When digital first starting shifting the world of photography, one of the topics I covered the most was color management. In fact, the second book I ever wrote–many years ago–was on the subject of color management.
Top among the issues in color management that I encouraged among photographers was to calibrate their monitor display. Back in those days, it felt that most photographers took this subject seriously, and calibrated their displays on a relatively frequent basis.
These days, it seems I never hear photographers talking about display calibration, and when I ask about the subject many say they simply don’t perform a display calibration.
In fairness, with today’s digital displays and more advanced operating systems, it isn’t as important to take an active role in color management as it was in the early days of digital photography. But that doesn’t mean you can expect accurate results among different devices–such as monitors and printers–if you’re not calibrating your monitor display.
While calibrating a monitor with today’s equipment won’t cause as dramatic an improvement in your workflow as was the case with older analog displays, calibration is still important. You don’t need to calibrate as frequently today as we did in the past, but calibrating every six months or so is still a very good idea.
There are a variety of tools available for calibrating your display to improve the accuracy of what you see and the quality of your workflow. One product I highly recommend is the X-Rite ColorMunki Display, which you can find here: