How To Calibrate Your Monitor

these days it's easy to go a little overboard when you're buying a monitor with 4k ultra wide and adaptive refresh displays all jockeying for your attention you might expect to be blown away after plugging in your rigs finishing touch but wait a minute despite your monitors high price tag something looks amiss the colors are all wrong how could this happen on such an expensive component well we've covered the reasons that monitors can look so different from each other in these episodes here but today we're gonna talk about ways to calibrate your monitor properly to get accurate crisp colors whether you spent a hundred bucks or a thousand now there are multiple ways to calibrate your screen so let's start with the simplest and cheapest and work our way upward but what ever one you pick make sure your monitors turned on for at least 30 minutes before starting so it can warm up and hit its usual level of brightness method number one for some quick and dirty display correction both Windows and Mac OS provide built-in tools to adjust gamma a setting that affects brightness and color ratios as well as contrast and color levels this method is fast and free but since you're expected to eyeball what the sample image should look like without a calibrated reference it's not much better than checking your car speed by sticking your hand out the window but if you'd like to go a little bit deeper with your monitor settings there's method to check out one of the free websites we've linked in the description that have more test images and patterns that you can use to get your display looking nice on your own these sites take longer and still rely on you eyeballing things but they'll give you more samples than what's built into your OS for more granular fine-tuning and better real-world results of course if you're a little more serious about color because you're a graphic designer home theater enthusiast or you tech channel on YouTube you might not trust yourself to get these things right just by fiddling with the monitor yourself in this case you may want to try method number three downloading a color profile for your display color profiles help map color information in files and UI elements which are stored as a series of numbers to actual colors that your screen can display there are a number of standardized profiles such as srgb a common default profile for computers and Adobe RGB which is popular with photographers and designers but there are custom profiles available for specific display models to help them reproduce colors more accurately if you want to see if there's one for your monitor there are websites staffed by professionals that have created color profiles for many different displays which we've also linked in the video description along with a page on how to install a color profile on windows but it should be noted that even that might not be enough to get your monitor looking its best slight manufacturing differences in display panels can result in even two units of the same model right next to each other connected to the same computer displaying colors differently so if you want to be super serial about your display calibration you'll want to try method number for buying a hardware calibrator that you place on your screen then run accompanying software the calibrator will then be able to tell you exactly how much your color balance luminance and other factors need to be adjusted to get your display as accurate as possible not only that but most calibrators will save a special custom color profile for your monitor as well the downside is hardware calibrators can be a little pricey they typically start at a hundred US dollars but electronic shops sometimes offer them for rental if you aren't a professional who constantly needs to recalibrate displays so while it would be nice if all of our monitors looked perfect out of the box the reality is a little legwork can go a long way especially if everyone on your screen looks like a talking spray tan right now speaking of making everything on your screen look beautiful Squarespace Squarespace lets you build a simple powerful and beautiful website that is easy for people to use and looks great on every device everything from a computer monitor to a cell phone screen wow that's a camera that's not what I meant to do they offer 24/7 support via live chat and email it starts at just $12 a month with a free domain thrown in if you by Squarespace for the year every site includes their commerce modules so that's a free online store and they've got all kinds of great tools to make the experience easier such as their logo designer so check them out at the link in the video description and try out Squarespace for free yes my friends you get two weeks for free with no credit card required and if you use Ofra Kotecki you can save 10% on your first purchase thanks for watching guys like dislike leave a comment with suggestions for future videos check out our other video here 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Channel: Techquickie

Views: 1,782,511

Rating: 4.9004245 out of 5

Keywords: calibrate, monitor, calibration, srgb, color space, adobe rgb, prophoto rgb, rgb, cmyk, gamma, graphic design, image editing, photoshop, color profile, icc, icc profile, display, screen, luminance, chroma, brightness, contrast, spyder, x-rite

Id: f1PCG5hXUmE

Length: 5min 34sec (334 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 20 2017