In the Display Properties applet in Control Panel, go to the Settings tab and click on the Advanced button in the lower right. In ColorSync will conveniently find it on the Devices tab but Windows hides it a bit since you don't really need to mess with it manually. You can see that the profile is indeed associated with your monitor by looking in your Display Control Panel settings on Windows or ColorSync on OS X.
Monitor profile as seen in Mac OS X ColorSync But when you save the profile using your monitor calibration software, it will end up where it needs to so your operating system can put it to use compensating for the idiosyncrasies of your display setup. If you want to see where it is for yourself, you should be able to navigate to it using Windows Explorer or Finder on Mac OS X based on the table presented here.
What's important to note though is that the software knows where the correct folder is so you don't really need to worry about it too much. ~/Library/Colorsync/Profiles (User folder) Library/Colorsync/Profiles (System wide) Just where this location is depends on what operating system your computer is running. When it finishes, you give your new profile a name and the program saves it in the correct location.
You then click next a few times, answer a few questions, and watch as the software produces a series of color swatches that are read by the colorimeter sitting atop it. After installing the software, you plug in the colorimeter and affix it to the front of your monitor where the program tells you to. Get one and use it.Īlthough the specifics vary somewhat from product to product, they all work more or less the same way. Prices for complete hardware/software monitor calibration solutions start from under $100 and go up from there. Any of the current choices though can do a good job. Due both to their own excellent engineering as well as the technologies they have acquired in the mergers, X-Rite tends to have the highest rated products. Where once there were many companies, the market has collapsed into two major players: X-Rite which has absorbed both Monaco and Gretag-Macbeth, and Color Vision who remains on their own. If you are at all serious about the digital darkroom, you need a current, custom made display profile - one made just for your monitor, as you have it set up.Ī lot has changed over the past few years in the monitor calibrator market. Monitor color will also tend to drift somewhat over time as your monitor ages, particularly in the case of CRT displays.Īnd don't make the mistake of thinking you can use sRGB or Adobe RGB as your monitor profile either.
They are not nearly accurate enough to properly judge color since the image you see on the screen depends not only on your monitor but also on your video adapter and display driver as well as how you have the controls on your monitor adjusted. Some monitors come with default ICC profiles based on their type and particular design parameters, but these are generally relatively useless for photographic work. Before we can discuss where your monitor profile goes you have to actually have one. Of course I'm presuming before we get started that you have profiled your monitor. To find out just where it does go, read on. The bottom line is that it doesn't go directly in Photoshop at all. A frequent question that comes up in conjunction with Photoshop's color settings is what to do with your monitor profile. I've spent the past two weeks discussing how color management policies work in Photoshop and what those darned warning messages are all about.