How to colour calibrate your computer
Have you ever wondered why the digital photo prints you receive from your local photo laboratory never seem quite right? Or how come you can spend hours editing your photos and still get them back with strange colours or too much light? Welcome to the often frustrating world of colour calibration!
Calibration problems occur because every computer monitor shows particular colours in a different way. Even basic colours can look dramatically different when viewed on different computers or screens. It can be an interesting experiment to test this out on a friend or colleagues' computer.
The problem can also change over time – as your monitor gets older it becomes less precise in the way it shows colours. So even though a picture may look correct on your monitor, it may end up printing out entirely differently. Some photography labs will try to manually adjust your photos while they are processing them – unfortunately this can sometimes make them even worse.
Achieving perfect colour calibration between your computer and a printing facility can be difficult – but in this article we are going to discuss some simple ways of achieving greater consistency.
Basic calibration
While they may not provide a perfect solution, a number of free online options can help you achieve better calibration of your monitor.
Easy RGB has a simple 4 stage process that will help you adjust your settings.
Software calibration
If you are lucky enough to have access to Adobe Photoshop it will have automatically installed a program called Adobe Gamma into your control panel (START-SETTINGS-CONTROL PANEL). If you follow the step-by-step instructions you will get far more accurate colour calibration settings.
A free alternative to Adobe Gamma can be found here.
Hardware calibration
Physical calibration devices provide you with the most effective way to calibrate your computer. These devices are placed against the computer screen, and help adjust your colours to a recognized standard. A popular hardware calibration device is the Spyder 2 (see http://www.colorvision.com)
Colour Profiles
If you would like to achieve a perfect match between the images you see on the screen and the one you get back from your photograph or canvas printing company you are welcome to ask us for a copy of our colour profiles. This is a small file that can be used by your computer to make colour calibration more effective. If you would like advice on how to use this on your computer please give us a call or send us an email.
A final word
For many people, taking pictures is an incredibly rewarding way of capturing the important memories and events of their lives. People can often spend hours editing their images before sending them off to be printed. Colour calibrating your computer is just one small way you can make sure that this effort and passion is rewarded with beautiful photographs - let along beautiful canvas prints!