Will Calibrating My Monitor Make a Difference?

By Greg | Category: Business Management, Designer Tips | 2 comments

Today’s Tip Comes from DSD-Pro Member Greg: Calibrating your monitor can make a huge difference in your printouts! Calibrating is simply setting your screen so what you see is what you get - or as close to it as your printer will allow. This is an important step for every digi-scrap professional whether you scrap for others, you design, or you create art pieces using scrapbooking digi-art.

Why Calibrate?

It’s such a shame when you print out an image and realize you’ve over-brightened it or your when the opposite happens and your printed pictures turn out too dark. This can easily be the unwanted results you get if your monitor isn’t calibrated. Because without calibrating, what you see on the screen may look perfect. But on paper, you get a totally different story.

Pictures Aren’t the Only Thing Affected

When designers don’t take the time to calibrate their monitors, it can result in elements and papers that when printed, simply don’t offer the colors they intended. If you’ve never calibrated your monitor before, print out a page of example elements from your kits. Then calibrate your monitor and reprint the same page. You may be surprised by the results.

Calibrations Can Be Tricky

Depending on the monitor, printer, and operating system you have, you may find that it doesn’t keep the setting very well. Be sure to check your calibration occasionally to see if they are still accurate. When you get a new piece of machinery, like a scanner, printer, or monitor – recalibrate again.

Calibration can differ based on your setup. So do a bit of research online and in your photo software products to find the best solution for your situation. Professional level calibration is rather expensive. But keep in mind that there are several non-professional levels of calibration that give really good results.

So this is the mini-tasker for today: Research calibration methods for your computer monitor and take the time to set things right. For you and for your clients!

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Tags: 30-Day Business Challenge, Business Management, color-tools, Designer Tips, digital-scrapbook-designer

2 comments
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David September 17th, 2007 5:02 pm :
Tip for Day 17: In line with the calibration tip, also consider doing test patches when printing.
This helps both calibrated and uncalibrated setups.

Here’s how: Add a white layer over your artwork, and digitally cut a few small holes over important parts of your picture. Put in a full sheet of the paper of the kind you will use in the final printout and hit “print”.

You’ll obviously see a few colored patches on the print – enough to judge that you have things right – or enough to show you you need to make alterations.

And next time you repeat the process, you can use the same piece of paper. Chances are, many of your patches will occur in different places on the sheet, allowing you to use that one sheet maybe a dozen times.

It saves a LOT of ink too!
PChip September 25th, 2007 7:34 am :
Greg – this is a great tip! Thanks for sharing it. I know it made a big difference with my colors when I calibrated my monitor. I found that when we replaced my hardrive recently I had to start all over again and re-calibrate… twice actually. I’m glad I took the time to do it though!

I have not been able to do a calibration on my laptop that’s worth a poop. I think it’s because of the way our screens change as we adjust the angle of them. Anyone else have any luck with calibrating their laptop???

David – Nice idea for the test patch. I’ve not ever heard of that method before. I’ll have to give that a go sometime.