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These days when it comes to any video project, people are expected to do a bit of color tweaking to their final output. This can be as simple as a simple curves adjustment to get a nice looking contrasty image to advanced dedicated color grading tools such as Magic Bullet Looks or Blackmagic’s Davinci.

I’m taking a guess here but I estimate over half of the videos made these days end up on the Internet. One problem – What if your LCD display is showing wildly inaccurate colors? If you are grading from a wrong starting point, the chance are, your video isn’t going to look like how you wanted it to on the majority of people’s monitors out there. It could even look totally wrong with people looking like they come from Jersey Shore. All those hours spent finessing a custom look can be wasted if your monitor is not calibrated. This is where a hardware monitor calibrater comes in to the picture.

Getting one of these has always been on my to do list. What they basically do is change the way your monitor looks so that the colors you see on screen are as close to how they should look like in the real world. So white will be 6500k (or whatever you set it at) which is what daylight is and reds will be proper red without the crazy saturation or greenish hue and so on with the other colors.

In this instance, I’ve decided to go with an X-Rite i1 Eyeone Display 2 as from reading many reviews out there, it is a very capable, pro standard colorimeter device which isn’t going to cost an arm and a leg. I got one new from eBay for $150US plus $18 delivery which is a very good deal considering if I were to buy this locally in Australia, it would have cost twice as much.

Another thing I learnt about the X-rite is that it uses the same hardware device that the Lacie BlueEye pro uses.

The only difference between the two packages is the software that it uses to create a color profile for your monitor. The X-rite comes with Eye-One Match 3 whilst the LAcie uses it’s own BlueEye Pro program. The other difference is the price with the Lacie retailing for around $100 more than the X-Rite. You can use either software with either device as was mentioned before, the hardware is identical.

What’s strange is the BlueEye Pro program can be freely found on Lacie’s own website to download. The same can be said with the X-Rite Match 3 software which can be found on X-Rite’s website. So begs the question, why would anyone bother with buying the more expensive Lacie version? In my opinion, after having used both, the Lacie software gives much better results. The interface may not be as bling as the Match 3 but it does come with a test and report utility which is so so so handy. But still, it’s available free so who know’s what Lacie is thinking?

Now I’m not here to tell you how to use these things, that can be found here at TFTCentral. All I am saying is that, if you are serious about your color grades or color correction or color in general, do youself a favour and get yourself one of these. Professional photographers should be using these things and so should videographers. I re-calibrate my monitors twice a month as they are getting old and always seem to go out of calibration. This can be easily tested using the BlueEye Pro, Test and Report feature as was previously mentioned which gives you a graph to show how close your monitor is to the ideal settings.

By next week I will be getting a couple of Dell U2410 monitors which are drool worthy high quality 8 bit IPS panel monitors. Learn more here.