Before I start talking about this subject I must add a disclaimer here stating that what I’m talking about here is from what I’ve read on this subject through various channels…also that this post was started because my sister mentioned on her blog that her scanner seems to be uncalibrated because the colors were off a bit…or a ton, can’t remember which was it…you can read the post here.

So I started talking there on a comment but ultimately decided on writing a blog post about the subject since it was going to go on for a while. So color calibration is a very important subject when it comes to professional imaging and I only mention professional level of graphics and imaging handling because for general purposes it’s not that important and can sometimes be something expensive to accomplish.

Monitors display colors differently and depend on the settings that are established on the monitor itself and then those provided by the video card, video drivers and OS. Lets break these down to better understand them.

There are currently two styles of monitors used in computers, as in desktop and laptops, being mostly used today and that is the Cathode Ray Tube or CRT (this is a fun monitor for some people) and Liquid Crystal Display or LCD. They actually display colors differently due to their way of displaying the pixels…though at the end they’re quite similar.

Monitors, even from the same manufacturer and model, can display the image differently depending on the white balance or color temperature, measured in Kelvin, the brightness and the gamma settings established in the monitor configuration and these settings are generally not balanced at the factory. The OS can use a color profile which will basically establish the color configuration that will be used to display the correct colors despite the monitor configuration not being set correctly, or at least I haven’t read anything that differs on this statement yet don’t quote me on this.

Some manufacturers of monitors will include a color profile which can be used by the OS, generally they include for Windows, to enhance the user experience on this matter yet it’s still at a consumer level and not at a professional level. There are free and commercial applications that will assist in correctly attempting to set your monitor calibration correctly and I say “attempting” because them being strictly software and expecting you to see colors like most of the population in the world does so they work…again for a general level and still not professional.

At a professional level there are hardware devices, which generally cost hundreds of dollars, that will set the calibration of the color space on your monitor correctly thus not expecting you to know when the colors match. This is the method that professionals use and the one I want to be able to use one day…I’m taking donations right now.

Hardware devices are set right in front of your monitor and read the colors being displayed by the software that comes with it so that it’s able to correctly set the calibration of your monitor and it’s a process that needs to be followed and can take several minutes to complete since the software needs to go through a cycle of displaying especific colors in order to calibrate the monitor correctly and then this process needs to be repeated anywhere from once a month to every 3 months or so depending on how critical it is for the user.

Monitors are not the only ones that need calibration when it comes to colors, also the printer and the scanner but these need to be done quite differently than with your monitor and need to be done, in the case of the printer, everytime you change an ink cartridge. Printers, like monitors, use a color profile to know exactly how the drops of ink must be placed in order to correctly display the colors. Calibrating a printer can be a daunting task and in some cases requires for the printed image to be scanned or simply looked at though there are devices that are able to assist on this matter.

Scanner calibration requires that you at least calibrate your monitor though it’s often recommended to also calibrate your printer first since this will allow you to actually see consistent colors on the three devices.

How to calibrate these devices?

For the monitor, like mentioned above, there are two methods of doing this. The first method relies on your visual capacity and the use of some software which can either be included with your monitor or computer or it can be downloaded from the Internet.

One such tool, which I’ve used, is Calibrize and it essentially walks you through a couple of steps that show you images with shades of green, red and blue so that you can determine what is the best color. Using this method requires that the user play with the monitor settings as well with the settings shown in the software. In the case of Calibrize it has a reminder so that you calibrate your monitor often.

For a more serious approach you might want to go with a hardware alternative. The company DataColor is one of many out there that sell devices for this purpose and it’s one which I’ve heard most of though I haven’t had the chance to personally test their devices. The lowest price was around 80 US dollars for their Spyder2Express which has a limited capacity. Personally I’d go with the Spyder3Elite since it provides the most features when it comes to calibration of a screen though it has a price tag of about 250 US dollars. They also have a device that will allow you to calibrate your printer.

Those two methods of calibrating your monitor will create what is known as an ICC profile which is used by the OS or Video drivers to correctly display the colors.

Sadly I haven’t seen any hardware devices which will accurately calibrate the scanner so the user will have to rely on software and scanning an image to tweak the profile used by the scanner.

If you know anything more about this let us know on the comments section.

-LM