Q&A: Do you calibrate your monitor?
By signcraft
Posted on Sunday, March 17th, 2024
A reader wants to know:
“Do others calibrate their display to match the output from their digital printer? If so, how do they do it?”
To make sure your digital prints match the color you see on your display, many recommend calibrating your monitor. How do you do that, and how often should you recalibrate it?
I use open source software called DisplayCAL and a X-Rite Optix XR DTP94 colorimeter. It’s most important to calibrate when getting a new monitor. Out of the box, most monitors are WAY too bright. I usually calibrate once or twice a year. I use soft proofing to see which/how colors will shift using our printer profile for 3M IJ180 C (the print vinyl we use the most). It’s not perfect and there are probably people that obsess about on-screen color matching perfection. In 25 years of doing this, the best means of checking color is with test prints. Profiling monitors helps get one get 95% of the way there.