Are you calibrated??

SabrinaO · Apr 16, 2011

A lot of people say that since I have a Mac that I don't need to have my monitor calibrated. Others post a jpeg of a grey bar and if I can see the color seperations on it I dont need to be calibrated.
Those of you that do photography professionally and have a business and sell prints... Do I really NEED to calibrate my monitor?

Docphil · Apr 16, 2011

SabrinaO said:
A lot of people say that since I have a Mac that I don't need to have my monitor calibrated. Others post a jpeg of a grey bar and if I can see the color seperations on it I dont need to be calibrated.
Those of you that do photography professionally and have a business and sell prints... Do I really NEED to calibrate my monitor?

Hi,
If you are hoping to sell prints, yes you need to have the monitor calibrated in order to produce consistent results. If you send your jpegs to be printed professionally, yes you need your monitor calibrating because the printers will have calibrated their printers either to Adobe 1998 or Adobe RGB. If you upload to "alamy" etc yes, you need your monitor to be profiled.
The differences may be subtle, but you may be disappointed if you get a print back slightly too warn or cold or with a slight cast.
If you are printing at home, most screens will be ok and you will adjust your own process to what you have.
I calibrate my macbook and even though the native colours are good, the program still makes some adjustments.
Phil

Overread · Apr 16, 2011

The problem with all the online do it yourself calibrations (like the greyscale) is that they rely upon your own eyes to make the final judgement call and our eyes are not a fixed viewing system. They are adaptive and that means they won't give a constant result. That makes them useless for proper calibration as changes in the lighting, heck how awake,asleep you are will affect the results.

What you need is a hardware based calibration setup such as a Spyder 3 - in order to calibrate your screen using a system that isn't adaptive and will give a fixed constant result. In addition if you print at home you can get calibrators that will calibrate your printer as well as those that will do both jobs in one. Also its important to realise that screens will naturally "drift" over time so its not a case of using it once and forgetting about it and most recommend you recalibrate every few weeks or so.

clanthar · Apr 16, 2011

MACs are no different than other computers. They are not self-calibrating nor do they come pre-calibrated from Apple. They have one advantage: less choice. In this case less choice is good because the displays available from Apple range from mediocre to pretty good. In the wild world of non-proprietary computers the displays range from unusably awful to excellent. (You can put an excellent non-Apple display on a MAC by the way).

There are two processes that you can apply to your display: calibration and profiling. It's important to understand what each does and the limitations of each. Calibration will alter the physical operation of your display. Profiling examines your display's fixed, physical (hopefully calibrated) characteristics and compares that to know standards. This info can be used by software (Photoshop) to help control the presentation of images while you edit.

First an analogy: A sharp knife in the kitchen really makes a difference. You can get your knife professionally sharpened. If your knife is made from the finest Toledo steel it will sharpen to an excellent edge and stay sharp a long time. If your knife came in a set for 19.95 that you brought late-night off the shopping channel and "but wait...you also get" -- well good luck with that.

So, calibrating the cinema display on your MAC Pro gives you a fine-tuned professionally capable work tool. Calibrating the display on your Acer netbook leaves you with the same worthless cr*p you started with. Calibrating a display is ultimately limited by the physical properties of that specific display. Laptop displays for example (MAC included) aren't physically capable of rendering all of the colors in the common color spaces we work with (sRGB & Adobe RGB). Calibrating them doesn't change that. It can still be helpful. I calibrated the display on my Toshiba laptop and it certainly makes photos look better (way too blue before). I still have enough sense not to use it for editing.

Profiling can be real helpful, but it also drives lots of folks nuts. The profile for a display characterizes that display's physical shortcomings and provides that info to Photoshop. Photoshop uses that info and will moderate how it renders a photo to try and compensate for the display. For example; after calibration a specific display still has trouble correctly rendering high value greens. Calibration doesn't fix this shortcoming. This is then discovered when the display is profiled. With this info Photoshop attempts a correction. However if your web browser (IE) is completely profile stupid, you can then load the same photo in Photoshop and in your web browser and see two different photos on your screen simultaneously -- fun fun.

You need a hardware device to calibrate and profile a display. Here's one of the better products: X-Rite i1Display 2 Professional Monitor Calibration i1 solutions

Just like displays these come in a range of quality/performance.

Joe

Bitter Jeweler · Apr 16, 2011

Yes.

$5 please.

Super Simple · Apr 16, 2011

SabrinaO said:
A lot of people say that since I have a Mac that I don't need to have my monitor calibrated. Others post a jpeg of a grey bar and if I can see the color seperations on it I dont need to be calibrated.
Those of you that do photography professionally and have a business and sell prints... Do I really NEED to calibrate my monitor?

+1 for the other responses.

I run Mac, Windows, and Linux boxes. They all need calibration.

Take whatever you hear from the Apple fanboys with a grain of salt. They won't let you walk on water or anything. They're just computers.

There are lots of tutorials and information on the topic. It's worthwhile to spend a few hours and find out more about the topic.

KmH · Apr 16, 2011

Not only do you need to calibrate your display, you need to calibrate it on a regular basis because it changes over time.
I calibrate mine concurrent with the lunar cycle so my editing display gets calibrated 13 times a year.

There is yet another step to providing clients consistant, high quality prints - soft-proofing.

SabrinaO · Apr 19, 2011

Bitter Jeweler said:
Yes.

$5 please.

lol I hate you. :sexywink:

SabrinaO · Apr 19, 2011

KmH said:
Not only do you need to calibrate your display, you need to calibrate it on a regular basis because it changes over time.
I calibrate mine concurrent with the lunar cycle so my editing display gets calibrated 13 times a year.

There is yet another step to providing clients consistant, high quality prints - soft-proofing.

13 times a year? UGH.. I want to get the spyder 3 but my friend who just got hers is having trouble with it! Is calibrating really that hard to do?

KmH · Apr 19, 2011

No, calibrating isn't hard to do. Of course, being technically literate helps.

Many pros (and print labs) recommend X-RITE's Eye-One Display 2 over the Spyder 3, mainly because of the software rather than the hardware.

From Mpix.com

Display calibration, in conjunction with ICC profiling, can only be accurately done through instrumentation; using a colorimeter and software. There are numerous calibration devices available that allow a user to automatically generate a monitor profile. We recommend the X-Rite Eye-One Display 2,

www.xrite.com<a href="http://www.xrite.com." target="_blank">.

From Bay Photo

In order to calibrate your monitor you will need a hardware calibration device. An excellent calibration device is the i1Display 2 by Xrite. Information can be found at www.xritephoto.com. This is a very popular device and we us it in the lab.

From WHCC.com

We recommend all clients perform hardware monitor calibration. This is a relatively straightforward and simple procedure. We recommend the X-Rite i1 Display.