If you’re serious about colour management, we strongly recommend that you buy a colorimeter and use it at least monthly (or whenever you think someone has fiddled with the monitor controls!)

You can’t tell what your printing will look like if your monitor isn't calibrated

As we said in our article on colour management , no two monitors display colours in exactly the same way, and yet the only way you can view an image before we print it is on screen. How can you tell what the print is going to look like?

Colour variation can be caused by something as simple as altering the controls on the front of the monitor, or changes caused by different technology – e.g. conventional monitors or flat screen technology. But in fact all devices display colour slightly differently. The whole point of colour management, calibration and ICC profiles is to adjust for those differences so that in the real world the colour looks the same wherever and however it is viewed.

A necessary step is to calibrate the monitors at each location in your workflow (eg your studio and our lab) to the standard defined by the International Colour Consortium (ICC) by means of an ICC colour profile. This is a “map” defining the colour that is to be displayed when the monitor receives a particular set of RGB values. Each monitor requires its own ICC profile.We calibrate our own monitors regularly, and you should do the same.

Note that while most profiles just describe the behaviour of a device, a monitor profile also changes the way the monitor displays colour.

While you can use calibrators like the Mac ColorSync Calibrator or the procedure we outlined using our Monitor Test Image , these depend on judgments based on your visual perception, and are therefore not reliable.

A measuring device such as the colorimeter shown here will measure the colours displayed on a monitor far more accurately than the human eye can. You should follow the instructions that come with the device and the accompanying software.

You are welcome to contact us for product recommendations.