistakes!).

Whether you are creating prints to sell, sharing photos to your clients, or even just posting your art on Instagram, calibrating your monitor will create a more standardized picture across all mediums.

If you’ve never calibrated your monitor before, you’ll be shocked at how different your photos look. Here’s how you do it.

Color Calibration

There are two ways to calibrate your monitor:

1. By eye
2. With hardware

Calibration by Eye

Most computers nowadays come equipped with color calibration software that’ll allow you to adjust your monitor’s gamma, brightness and contrast, and even color balance.

This gives you the ability to calibrate by eye.

To an extent.

Here are the pros and cons:

Pros

• Cheaper

Cons

• Will never be accurate no matter how hard you try
• Can be time-consuming

If you’re looking to create prints and absolutely cannot shell out for color calibration hardware or find someone to borrow off of, this is an alternative.

If you’re calibrating by eye, here are a couple tips:

Reviewing Your Workspace

• Sweet, sweet ambient lighting is your friend here. No harsh shadows or light reflecting off your monitor is a must.

• Allow your eyes to adapt to the gray color balance by adjusting your lighting so it’s dimmer than your monitor.
• Choose a room where your walls are neutral colored. If you work on a bright colored wall, your eyes and brain will be conflicted between the perception of colors. In this case, a cave-like room might work best!

Adjusting Your Settings

• Have a print made so you have something to base your adjustments on

• Start by setting the proper brightness on your screen. This is crucial because most monitors have factory settings that are way too bright. Combined with the fact that most monitors are backlit and you have a recipe for disaster if brightness isn’t correctly adjusted.

Here’s a sweet and simple way to get your brightness just right(credit to reddit user pussielol)

• Open up an all-white image on your screen
• Set your camera to F11, ⅛ SS, and ISO 200
• Fill your frame with the all-white image
• Adjust the brightness on your monitor until the exposure meter on your camera is dead center

• Open up your system color calibration
  • You can do this searching “color management” on Windows
  • Click the “Advanced” tab
  • Click “Display Calibration”

• Follow your monitor instructions to adjust gamma and contrast (adjust your brightness too if you haven’t already)

• Put your print side-by-side with your monitor and adjust the colors on your computer to get as close as you can to your print
• Once you’ve made your adjustments, get another print made and adjust as needed
• Repeat as many times as necessary

Calibrating by eye can be a pain especially because even after going through all the steps, the results will only be satisfactory. There just aren’t enough tools to change what you need to change and there are too many factors that go into color calibration for you to account for all of them (color subjectivity, paper you use to print, etc).

This makes color calibration by hardware the superior method by a mile.

Color Calibration by Hardware

Pros

• Can be done in 10-30 minutes depending on your hardware
• Takes very little brain-power, a caveman could do it
• Accurate

Cons

• Good calibration can be costly because you’ll need a monitor + the hardware. If you don’t need the best of the best, a solid colorimeter will run for about $200

The rest of this guide will go through step-by-step how to calibrate with hardware.

Investing in a Solid Monitor

A great monitor makes a difference. And while it is not completely necessary for great looking photos, the benefits and how affordable they can be definitely warrant at least a consideration.

If you’re combing through the market for an accurate monitor for photo editing, here’s what to look out for.

• IPS Panel

Every monitor is most accurate in the center of the screen. As you move away from the center, the image and colors begin to degrade.

The viewing angle of a monitor tells you how much or how little degradation happens.

What determines the viewing angle is the type of panel used in a monitor. The better the technology, the less degradation that happens.

IPS panels are the gold standard for color accuracy offering maximum viewing angles of (178º horizontal/178º vertical).

This means as you edit your photos, you can be confident that what you’re seeing is as close as possible to what you’ll get when you finally print.

• Color Space

Monitors are like dogs. They can’t process as many colors as we can. But even among monitors, there are differences to how many colors they can process.

The range of color a monitor, browser, or any digital device can process is called color space.

You may have seen them most commonly defined as sRGB or Adobe RGB. These are the most popular color spaces as sRBG is the color space of web browsers everywhere and Adobe RGB is the standard for photographers and other creative professionals.

What is important to note is that colors outside of the device’s defined color space cannot be displayed.

For example, photos shot in RBG which are then uploaded onto the internet (which has a color space of sRGB) will look dull and muted. The colors still exist encoded in the file. They are just unable to be displayed because the device does not cover those colors.

That’s why when you’re purchasing a monitor it’s important to pay attention to the color space display.

Adobe RGB displays will cost more, but will give you access to more vibrant colors. If you’re printing your works out often, consider investing in a monitor that can operate in Adobe RGB.

At the very least, the monitor should be able to cover full sRGB. This will allow you to confidently edit and share your photos anywhere.

• Screen Size and Resolution

Size matters. Bigger really is better. A bigger screen allows for an easier workflow, while a bigger resolution leads to sharper images and more clarity.

When you’re purchasing a monitor, try to go for a monitor that is at least 24” and has a resolution of 1920x1080 or higher.

Otherwise, go as big as your budget allows.

Color Calibration Colorimeters

Colorimeters are amazing. They’ll give you near perfect display with almost zero effort. They usually come with two components:

• The software
• And the hardware

(Sometimes products are priced higher because of the software. You can save a couple bucks by buying a cheaper colorimeter and then downloading free software on the internet.

DisplayCAL is a solid, free option. A bit harder to setup, but once you figure it out accuracy can even be better than the box software. Check to see if your colorimeter is compatible first.)

The hardware goes over your monitor. Then once you activate the software, your monitor will flash a bunch of colors while the hardware reads the colors and adjusts as necessary.

It can take anywhere from 2-30 minutes depending on thorough the job is. But it’s as simple as clicking a few buttons no matter what brand you go with.

Popular calibrators include the:

Datacolor Spyder 5 Pro

X-Rite i1Display Pro

X-Rite ColorMunki

Once you have your calibration hardware and software in hand, you’re ready to start the process.

Preparation Steps

• The lighting in your room will affect the calibration process. For best results, avoid any direct lighting onto your monitor. Your lighting should be more or less the same as when you edit.
• Sweet, sweet ambient lighting is your friend here. No harsh shadows or light reflecting off your monitor is a must.

• Allow your eyes to adapt to the gray color balance by adjusting your lighting so it’s dimmer than your monitor. The monitor should be the brightest thing you’re looking at.
• Choose a room where your walls are neutral colored. If you work on a bright colored wall, your eyes and brain will be conflicted between the perception of colours. In this case, a cave-like room might work best!

Calibrating Step-By-Step

• Start by warming up your display for about 30 minutes. This step is to ensure your monitor is as bright as it’s going to be when you photo edit.

• Open the software.

• Connect the calibration hardware by hanging it over your monitor.
• Set your white level to 120 cd/m2. This sets the brightness you’d like the colorimeter to calibrate and adjust to. 120 cd/m2 is generally “standard.” (meaning this will work fine for all situations, but can adjusted for optimal results)
• Set your whitepoint to 6500K to calibrate for images you intend to post on the web. If you’re printing, set your whitepoint according to the color temperature of your paper. (this setting sets the color temperature you'd like to calibrate to)
• Begin the calibration process.
• Leave your computer alone while your monitor is being calibrated.
• Save the profile and name it. The new calibration will be stored as an .ics file and will show up as a new International Color Consortium (ICC) Profile in the Color Management.

Calibrated and Beyond

Over time, monitors’ color temperature and screen brightness will gradually change (even Apple monitors!) so do a quick maintenance calibration every 2-6 weeks to keep everything fresh and accurate.

Please note you can change between profiles. This is important because you’d want a different profile for when you’re editing for web use and editing for prints. (for prints you’d want a different profile each type of paper even)

I hope this guide helps you to avoid any embarrassing mistakes and helped you learn more about monitor calibration. If you have any questions, please ask in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer.

Emily May Gunawan from Sally & Emily photography duo was born in Sydney and raised in Jakarta, positioning her and her sister Sally to engage with both Western and Eastern worlds. Since establishing her career in 2012, they have gone on to work with global brands including Adidas, Tim Tam, to NYLON Magazine in a wide range of capacities both for print and digital publications as photographers, creative directors, to videographers. Sally & Emily’s images are fuelled by self-discovery and contemporary femininity, taking inspirations from their diverse cultural heritage and personal stories. View their works at www.sallyemily.comand follow the journey at www.instagram.com/sally_emily