Editing & Post-Production

Monitor calibration

Also called: display calibration, colour calibration

An uncalibrated screen lies in a specific direction, and you compensate for the lie without realising. Grade on a display running blue and you will warm everything up. Build thumbnails on one running bright and they arrive muddy on a phone.

Hardware calibration uses a colorimeter to profile the panel and generate a correction, and for video the target is usually Rec. 709 at a set white point and gamma. Calibrating by eye in software beats doing nothing. Even then, check the finished thumbnail on a phone and a TV, because your audience sits in front of uncalibrated screens.

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