Calibrating Displays - Serious contrast of colour reproduction across displays

melissavm

Heya,

I recently bought an external monitor to do some project work to go with my Macbook Pro and I'm noticing sharp differences in the colours of both displays. I was working on my external monitor and then moved the window across to that of the Macbook and the file looked way darker, even on the brightest setting.

Is there any easy way to calibrate both monitors so that they're both displaying a similar palette of colours?

I've attached a crop of a file I've been working on. On my external monitor this has blues and grays but on the Macbook screen the whole thing looks very dark.

Are there any other issues that working from this external monitor is likely to throw up?

Thanks in advance!

EvolutionNights

System Prefrences - Display - Colour.
Make sure both your monitors are working off the same display settings.
Alter the contrast, brightness etc to the same levels on both monitors.

Pixelcraft

Just fyi, I'd go with the macbook's default as your base. I can't make out that picture on any machines here, it looks very dark

InTheTrees

Its an absolute nightmare.

Our IT guy bought some expensive gadget that attaches to your computer screen and analyses the colours and adjusts. It didnt seem to work.

As far as I can figure the only way to do it reliably is to buy a few pantone colour chips and hold them up to each monitor and manually calibrate.

And then of course Clients all have their monitors calibrated differently anyway...