Monitor and Printer Calibration

The only way to insure that what you see on your monitor is what you get on your printer, or on a commercial printer, is to have your monitor, and possibly your printer calibrated.  Monitor calibration systems can be purchased for $125-$250, but printer calibration systems run in excess of $1000.

Digital Wonders Photography uses a professional Gretag MacBeth Eye-One calibration system, which employs a custom color spectrophotometer to accurately read the colors of your monitor or printed output, and then calculates how it differs from a calibration standard.  The system then creates a custom ICC driver profile that will color correct your output to match the established color standard.  Our service brings this system to your home or business where we will perform the calibration, and install the custom ICC profiles on your system.

Calibrating your monitor:  We can calibrate both LCD and CRT monitors.  Calibrating your monitor will require 20-30 minutes of time.  Monitors do age, and the manufacturers usually recommend recalibrating your monitor every 3 months, although our experience has found that every 6 months to a year is usually sufficient for most users.

Calibrating your printer:  Calibrating your printer will require 30-40 minutes per paper type.  For each paper type, we will print a calibration patch containing 918 unique color squares, and then we use the spectrophotometer to read each square, and the Eye-One software compares each color to a color standard, and calculates the difference.

Each paper type must be calibrated separately.  Although there may be slight differences from one manufacturing lot of paper or ink to another, for most purposes the papers do not require recalibration, unless you change brand, type of ink, or change printers.

Digital Wonders Photography offers our on-location calibration services anywhere in Northeast Indiana or Northwest Ohio.