Do you REALLY NEED to CALIBRATE your MONITOR?

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In this episode, I tackle the discussion as to whether or not color calibrating your monitor is really necessary if the majority of your photography is shared online as opposed to printing your photographs. Also, I review my experience color calibrating my monitor for the first time using the X-Rite i1 Display Pro - it was actually much easier than I had originally anticipated:)

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-Mark D.

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[davidtran]

Awesome thoughts on this subject Mark and honestly you're the only person I've found to have shared solid and unbiased points on color calibration. Most people (especially non-photographers) owning a laptop/desktop computer don't calibrate their displays - they're just regular folks who appreciate great pics. For sharing on social media I feel like calibrating could backfire as those who view it on non-calibrated displays will see a much different photo. After my macbook calibration, I had a similar experience like you - colors became noticeably warmer. After editing and exporting and sending the pics to my iphone, all of them appear much cooler. For printing, that's obviously a different story and I'll keep my monitors calibrated.

I do find a bunch of other channels BSing how crucial/life-changing calibrating your monitor is (very true if printing and making money off photography is key) - too salesy about those calibrators and they don't point out the drawbacks. Thanks for sharing your unbiased thoughts and for your honesty.

[bereantrb]

Printing is obvious, as is working in an industry in which you share your images with other design professionals; you all need to see the same thing. But it's interesting to read some of the comments about others viewing your images on un-calibrated monitors. It doesn't matter. Calibration can still help produce the best source image possible that will look its best to the widest range of people. Perhaps it's helpful to think about how music is produced. Audio engineers need to hear what was actually recorded as accurately as possible in order to do a proper mix, and to hear the final mix as clearly as possible to know they're producing the best sounding track. The listener doesn't have to have the same audio quality as the engineer. If a listener has a great audio system, sure, they can hear the track in all its glory. But it doesn't matter if someone is listening on lesser speakers or earbuds, the song still had to be properly recorded and mixed. Likewise, the better and more accurately you can see the colors and dynamic range that are actually present in the image data, the better your final image, and the better it will look to everybody. One final example: photographers still do everything they can to get their images as tack sharp as possible even though Instagram reduces the image quality. The same is true for other image attributes.

[normstangl]

I’m new to your site, nice work! Calibration is of course useful for printing references. For consistent image processing of your own work, calibration sets a standard reference point for you regardless of it being displayed on the internet or for print. What happens to the image on other people’s monitors is irrelevant. Calibration helps when using outside printing services since you can establish a standard for the accurate output of your work through a provider. I prefer to be calibrated for my workflow knowing that I’m seeing a consistent colour view of my work.

[benalexanderbengtsson]

thank you for this. Im working as a professional photographer, and ive hav the exact same point of view of calibrated monitors. Ever since i started working, everyone was so scared of not using a callibrated screen. But i never understood why. No one ever sees it the way i did. After a few years i decided to quit all the bullcrap of callibrated screend and just optimized it so it looked close enough to what an imac did. I find mac to be the best Reference feran

[rontz]

About color calibrating for web: yup, you're totally right, there's a big BUT though:
a huge chunk of people is looking at your photos through mobile Apple devices and maybe also on Apple computers - what they've got in common is, that they're using the P3 color space on similarly calibrated devices. So, even though you're not exactly controlling the users devices, you can use Apples big marketshare to your own advantage to get a relatively good impression of what your images will look like :)

[paulm]

Points taken! Calibration works best when viewers standardize or calibrate to a close set of values. Viewing light levels, individual color perceptions that vary and viewing under back or front lit light sources can alter what we see. Slight variations won’t be a big deal, but significant shifts matter. My educated hunch is that most major color calibration devices work much the same way — they load the calibration profile settings into a PC’s video card at boot-up, meaning you can disable that process if need be, thus solving the “non-reversible color shift of death” syndrome you referenced. From my days of analog print evaluations at a camera club, I remember we had a special “calibrated” light box for print judges to use during our competitions — don’t know what’s used today by on-line viewers. OK, I’ll bite ... what’s with the inhale/exhale tee shirt?

[mohanpugaz]

Oh my good. This answers my biggest questions. Thanks a lot!

[adokool]

Ive been thinking the same thing! You always hear people talking about how important it is to calibrate your monitor but I dont print my work atm I just share it online, so like, what the image looks like to the person viewing it you cant really control. Im 99% sure not a single person has viewed my work on a calibrated monitor as the vast majority of my work is on instagram where people view with phones.

[CynicalWilson]

Well, yes, I agree.. you can't control what your client might actually see, but I'd think you should still aim for producing the "most accurate" representation of what is "intended to be seen", or even a step further to produce what the client ultimately could bring to a printer and have printed what is supposed to be printed...

[michaeltrue]

Enjoyed the flow of this video. Calibration is good, may not help in every instance, but valuable tool for quality consistency, especially with printing workflows. Even though you can't control the online viewing of your work, you can at least provide a consistent product to be viewed!

[EdiUtomoPutra]

I remembered, some day it is regarding photo of my client i i use color accurate screen then when i sent the picture to my client she doesn't like it she said it is dark, and 5 min later she figure that her display brightness isn't bright enough 🤣. I think calibrated display is needed only when you are in a team or you have multiple display so you can match the display color of each team/display . But when you only has one display and only share the online i don't think we need 🤣 since in online stuff every display is different 😅 we can't control everything.

Another think when we want to print our photo, we need to calibrate the printer also. The idea is to make what we see is similar to what we print.

[Philip]

If you are doing stock photography calibrating your monitor is essential. The reviewers will almost certainly be viewing your images on a calibrated monitor and will reject anything with “off” color. I also agree, every Apple monitor I have used definitely is quite cool until calibrated.

[L.Lyubomirov]

I calibrated my monitor with Xrite i1, and removed the calibration...because when i edit my photos in Photoshop, after that they look with very black shadows in all across devices and instagram and facebook, so i prefer my manual calibration method from my video card, adjusting the proper white balance by eye is not difficult, and adjusting the right contrast -there are plenty of charts in internet and its not difficult.

[CurtisGabrielMusic]

I agree with you on this. I'd rather just edit a picture and then check to see that it works ok on a couple of other devices.. I've never had to go back and tweak as yet.

[Mohammedalammadi]

Thanks for such a quick and fruitful review

[suzannet]

Hey Mark have you made any changes to your calibration process since this video was posted?

[raytreat]

If you are calibrating your computer to match the output of your printer then I see calibration software/hardware being useful. That’s s closed loop system.
But if you’re taking your images to the local photo print shop it’s not going to be particularly useful and of course for online sharing of images either.
Basically, calibration works best in a closed loop environment.

[ajaynair]

Do all monitors do calibration? What would you recommend when buying a monitor? Love your contents 😊

[Pvince]

Very interesting but i have a dilema… i upload my pics to a print on demand website, so they are displayed online but the same files are used to deliver prints to clients; what settings should i use? Should i calibrate my screen for online vewing or for printing?

[MatthewBrandon]

I think even if we cannot calibrate for everyones devices, It would be nice to have your own devices match. Im shooting raw on a nikon z6, I import to Lightroom, make modifications based on my 5k iMac monitor then usually post to Instagram. When I posted what I thought was a vibrant image on my iMac looked darker and less vibrant on my iPhone XS. I feel like being in one device family should give at minimum similar images that aren't drastically different.