When it comes to using our computers or laptop along with the printers, it is crucial to properly calibrate the colors on both monitor and printer. Printers are made to output the graphics on the papers by using color combinations. However, the monitors do the same using a completely different method. So, when it comes to printing our desired documents or graphics using the printer, the actual image you see on the screen may vary when it gets printed out on paper. So, this is the reason why it becomes very important to color calibrate monitor to cartridges printer.
This would not be required if you are dealing with only black and white printouts. But, if you are a professional or using your printer on a regular basis, you would surely require to do calibration in a proper manner.
Also, if you are a professional like a photo editor, graphics designer, or interior designer, you would need a printer on a regular basis.
So, in that case, you should have a combo with proper configurations. It means, your monitor should show the exact thing you are getting on your printouts. Now, there are several ways to do the same. We have the proper hardware for the calibration tasks. But, you can do the same using other methods also.
Now, we are going to reveal all the details about monitor and printer calibration but keep a thing in mind that you can only configure your monitor. Configuring printer outputs is not advised.
But, using this strategy, you would surely get the desired results. It is very easy to perform the steps and all of them are the same for all kinds of monitors.
Now, without any further delays, let’s start discussing more this topic.
What is color calibration for the printer?
Color Calibration in the printers can be done using ICC profiling. For this, you will have to go deeper into the printer configurations and change the settings from there. But, there is no need to do it because if your monitor is creating the outputs, it is well and good. But, this term can be called the monitor configuration.
In other words, if you are not getting a proper output of your photos or graphics on your printer just as you see them on your monitor, there is something wrong with your monitor itself.
The colors are not showing accurately and this can be the main problem behind the issue.
The printer can also get damaged or you can see several issues with it. So, it is important to know if your hardware is working fine before you jump right into the calibration process.
Why is color calibration important?
Color calibration is important because it helps you get accurate printouts of your documents. Suppose, your monitor colors are not properly configured and you are designing anything on it. So, you would do it perfectly fine by adding the right colors as you see on the display.
But, when you get the printout, the colors will vary. This is why it is very important to calibrate your monitor if you are going to use if for any color printing task.
Again, it is not required to do if you have a black and white printer.
Color calibrate monitor is going to help you get satisfactory printing results in terms of digital printouts. If your monitor is properly configured and calibrated, there is no need to worry about the prints.
Whether it is your kid’s homework, job tasks, graphics printouts, or photographs, you should always make sure that the printer and monitor both and properly configured to produce the results you are looking for.
These are the reason why you would need to monitor calibration. In simple words, it will enhance your productivity.
Does color calibrate monitor affect the print quality?
No, there is no relation between the colors on your monitor and the printer. In fact, the monitor will just take the input from the system in the form of codes. It never knows the actual colors.
Then, the monitor is responsible to convert those digital codes into the actual printouts using its ink and the overall system. So, the calibration simply means that you are adjusting your monitor to show you specific colors in a specific way.
It is just like resetting your monitor to create colors as the manufacturer has designed it. So, there is no relation between the monitor calibration and the print quality.
But, there is surely a relation between the monitor color calibration and your overall work productivity.
If you are capable to see proper colors on your screen then the printer will give you the same outputs and the results will never frustrate you.
So, don’t expect your printer to produce the same results as your seeing on your screen. This is the reason why it is important to monitor calibration and keep everything neutral.
How does color calibration work?
Color calibration can work on two different levels. The first one is the software level and the second one is the hardware level. At the software level, we just change the monitor settings and try to reset all the changes to the Hue, color saturation, brightness, and all that to have a neutral color response.
In this method, we make use of our eyes and the inbuilt settings to calibrate our device. But, on the other hand, if we talk about the hardware calibration, we would need another hardware device to change these settings for us.
Now, you can also buy monitor-printer calibration devices. But, we generation use a colorimeter which shows us the actual color output as per the settings on our monitor.
This device will help you observe and also change these settings without letting you do anything else.
We are going to come to both these things below in this article. So, keep reading until the end.
Do you need hardware to color calibrate the monitor screen?
If you never use a printer and you do general things like word processing and internet surfing, you may never feel the need of calibration. But, it is surely worth it for everything because you always get to see the natural color outputs on your monitor.
However, if you don’t think your monitor’s color outputs are biased, just don’t do it. Most people would disagree with this when they don’t get the exact colors on the prints as they see on their monitor.
They are mostly dull or sometimes too bright or the color changes slightly. So, this is the place where you will have to think about the calibration and choose any of the suitable methods given below.
Type of your monitor also matters
If you are using a cheap and low-quality monitor, it is impossible to get great outputs from it. So, if you are not using a good quality display device, you should also consider upgrading it before you go for this method and try to enhance the quality reproduction.
However, you can still use these processed but they would not do much for you. So, it is always advised to use a good quality monitor if you are doing any professional work.
We would suggest you at least using a 4K monitor if you are into graphics designing or photo editing. This will help you receive numerous other benefits along with good colors.
How to Color Calibrate Monitor display with printer?
Software Calibration
As we discussed earlier, software color calibration is the simplest way to do this thing. We just have to play with the inbuilt color settings or we can also install third-party software to make this easier for us.
But, we are going to use the generic method here to help you without any issues. These settings are available in all operating systems and all kinds of devices.
Note: Before starting, make sure you haven’t changed the colors using the OSD menu in any way. If you have done that, just undo those changes. Also, make sure you are not using any eye protection software because they can also change the overall color of your screen.
- Go to the Windows search bar and search for Calibrate Display Color
- Enter the menu and click Next
- Now, follow the guidelines and adjust Gamma, Saturation, and Brightness
- If you don’t know about them at all, just make sure to set them at their normal/middle levels.
Once this is done, you have done everything you need to do. If you don’t want to enter these settings, you can also make use of software like Calibrize and ColorNavigator. These software will make everything very easy for you.
Hardware Calibration
This method would cost you some money because you will have to purchase an actual device in order to make this happen. You would need to buy a colorimeter as we discussed earlier. These devices can cost you around 100 to 200$.
So, if you are not ready to buy it, just don’t go further from this heading. You are good to go with the above one. But, if you are ready, you are going to get a lot of great advantages as well.
Some of the most popular and well-rated products are as follows. You can buy any of them from Amazon.
Once you have any of these products in your hand, you can easily connect it to your system and then attach to the monitor screen. This device will do its own job to change the monitor colors and configurations as per the natural levels.
Obviously, you will need some third-party software to see the difference and do the changes. So, you can follow the user manuals and make this happen.
Final Verdict
We hope you are not aware of everything related to the monitor and printer calibration. If you have anything else in your mind which should be there in this article, just let us know in the comments section.
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