[shuttertalk]

Did you know that ambient light can affect the perceived colour of your monitor and workspace. Even if you've calibrated your monitor to the nth degree, there will be shifts if you work by daylight during the day and say use incandescent lights by night. More importantly, your audience will also perceive colour differently, depending on what hardware they are using, the age, and even what OS they use.

Above, different calibration shows that “white” is often an assumed color:
- The original image, shot under fluorescent light with a point-and-shoot camera.
- Approximate color shift on a Mac before Snow Leopard.
- Approximate color shift on an aging CRT monitor.
- Close to true color, as seen on the laptop on which the photo was processed.

Here are some tips to prepare a room for work, and also for calibrating your monitor.
http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2010/04/...r-the-web/

[Zig]

I do reckon that for anyone half-serious about photography, hardware calibration is a must. Datacolor Spyder I've found to be the most cost-effective: turn the ambient light sensor off and recalibrate monthly, as TFT monnies flap about even more than CRT ones, in my experience. I have an additional "aging" Compaq CRT that even now outdoes the stability and dot-pitch(or equivalent in TFT terms) of my "weffer-thin-mint" TFT one.
I must also add, that despite the level of precision that we often think we need, we all still "develop" our photos differently: That is, one person's eye or preference might be for a default style that another might consider too dense, dark or underexposed..yet perfectly "normal" for the style of the originator...we did used to develop film in the same subjective way without too many worries about standardisation, after all. I remember looking at some of Don McCullen's landscapes: to many an eye, quite dense and "incorrectly-zoned" monochromes..yet in fact purposefully dark because that was both his style and "comment".
One of many of our gadget-correct hangups is that of needless worry about stuff that needn't be worried about: we'll complain that a lens isn't good enough because we assess its performance by peeping at the pixels on the edge or corner: yet how many peepers ever output enough real-world prints for this to be a concern? Similarly, unless one's monny is wildly doing what one doesn't want it to do in terms of gamma or colour cast, one generally can do more than get by.
Mind you, here's the very thing: monnies, like all other modern gadgetry, are built to a price and with an inbuilt obsolescence-cycle...consequently there is in fact even greater need to do a monthly profile on a modern TFT monny with hardware like a Spyder, unless one is spending a few thousand quid. Colour shifts in TFT monnies are up and down like a bishop's cassock, to be honest.

[Toad]

Colour shifts in TFT monnies are up and down like a bishop's cassock, to be honest.

[shuttertalk]

I must also add, that despite the level of precision that we often think we need, we all still "develop" our photos differently: That is, one person's eye or preference might be for a default style that another might consider too dense, dark or underexposed..yet perfectly "normal" for the style of the originator....

I always got hung up about that - after all I can calibrate my monitor to the nth degree but it doesn't guarantee that whoever is viewing the photo halfway around the world is going to have the same calibration, or even the same appreciation. I suppose then beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and you can only do your part to make sure that they are able to use a common reference point (should they wish to use it) to which to judge your work.

[EnglishBob]

My LCD is very stable, I recalibrate monthly for the most part and it hardly ever makes an adjustment... My laptop screen on the other hand is just horrible at holding a profile..