November 11, 2018
Do you print your own photos? Do you sell or share your images with others? Have you calibrated your computer monitor lately?
I had read “Calibrate your monitor before you print your images or share them with others!” I have an iMac computer and the colors on the monitor’s screen looked fine with me. So why bother?
However, since I was having trouble with colors when printing my images, I decided to take the plunge and buy a device to calibrate my monitor. I purchased a Spyder5pro from B&H on sale for about $100. After I ran the software to calibrate my iMac’s monitor, I was amazed by the difference! First, like many people I had the monitor’s brightness too high which means when I adjusted my images in Lightroom they would print too dark. Also, the colors were slightly off! And, the calibration solved the weird colors that I was seeing when I printed an image!
On the left is a sample image that I had adjusted in Lightroom before the monitor was calibrated. On the right is the same image adjusted again in Lightroom AFTER the calibration. The one on left should appear a little dark with a slight change in colors. Of course, the appearance depends on if the monitor you are using is calibrated properly! 🙂
The bottom line: You need to calibrate your monitor before you adjust them in a program like Lightroom or Photoshop if you plan to print them, sell or share your images with others. It really does matter!
Dan
