External Monitor Calibration

[krs]

In the discussion just recently about required/suggested Mac maintenance, one item for MacPro and MacMini items that never came up is calibration of the external monitor.

I'm reading that if one really requires accurate colours, than this calibration should be done every two weeks because several monitor components age - that sure sounds like a maintenance item to me.
I just got into a discussion with a friend of mine where we were exchanging scanned images of product flyers and, although we couldn't see each others monitors, it became obvious that my monitor calibration was way off. Other than to adjust brightness and contrast to suit me, I only tried to calibrate the monitor once over all the years I had it.

I tried using the built in monitor calibration in Display preferences again and am having trouble to really see the change in the visual appearance clearly.
Other than spending a large chunk of money to buy an external calibration device, is there any other way I can try to calibrate my monitor in at least to a reasonable degree, enough for personal use where the colour is at least close to what it should be.

 

[ferrarr]

How could you know your monitor calibration was way off? Are you talking about printing something out? Because that could be a print setting?

 

[Raz0rEdge]

Software calibration tools will be limited in what they can do. If the various profiles available to you aren't sufficient, you might want to explore the external calibration tool. I've worked with some X-Rite's for work and they do a good job. Check out X-Rite Colormunki Smile and their other products.

 

[krs]

How could you know your monitor calibration was way off? Are you talking about printing something out? Because that could be a print setting?

No, nothing to do with printing.
We are both scanning a copy of the same paper document (different copies of course, but I have several copies and they look visually pretty much identical, so I assume the other person's copy is the same).
My scans always came out too light compared to the paper copy so I used preview to adjust the image until it matched the paper copy I had.
The other person now tells me that this image I adjusted is much too dark, so he sent me the image back adjusted to what his monitor shows as being correct.
That image is much lighter on my monitor than the original paper copy.
If I assume my monitor caslibration is off, that would explain why my scans show up too light.
Until yesterday I was looking at scanner settings to adjust that - never even suspected the monitor, but now I'm thinking it's more likely the monitor that is the problem.
In any case, the correct monitor calibration is the right starting point I think. I'm just not keen to fork out several hundred dollars for some hardware calibration device. Maybe one can rent one - or there is a consumer version with fewer bells and whistles for les than $100.-

 

[krs]

Software calibration tools will be limited in what they can do. If the various profiles available to you aren't sufficient, you might want to explore the external calibration tool. I've worked with some X-Rite's for work and they do a good job. Check out X-Rite Colormunki Smile and their other products.

Thanks, that looks like something I could use. This apparently occasionally goes on sale for less than $100 Cdn.
There also seems to be another competitive tool for about the same price.

It's just when I googled for a product like that, all the ones I saw were $250 and up.

 

[krs]

I managed to find a Colormunki Display (which is actually a step up from the Colormunki Smile) for $100 Cdn.

But reading up on it a bit, it doesn't seem to be that easy to actually use it - nothing like setting it up on the display, plugging it into a USB port and clicking calibrate.

One think I just came across is a menu setting on the Dell U2412M monitor I'm using.
There is a setting for Gamma which was set to "PC". The other option is "MAC" (All capitals on the monitor, but I assume they mean "Mac".
So I changed the setting from PC to MAC and now the screen looks even brighter than before - and that with a brightness setting of 31%

But what I was reading - and that's where I could use some feedback - is that the Mac originally used a different gamma than a PC, so having a PC and Mac option made sense.
But now (I'm on ElCapitan), the Mac uses the gamma setting 2.2, same as a PC I believe - so I wonder if the gamma setting "PC" was actually correct at this time.

Other general question - does anyone have experience actually calibrating a monitor using one of these Colorimeters?
Like I said - seems more complicated than I thought initially; I don't want to lay out the $100 and then find out that the 10 minute calibration that's advertised ends up taking hours.