Accurate Color Rendition: Is it Really Important to You?
If you've been around the photography business for a reasonable amount of time, you've heard how important it is to calibrate your monitor. It's the only way to ensure that the colors you're seeing and printing are the colors you recorded when you took the shot. You've probably also heard the argument from at least one person that monitor calibration isn't enough. After all, not everyone that sees an image is going to have a calibrated monitor, and all printers aren't alike.
So, what's the answer? Can you calibrate your monitor (or monitors) and be sure that your prints are accurate, or that your digital images look the way they should on your client's monitor? The simple truth is, it depends mostly on your plans for your images.
If you're shooting family photos or vacation shots just for the enjoyment of you and your friends, you'll want them to be as bright and colorful as you remember the moments when you snapped them. In that case, consistent and accurate monitor calibration is probably enough to help you get the results you want, with a whole lot less trial and error. If, on the other hand, you're planning to throw your hat in the ring in the extremely competitive arena of professional photography, producing consistently accurate and consistent color is critical to your success.
Now, just in case you haven't heard, the only way to ensure that your colors are always reproduced accurately is to calibrate your viewing and printing equipment, starting with your monitor. Your eyes can be fooled. Your brand-new monitor didn't come from the factory tuned to display the colors in your digital images as accurately as possible and even if it had, the output from your computer's video card would differ enough to change the way it looks. By the way, every printer is different, too, and how you have yours configured also makes a difference. Oh, and your camera, too, has to be set correctly to be sure those colors are captured accurately!
Here's the good news: there's an incredible system out there that will help you bring all of that into line and it's been tailored to suit the needs of photographers at several different levels. Whether you just want to save money on printer paper and ink or meet the needs of discriminating clients, it's one of the most important tools you can add to your box, and you don't have to invest more than your needs warrant or your budget allows.
The Spyder5 from Datacolor is the most intelligent and versatile calibration system we've seen and it's so simple that even the most inexperienced hobbyist can be matching colors professionally in just a few minute's time. Initial calibration takes about 5 minutes, and ongoing tune-ups take about half the time.
If you're in doubt about how important color calibration is, we invite you to watch the video below, in which professional photographer Podge Kelly talks about portrait and landscape photography techniques and how he uses the Spyder5 as part of his critical workflow. When you're done, head on over to the Datacolor website to find the right Spyder5 package for your needs. You'll be glad you did!