Monitor Calibration

[Chris MacDonald]

hey chaps,

 

I realise this might perhaps be in the wrong section, but I was curious about how much of a difference monitor calibration can make and whether it is worth investing in the kit to do it? The company almost certainly wont pay to have a specialist/contractor to come in and do it which leaves me with the option of buying the kit (spyder colorimeters, etc) and doing it myself.

 

What I'm asking I suppose is;

1 - is it worthwhile? I produce architectural visualisations, which sometimes go off for print. So I guess I'd like peace of mind knowing that what goes out of the door is correct, and any colour problems are the printers fault. Also we sometimes have clients come back with comments about colours not being right, which is generally something I take in my stride as the chances are they are viewing it on a crappy monitor, and have no idea about lighting a CGI ("We want a bright sunny day, but no shadows please").

 

We're using pretty decent monitors here - ASUS ProArt PA248Q, hooked up to Quadro K4000's.

 

2 - Which colorimeter should I go for? There are quite a few different ones on the market at first glance, and I know literally nothing about them.

[Scott Schroeder]

We use the Sypder Elite and we've had great results.

 

You can also embed your color profile into the proof you are sending the client to help fix some of the wrong colors on their end.

[Nicolai Bongard]

When i started at my current job, i was tasked to "fix the printers", as noone could get proper colors when they printed. Turns out it was not the printers fault at all, it was just that nobody had bothered to calibrate their screens. After the inevitable facepalm we got our hands on one of those spyder things and now the colors are adjusted everywhere, people get pretty much what they see on screen, and the pictures does not "magically change" when they view it at another persons monitor. It was incredibly easy to set up, so i cannot understand why they did not do it years ago, instead of keep on color correcting after the wrong prints. But then again these people are architects. =)

[Dimitris Tolios]

Monitor Calibration does make a difference within your office, but in many cases if the printer is not calibrated, it makes little difference outside making sure your colleagues see what you see on screen.

If you are outsourcing prints, there is little you can do about that, other than what Scott mentioned - embed the color profile your machine uses, and "hope".

 

But there are so many things that "change" the way we perceive color other than how the printer or screen are calibrated - changing light sources, paper attributes, angle of viewing/reflections (even for matte papers) etc etc. Presentation prints and even renderings in general should not be used directly for proofing.

[notamondayfan]

I use the i1 X-rite, and it's brilliant, after a recommendation from an illustrator friend. It's got a really nice feature where it monitors your environments colour temp, and then adjusts the screens to compensate for the light.

 

You're best off buying the kit too, rather than hiring someone, as you really need to re-calibrate every 4 weeks.

 

I would say it's the best bit of kit I bought last year. You really don't realise how far out the colours can be, and also you'll probably find most people have their monitor too bright, which confused me at first, but now it really makes sense.

 

As for printers, so long as you are confident in colours on your calibrated screen are correct, then a decent printer / print firm should be very close.

 

Dean

[Stephen Thomas]

We have the XRite i1 Pro kit in the studio as it came with our copier/printer rental. I profile both printers every month and distribute the new profiles around staff. I do calibrate my own screens which are PCs, but don't bother doing the rest of the studio, who work on macs, as basically it would be too much of a pain in the arse. Doing the printer profiles has massively changed things though, as people were constantly complaining about dark prints and trying to compensate before.

 

It's a good kit, not sure of the pricing though. I've also used the ColorMunki before which is also excellent and I think around £400? Again, a bit of a premium option compared to Spyder for example, but does have the ability to do printer profiles as well as spot RGB colour picking from material swatches.

 

If you don't have the requirement to do in-house printing then definitely go for a cheaper screen profiling only option I think.

[Morne Erasmus]

+1 for Xrite

I use the colormunki and it works great