Have you colour calibrated YOUR monitor?
It seems to be ‘Prague season’ on this site at the moment….it just felt like the right thing to do – get my snow shots up and out there on the interweb whilst we ae still in the depths of winter.
HOWEVER! what excites me much more about this particular shot? Well, its the first time I have processed an image in my life, using a properly calibrated monitor, in this case my beloved Macbook Pro.
Until recently I had always dismissed the idea of spending money and effort to calibrate my ‘workspace’ - it seemed over the top. However, I had been getting annoyed at how a shot produced on my computer looked great on my own screen, only to view it elsewhere (another monitor, a print coming back from a lab) and see colours too dark, or too vivid, or a myriad of other problems. I would get the occasional Flickr comment or suchlike that re-inforced this frustration. From early last year, I had started to quite carefully match the colour spaces I work with across all my software/hardware, having read a few books which covered this topic. But that was about it regards calibration and profiles. Anyway, I attended a marvellous convention at the weekend, the SWPP in hammersmith London – its an annual gathering of wedding and event photographers, as well as lots of photography suppliers. I had a really engaging chat with the (very down to earth) guys from Datacolour whilst there. I shared my frustrations whereupon, they showed me some stuff and in short, convinced me in 2 minutes to buy a Spyder Express 3, a piece of hardware/software to calibrate my screen. Its been transformational! Plugged it it, ran the easy to use software, all done in 5 minutes. I’ve been thoroughly impressed so far with the results – I am fairly convinced its going to really the output of my work, both onto the web and in printed form (though print also requires some work on printer profiles, inks etc. to ensure proper colour re-production). The Spyder 3 Express is therefore thoroughly recommended. I’ll really appreciate any comments on the colours and rendition in the shot posted here (and any I post from here on in), bearing in mind they are popping out of my newly super-duper calibrated ’colour machine’. Thanks in advance!
