FAQ: Color Awareness & Calibration

I think I've posted about this briefly before but I wanted to quickly touch on it again. Monitor calibration. Monitor calibration is "the process of optimizing the color settings of a monitor to match selected colors of a printed output."

By having a calibrated monitor it ensures that you see on your screen, what you will get in print. If your monitor ISN'T calibrated, photos you view on the web (or your computer) can appear slightly more red, green or overly bright. Of course, MOST people do NOT have a calibrated monitor. And unless you edit photos on a regular basis, or for a living - you may not have a need for these devices or software.

If your monitor isn't calibrated, you can still take steps to help the photos you view on the web look correct by downloading "color aware" internet browsers. Safari (mac) & Mozilla Firefox (pc) are a couple of them (Internet Explorer is not). With Firefox you just have to go to Tools, Options, Manage Addons and search for color awareness. It's as simple as that. My laptop isn't calibrated, and I can tell. But viewing my blog through the Color Aware browser certainly helps!