Colour management is the simple process of maintaining colour accuracy and consistency between the ACTUAL COLOURS in your image, in terms of Hue, Saturation and Luminosity; and those reproduced on your RGB devices; in this case, displayed on your monitor. Each and every pixel in your image has its very own individual RGB colour values and it is vital to us as photographers that we “SEE” these values accurately displayed on our monitors.

If we were to visit The National Gallery and gaze upon Turners “Fighting Temeraire” we would see all those sumptuous colours on the canvass just as J.M.W. intended; but could we see the same colours if we had a pair of Ray Bans on?

No, we couldn’t; because the sunglasses behave as colour filters and so they would add a “tint” to every colour of light that passes through them.

What you need to understand about your monitor is that it behaves like a filter between your eyes and the recorded colours in your image; and unless that “filter” is 100% neutral in colour, then it will indeed “tint” your displayed image.

So, the first effect of monitor calibration is that the process NEUTRALIZES any colour tint in the monitor display and so shows us the “real colours” in our images; the correct values of Hue and Saturation.

Now imagine we have an old fashioned Kodak Ektachrome colour slide sitting in a projector. If we have the correct wattage bulb in the projector we will see the correct LUMINOSITY of the slide when it is projected.

But if the bulb wattage is too high then the slide will project too brightly, and if the bulb wattage is too low then the projected image will not be bright enough.

All our monitors behave just like a projector, and as such they all have a brightness adjustment which we can directly correlate to our old fashioned slide projector bulb, and this brightness, or backlight control is another aspect of monitor calibration.

Have you done a print that comes out DARKER than the image displayed on the screen?

If you have then your monitor backlight is too bright!

And so, the second effect of monitor calibration is the setting of the correct level of brightness or back lighting of our monitor in order for us to see the true Luminosity of the pixels in our images.

Without accurate Monitor Calibration your ability to control the accuracy of colour and overall brightness of your images is severely limited.

I get asked all the time “what’s the best monitor calibration device to use” so, above is a short video (no sound) I’ve made showing the 3D and 2D plots of profiles I’ve just made for the same monitor using teo different monitor calibration devices/spectrophotometers from opposite ends of the pricing scale.

The first plot you see in black is the AdobeRGB1998 working colour space – this is only shown as a standard by which you can judge the other two profiles; if you like, monitor working colour spaces.

The yellow plot that shows up as an overlay is a profile done with an Xrite ColourMunki Photo, which usually retails for around £300 – and it clearly shows this particular monitor rendering a greater number of colours in certain areas than are contained in the Adobe1998 reference space.

The cyan plot is the same monitor, but profiled with the i1Photo Pro 2 spectro – not much change out of £1300 thank you very much – and the resulting profile virtually an identical twin of the one obtained with the ColorMunki which retails for a quarter of the price!

Don’t get me wrong, the i1 is a far more efficient monitor calibration device if you want to produce custom PRINTER profiles as well, but if you are happy using OEM profiles and just want perfect monitor calibration then I’d say the ColorMunki Photo is the more sensible purchase; or better still the ColorMunki Display at only around £110.

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