One of the most fun stages in photography is post-processing. But if your computer monitor is not displaying the exact color, then all your editing may be wrong-and one of the least funny steps in photography is re-doing a bunch of you already done! That is why the proper color calibration is so important for your monitor. In this article, I have reviewed the Calibrite DisplayPro HL, a device that you can use to test and calibrate your monitor, to ensure that it is enough to edit a photo.
Color calibration
Many people can get acquainted with the basic adjustment available on monitor. Most of them allow you to change the color temperature and adjust the brightness. Unfortunately, it will rarely get closer to reproducing you to the exact colors, even if you manage to get the temperature correctly so that the neutral color looks really “neutral”. It is not possible to strengthen your monitor with just those basic adjustments.
Now, some monitors come with very advanced calibration equipment, but do not have a vast majority. For example, consider my MacBook Air. It is an original color calibration tool, but it does not do much except you allow you to choose a white point and sometimes a gamma curve. It also has various types of underlying profiles, but they are all normal and do not take into account variation or variation on individual screens that can occur with single screen over time!
Thus, to accurately tune the colors of a monitor, you usually require an external hardware device, and this is where the Calibrite displayprin -like tools come.
Calibrite Display Pro HL
The device I am reviewing today is called Calibrite DisplayPro HL. It is a small USB device that comes with a soft fabric bag, and for USB-C with USB-A Adapter you still use USB-A. It has a rotating hand and a counterweight that allows you to keep it gently on your monitor. The part you placed on your monitor are padded with a soft content, so it will not scratch your screen. It has a small lens designed to measure the actual colors produced by your monitor (as well as a spread cover and a tripod mount that is used to measure colors from the projector).
The main function of the device is to make color profiles for monitor, and it does this in combination with calibrite profiles software. Although Calibrite has created a lot of calibration equipment, it can measure a lot of brightness of new HL or “high luminosity” version 3000 NITs (CD/M^2). Thus, it can measure and examine OLED, Apple XDR, Mini-Lead, as well as traditional LCD displays.
Of course, to really use it, you also have to install software. It can be found Calibrite websiteAnd it is available for Macos and Windows (and possibly using Displaycal on Linux, although I have not tested it). I tested it on Macos.
The idea is very simple and quite easy to use software – only the negative side is that you have to create an account to use it. Once you do this, you simply choose the calibration option, go through some signals, and hang the device on your monitor. The software measures each for accuracy against a defined standard, displaying hundreds of color patch.
The entire process takes about five minutes. Once this happens, the software creates a new color profile so that your monitor is displayed as possible as possible. Finally, you then select this color profile within the monitor-related menu of your computer, and your monitor will display the exact color.
This means that two monitors calibrated with the device should look the same, although there may be a slight difference depending on the quality of the monitor. Low-quality monitors may still have some problems, but I tested the device on my MacBook Air and a consonant monitor and the results were quite close. (Note that a properly calibrated monitor looks slightly darker and warm that many people expect initially.)
At the end of creating a profile, the tool may show you what color location you have achieved compared to standard color locations such as Adobe RGB, P3, Profoto and SRGB. It is quite useful to see if your monitor is really advertised.
All these stages can also be done evenly for a projector, as well as the displaypro HL device is flipped so that it is above the defuser lens.
Accuracy check utility
There is another feature of Calibrite Profiler that is quite useful after calibrating it, and it is checking the color profile of your display for accuracy. This calibration is similar to the utility, but it displays twenty -four colors of a color target and measures them. After testing, the Calibrite Profiler gives you all the OFE 2000 values, which indicates how far the color is from the reference color.
One way to see this test is how close your monitor is for the “ideal” target values. A low quality monitor can score poorly in this test, even when calibrated properly, this target may not be able to fully display colors.
Not only this feature is useful to test the accuracy of your generated profile, but you can also use it to see how good your monitor is really. It is difficult to get an inferior display, no matter how much you profile them.
There is also a “Monitor Quick Czech” which is even more basic, but can broadly tell you how far your monitor has gone since the final calibration. I profiled my monitor a month after the initial calibration, and it changed very slightly, so I think it is a good idea to profile your performance every 6–12 months.
Monitoring of uniformity equipment
Calibrite profiler has a monitor uniformity tool, which measures nine areas of a monitor and tells you how your monitor varies on its surface in luminance and white points. You use the tool by placing dysplaypro HL in areas of monitor as indicated by Calibrite Profileer Software:
I always suspected that my M1 MacBook Air was a little dark in the bottom-left corner, and now it has been confirmed:
There is also a more detailed report on the variance measured in white, gray and black colors:
Sadly, such a variance is a permanent property of a monitor and cannot be corrected. But this can be an important tool because you think the dark area is in your photo, while it is actually in the monitor. (Time to re -edit 1000 photos…)
Camera Profileer
Another feature is quite useful – an input color profile generator, raw developer software such as lighterrooms or a pro. The idea behind this device is simple: if you are shooting in controlled lighting, you can manually set the white balance of your camera and take a shot of the color checker passport of the calibrite.
With this shot, you can generate a profile that can be loaded into your raw developer. This profile will adjust colors so that all the shots in a session under controlled lighting will be as accurate colors as possible.
The device is very simple to use, and you just have to load an unhappy 16-bit TIFF file to the Calibrite Color Checker Passport. You can choose a format that either works with lieters or captures a Pro.
There is also a lighter plugin to help automatically to automatically make up the process. If you use the ICC-TFF option, the ICC profile can also be loaded into some open source programs such as dark, although dark users of the dark can prefer to use “color calibration” modules, which can be used directly with sample shots of different color charts.
I would also advise that an image is taken for each camera/lens combination. The color of various cameras can have significant variations in reproduction, and even there may be some variation between different lenses on the same camera.
final thoughts
Calibrite displaypro HL devices and related Calibrite Profileer Software are useful tools that can profile and test your monitor or projector, as well as generating color input profiles from your camera.
What I like about this color calibration solution is easy to use. I like even more that this monitor gives detailed, numeric data about performance and accuracy of calibration. It is useful to ensure whether your monitor is a high-end, accurate photo tuning device, or if it is equal to a junk car running on the sawdust and cooking oil.
I found no significant downside with this product, although it is possible to save some money with less expensive calibration devices if you do not need all these features. Popular options include Datakolar spider It is slightly less expensive at $ 169.
If you are interested in obtaining Calibrite DisplayPro HL, consider using any of these affiliated links to support photography life. Photography life is fully advertised for its loyal readers!
The general value is $ 279, however, currently has a sales that results in the price of $ 199.
Finally, note that you will also need to receive Calibrite Colorchecker Passport Photo 2 If you also plan to create color profiles for your camera with Calibrite Profilers. However, this is not necessary for monitor calibration.
