i1Studio-M20

[Damien Symonds]

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Nothing's right

I know I’ve said this before, but I have to hammer it home again. NEVER underestimate the effect your surrounding light has on the way your photos appear. You’re on this page because your screen and prints differ in colour. Before proceeding, I need you to make a frank appraisal of the light in your room. If it’s too yellow (which is the most common problem) it will make your prints appear yellow, and therefore cause you to conclude that your screen’s calibration is too cold.

If you think, or even suspect, that your light is the culprit, take steps to rectify it. Get whiter bulbs if you can, or at least try assessing your prints in daylight. I would hate to be wasting your time with all of these calibration adjustments if the calibration wasn’t actually the problem.

If you’re sure the light is ok, read on …

Let’s begin with brightness

From the home screen, choose "Display" again to get to the targets page.  Pull down the "Luminance" menu to take a look at your options:

• If your screen is a little bit darker than your prints, choose the next highest number.
• If your screen is quite a bit darker than your prints, choose an even higher number.
• If your screen is brighter than your prints, choose the next lowest number.  (But seriously, if you have to go below 80, that's a problem.  You have to get more light in your room.)
• If you've calibrated several times and none of the presets work exactly right for you, you need to manually adjust your screen's brightness to get a good match, then choose "Native" from the menu.

Next, the colour

Pull down the "White Point" menu to take a look at your options:

What setting to choose

Remember how we chose “Native” the first time? Did you write down your Native result from your first calibration?  I hope you did, because you need it now.

This gets a tiny bit confusing.  The White Point targets are listed as "D" values - from D50 to D75.  But your calibration result was given as a "K" result - remember how mine was 7038K? Well, you simply divide the K value by 100 to get the D value.  My 7038K screen is roughly D70.  If your screen was 8193K, that would mean roughly D82.  I hope you get the idea.

So figure out the "D" value of your screen, then ...

• If your screen needs to be cooler to match your prints, choose the next highest D target.
• If your screen needs to be warmer to match your prints, choose the next lowest D target.
• (Or if you screen needs to be a lot warmer, maybe choose an even lower target.)

So if, for example, my D70 screen was a bit too cold, I'd choose the D65 target for my next calibration.

I hope this makes sense!  Please comment below if you need assistance.

With your new targets chosen, press Next to continue and calibrate again.

Re-calibrate >>