Monitor Calibration

7 Building Blocks of Photography 2

If the colour of your prints doesn't match what you see on your monitor you need to sort out your monitor calibration. Here's why.

All screens display colours differently. Stand outside a TV shop and look at all those screens displaying the same programme and you'll notice they're all different levels of colour and brightness. Computer monitors are the same.

Monitor calibration is a simple way to make sure your monitor is working to an approved colour range used by professional photo printers so you can be sure what you send them is using the same system as theirs.

Our brains colour correct everything we look at - including monitors. So for example, if your monitor is actually a bit red but you don't know it, you'll look at a picture and decide to take a bit of the redness out by adding cyan. It'll look great on your screen - but the problem isn't that your photo's the wrong colour - it's your monitor showing it as the wrong colour.

So by adding cyan to get rid of redness which isn't there you've un-knowingly messed up something that was OK in the first place, and an image with a nasty colour cast is what will come back from your printers.

We'll show you how Monitor calibration works and how it's done to ensure all your beautiful photos come back looking the way you want them to.

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