I have to be honest; Up until recently I did not think much about color calibration. Its not that I did not think it was a good thing. It’s just wasn’t important to me. After all how bad could a monitor be? Could it really affect the appearance of my pictures that much? I’m here today saying I was wrong, oh so very wrong.
I got a Sypder2 Epxress for $65 at Amazon, not a bad deal. The Spyder3 is out so its only going to get cheaper or you can go for the new one.
I followed the instructions, pretty simple really, install the S/W, register it, I set the monitor brightness/contrast to factory defaults (when possible) then I plugged the calibrator in and let it go. A few minutes later it was done.
When complete it allows the user to jump between before and after so you can see the difference (i.e. it really did something for the $65) My initial impression was OMG I hate this, my display is much brighter and warmer than it was before. The before was down right blue by comparison. Then when I opened smugmug and aperture to look at my photos they were all over exposed. The first question to hit me was, Why didn’t anyone tell me my photos were overexposed? Friends don’t let friends over expose over expose their photos.
So I started the process of re-editing my photos. Although they are all brighter, for most its not a big problem, but some are horrible. A lesson learned. I plan to recalibrate again every few weeks to see how display is doing and to make sure I don’t get out of whack in the future.
Now I wonder if I should have gotten a calibrator for my new printer ?
Awesome, I did not know about that till now. Thx!