Section 2.10. Calibrate Your Monitor

2.10. Calibrate Your Monitor

Just about any book for serious Photoshop users and digital photographers will tell you to calibrate your monitor with a hardware calibration spectrometer. "Hardware calibration spectrometer!?!" The words themselves are scary enough to make your hair fall out.

Relax. The first time you use one of these systems you'll go to the mirror and ask yourself why you weren't smart enough to catch on to this earlier. It takes about 10 or 15 minutes to install the software and about 5 minutes to run it; the only reason to read the instructions is to give yourself a little self-assurance. In fact, all of these systems tell you exactly what to do for each of the four or five needed steps. The software itself, in conjunction with the spectrometer, does the rest (see Figure 2-15).

Figure 2-15. The ColorVision Spyder 2 monitor calibration interface.

Although you can spend a small fortune on calibration, for a mere $89 you can buy a tool that will put you miles ahead of using the Adobe Gamma manual calibration software that comes with Photoshop or the ColorSync utility that comes with Mac OS X. Of course, if you don't have a spectrometer, at least make sure you're taking advantage of Adobe Gamma if you're a Windows user or ColorSync if you're on the Mac. If you feel like taking the spectrometer jump to instrumental calibration, the ColorSync Color Plus is a bargain.

When you're ready to invest in a colorimeter (aka spectrometer), you should know that both the ColorVision and GretagMacbeth products can now measure flat-panel LCD monitors and laptops, in addition to CRT monitors. So you can ignore the old caveat that spectrometers can only measure CRTs.