do you REALLY need to calibrate your monitor?

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In this video I attempt to color calibrate my monitor using the new datacolor SpyderX Elite.

[canturgan]

I'm looking at your calibrated monitor on my uncalibrated monitor.

[JZStudiosonline]

I'm genuinely impressed that you managed to brick a PC with monitor calibration. That's amazing.
Even WinXP had monitor calibration profiles, all you had to do was reset it to the default.

[benjhaisch]

I love that I was watching a monitor being calibrated but the music told me we were bringing the ring to Mordor.

[canturgan]

This is like watching ads for 4K TV's on your HD TV and being impressed at how good the image quality is.

[michelwengler]

If you print that image now it still might look different. You need to calibrate your printer aswell

[BeyondSlowMotion]

I swear by Spyder products. Changed my color correction life! Seriously It is one of the first things I do when I get a new screen.

[SharpblueCreative]

Welcome to iso gamut calibrated monitor. I work in print and this is actually more important than people think.

[HaroldsMind]

Man I feel your pain from your first scenario! Color Management is a very daunting subject to fully understand.

A few pro-tips:
Your image will look the same in any application that is color managed and/or uses the ICC color profiles that gets embedded with your image (sRBG, Adobe RGB, P3, etc). Always embedded your color profiles to you images when exporting from Photoshop or other applications. If you have a high gamut monitor (ie: Adobe RGB, P3, etc) don’t use Windows default photo viewer, it is not color managed and won’t use the embedded ICC color profiles from your image (your image will look over saturated), you might not notice this if your monitor is not high gamut. As of now Chrome, Firefox, Safari all support ICC color profiles from images so they’ll look the same in those browsers. Some services (ie: LinkedIn, I believe Twitter as well) will strip out the ICC profile from your images, which is why you might see them differently when uploaded. Facebook coverts your ICC profile to their own version of sRGB, so for the most part they’ll hold up color wise to how they looked.

[MichaelKire]

My monitor, after a Spyder 5 pro calibration, has a slight green tint to it when i use chrome or other programs. In Lightroom it looks perfect. I've learned to live with it.

Also, Spyder should have included those same test images on a piece of paper or cardboard for you to judge.

[sorenmelchior]

I have been using color calibration software for computers (apple, and PC) since the late 90's with both Xrite, and Datacolor. Both company's have provided excellent quality over the years, and have improved the ease of doing a calibration quite a bit in that timeline. Your description of having different colors on different applications seems like something went very wrong with your calibration process. Because what calibration does is create an ICC profile that gets embedded in your OS (and if you know where to find it, you can delete it without having to do a reinstall). Working properly it should affect all applications on that computer you are working on.

Another tip: If you want your prints to match what you see on your monitor, you also need to create printer profiles for your printer paper. And that's for each type of paper you are using on that printer. So say you have a gloss, semi gloss, and luster papers you are using on a printer, then you have to create 3 paper profiles (one for each paper). Now some paper company's offer some baseline paper profiles for printer models on their website. But if you want the most accurate print, you will want to create profiles yourself. I myself currently use Xrite Colormunki system as I can use it for both monitor calibration, and making printer profiles in one unit. So just remember that if your objective is printing, monitor calibration is only half the work.

[Eric-lhwp]

It would have been interesting to calibrate two identical screens. Each screen with a different Spyder callibrater from the same type and than compare them to see how consistent these callibrators are.
I saw such comparison a few years ago. It showed a huge difference in callibration results of two same type Spyder callibrators. After seeing this comparison I stopped thinking of calibrating my screen...

[sethleigh]

The only thing that surprises me about this video is to learn that he's been doing fstoppers for so long and this whole time wasn't using calibrated monitors.

I use the DataColor Spyder 5 but not their software. Datacolor will sell you different models where the hardware is exactly the same, but the features they unlock in their software are different (you pay more for more software features). The DisplayCal software is freeware, and allows you to do pretty much anything the hardware is capable of. Calibrating my desktop and laptop monitors made a ginormous difference. In my case my main desktop monitor was too yellow, my laptop monitor too blue, but now both are as close to accurate as their LCD panels are capable of. I've calibrated some friends' monitors for them, and especially old laptop monitors typically look way better afterward. The one laptop I calibrated that hardly changed at all was a friend's MacBook Pro, whose retina display was very well calibrated from the factory. I guess those outrageous Apple prices do buy you something.

[Mionwang]

"i hope windows 10 has improved..."
No it hasn't. The default windows photos app is still not color managed ie it ignores the color profiles embedded in the photo. I've switched to Adobe bridge as my primary photo viewer. Chrome, Facebook, Instagram etc are color managed but they convert images to srgb which is the internet standard. Also the internet standard white balance is 6500K so calibrating the display to 6500K is crucial.

[RealHankShill]

Just because you calibrate your monitor does not mean that what you see is how it will print. It means that the monitor is showing you accurate colors to what it is told. Printing uses an entirely different color gamut, with a different process, on a variety of papers.

Yes, if you want accurate prints you need to calibrate your monitor. That is just step one though. After that you need to soft proof your file with a profile that is set up for your specific printer, inks, AND SPECIFIC paper. Your computer will use this to show you a representation of what it could look like and will show you which colors you see on your monitor that CANNOT ever be printed on your combination of printer and paper. You can choose how to replace these colors.

Point is, calibrating your monitor has little to do with how your print will look. Calibrating your monitor is to make sure that what you see, is what everyone else sees, particularly in color shift, as we all know what tiny color shifts do to the mood of your image.

[Layarion]

Fstoppers...i wished you woulda...Printed something. Just to see if the picture was as bright/dark as on your screen.

"I can't believe technology has improved in the last 10 years"

[RuddyDelRosario]

I don't use PC but in a Mac It's super easy and works great. Tray a mac. And as a professional photographer, I humbly think that it's very important to have the monitor calibrated.

[PauloParreira]

Still use Spyder Pro 3, unfortunately Datacolor forgot to update the software for Mac. It can calibrate but at the end saving profile is not possible, but if buy a new one it comes with newer software.
Had to change to DisplayCal. Thanks Datacolor.

[JeffCowan]

Lee, I really wanna see the same test, but now for printing. That's the final frontier right there.

[jsabatier]

I also use the Spyder calibrator and love it. I can't work on anything not calibrated heck, I even had my work monitor calibrated.