The DSLR Field Guide

Calibrating your Monitor

Calibrating your monitor is essential if you want to render color accurately and consistently.

For good color management, using system level color software (introduced by Apple in 1995 as ColorSync 2 (now ColorSync 4) and later by Microsoft in Windows 2000 and XP), your computer will automatically go some of the way to setting the displayed colors by accessing the monitor’s ICC profile. This, however, is only a starting point.

At the very least, use the system’s calibration setup assistant to work through the settings. The key steps are to adjust the brightness and neutrality of the black, white, and mid-points; to set the gamma (see opposite for definition); and to set the color temperature. The resulting settings are ...