**Testing Color Calibration on Different Monitors**

We're going to test three different scenarios on three different monitors. The first one is looking at photos, watching videos, and then playing games. We'll see if Anna can tell the difference between the calibrated and uncalibrated monitors, and which one she prefers.

This will help us determine whether or not there's a clear difference between the two, and if as a content consumer, she prefers the uncalibrated monitor. If so, we know that there isn't much of a point for a gamer to get a color calibration tool.

**Conducting the Test**

Now, we have Anna here and we're going to do a test to see whether or not she can tell the difference between all three monitors - calibrated and uncalibrated. We'll do four tests for each monitor and see how accurate she is. Are you ready? Okay, so have a look and let me know what you think.

Okay, I think this one is calibrated, and the previous one was also calibrated. Now I kind of think they are all... have been on calibrated. Okay okay perfect well then close your eyes. Okay, now we're doing the old crowd favorite, which is Doom! So, I actually think this one looks better but I actually think it's uncalibrated.

**Results**

So, there you go! Not bad! When it comes to media consumption, you got them all wrong when you came to the photos. Yeah, especially if you didn't know what was a comparative like when you switched between calibrated and on-calibrated, and I could see you switching yeah it was clear yeah yeah.

But when I didn't know which one you were choosing when it was like a blind test, yeah I had no idea. Yeah! You got them all right!

**Conclusion**

Based on these results, we can draw some fairly interesting conclusions with a couple of caveats.

The first conclusion is that the effect of color calibration varies from monitor to monitor. For example, on this Dell monitor behind me, the difference was clear - it was really easy to tell. Whereas with the BenQ monitor, it was almost identical because the BenQ monitor was very close to these recommended settings out of the box.

Honestly, it's not only the monitors that have an effect on it but it's even the color profile that you use! So if you use a very flat gamer profile, there's a very big difference between the calibrated result and the uncalibrated result. Whereas the standard color profile may be closer to what you should be using if you're doing color-sensitive work.

**Two Types of Monitor Users**

The second conclusion comes with a bit of a caveat which we'll get into in a little bit, but in my opinion, there are two types of monitor users - content creators and content consumers. If you're a content creator, you should seriously consider investing in a monitor calibrator because it's going to mean that you get more accurate color grading results from your specific monitor.

And you know that you can trust them when it comes to something as subjective as content consumption! Though I don't think you should worry too much about getting a monitor calibrator, especially considering the fact that Anna consistently preferred the uncalibrated look to the calibrated look on pretty much all of the monitors.

**Caveat**

Now, let's get to the caveat around that statement because all three of the monitors used for this test are IPS panels and they have pretty good color reproduction out of the box. They produce a very pleasing image. So I don't know necessarily if this point stands for like a low-end TN panel that has pretty bad colors.

**Follow-up Video**

I want to do a follow-up video where I see whether or not color calibration can actually save a pretty nasty-looking monitor. Let me know in the comments section below if you want to see that follow-up video!

**Thank You**

With that, thank you very much for watching! If you like this video, subscribe to the channel for more videos like this one. Follow me on whatever social media you're interested in! Until the next video, bye bye!

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: entoday we're gonna see if a noob can tell the difference between a calibrated and an uncalibrated monitor and which one they prefer bye bye they I mean Anna and I'm also going to be involved we are also gonna take it further than that because we don't only want to answer whether or not you can tell the difference between a calibrated in an uncalibrated monitor we also want to know which one's better for what use case and who should care about calibrating a monitor and who shouldn't worry too much about it but before we get into any of that let's actually talk about what color calibration is how you do it and what kind of tools you need for the job considering that this is a tech Channel let's start out with the tools that you need to use for color calibration what you need for this whole process is called a monitor calibrator and it's this little puck looking thing the specific one that we're looking at today is called the data color spider x elite which under the cover on the one side has a camera or a spectrophotometer if you want to sound like a real professional on the other side it's got an ambient light sensor and then it's attached to your PC via this USB cord which is a little bit short on this one if your pcs placed under your desk now how this whole process works is you download the accompanying software off of data colors website when you fire up the software it asks you various questions about your monitor like what kind of backlight it uses after that you plug in the little puck which then takes an ambient light reading after it takes an ambient light reading the software gives you either a recommendation on what monitor brightness to use or it chastises you for having way too much light in your room so that you have to close curtains and things like that after you set the monitor to the exact recommended brightness the software will make the monitor flash various colors and brightnesses of stuff which the spectrophotometer will then use to calibrate the monitor when this whole process is finished the software will give you this little report card which tells you the difference between pre calibration and post calibration and it also shows you how close the monitor currently is to the color standard that the software uses in terms of like gamma white point delta ii primaries all these kind of monetary keywords now all of this may not mean very much to you but it is actually very important for anybody who does anything color critical on a monitor so let's say you have two colors to working on color grading a movie and their monitors on set to the exact same color settings if the one person does a bunch of editing and tries to get a certain effect and a scene and they give it over to the other colorist who then looks at it they may not be on the same page of what that looks like because well their monitors aren't displaying the exact same image I actually have first-hand experience with this I add it and color grade all of my videos on that LG 27u d88 monitor and what I've noticed is every time I render the video and watch it on any different display it looks quite different and I never really know which one is the correct representation of the video but if you calibrate all of your monitors you'll get the same representation of that video on various monitors so that's that's quite important another place where this is really important is if you're a photographer that likes to print your work if you color grade a specific effect on an uncalibrated monitor you may print the photo and it looks different and it doesn't quite capture that same feeling that you wanted it to a calibrated monitor will remove all of that guesswork now all of these use cases relate to professionals who color grade and honestly if you're a color grader you know that you need to calibrate your monitor but what about gaming does it actually make a difference for a gamer or for a Content consumer to actually color grade their monitor and that's where the noob test comes in with Anna hi okay so what we're gonna do is we're gonna test three different scenarios on three different monitors the first one is going to be looking at photos watching videos and then playing games so we're gonna see if Anna can tell the difference between the calibrated and the uncalibrated monitors and which one she prefers because there may be a very clear difference between the two but if as a Content consumer she prefers the uncalibrated monitor then yeah we know that there isn't much of a point for like a gamer to get a color calibration tool thing and I'll also do these tests and then we'll conclude so now we have Anna here and we're gonna do a test to see whether or not she can tell the difference between all three of these monitors calibrated and uncalibrated so we're going to do four tests for each monitor and we're gonna see how accurate she is cool are you ready okay so have a look and yeah let me know what you think okay I think that this is calibrated and the previous one was also calibrated now I kind of think they are have all been on calibrated okay okay perfect well then close your eyes okay okay let's let's do a fourth one and then you can make up your mind okay I'm calibrated the second two were calibrated and so now we're doing the old crowd favorite which is doom okay so I actually think this one looks better but I actually think it's uncalibrated so I think the first one was calibrated and the second one is not calibrated but this one I think looks better okay okay okay what we're gonna do is show another results now and then we can see what she thinks so there you go not bad well when it comes to the media consumption you got them all wrong when you came to the photos yeah especially if you didn't know what's a comparative like when you switched between calibrated and on calibrated and I could see you switching yeah it was clear yeah yeah but when I didn't know which one you were choosing when it was like a blind test yeah I had no idea yeah all right you got them all right and you made it clear that you preferred I think with those results we can draw some fairly interesting conclusions with a couple of caveats which we'll get to in a bit the first one is that the effect of color calibration varies from monitor to monitor for example on this Dell monitor behind me the difference was clear it was really easy to tell whereas with the BenQ monitor it was almost identical because the BenQ monitor was very close to these recommended settings out of the box and honestly it's not only the monitors that have an effect on it but it's even the color profile that you use so if you use a very flat gamer profile there's a very big difference between the calibrated result in the uncalibrated result whereas the standard color profile may be closer to what you should be using if you're doing color sensitive work now the second conclusion comes with a bit of a caveat which we'll get into in a little bit but in my opinion there are two types of monitor users there are content creators and content consumers if you're a content creator you should seriously consider investing in a monitor calibrator because it's gonna mean that you get more accurate color grading results from your specific monitor and you know that you can trust them when it comes to something as subjective as content consumption though I don't think you should worry too much about getting a monitor calibrator especially considering the fact that anna consistently preferred the uncalibrated look to the calibrated look on pretty much all of the monitors now let's get to the caveat around that statement because all three of the monitors that are used for this test are IPS panels and they have pretty good color reproduction out of the box they produce a very pleasing image so I don't know necessarily if this point stands for like a low-end TN panel that has pretty bad colors so I want to do a follow-up video where I see whether or not color calibration can actually save a pretty nasty-looking monitor so let me know in the comments section below if you want to see that follow-up video and with that thank you very much for watching if you like this video subscribe to the channel for more videos like this one follow me on whatever social media you're interested and until the next video bye byetoday we're gonna see if a noob can tell the difference between a calibrated and an uncalibrated monitor and which one they prefer bye bye they I mean Anna and I'm also going to be involved we are also gonna take it further than that because we don't only want to answer whether or not you can tell the difference between a calibrated in an uncalibrated monitor we also want to know which one's better for what use case and who should care about calibrating a monitor and who shouldn't worry too much about it but before we get into any of that let's actually talk about what color calibration is how you do it and what kind of tools you need for the job considering that this is a tech Channel let's start out with the tools that you need to use for color calibration what you need for this whole process is called a monitor calibrator and it's this little puck looking thing the specific one that we're looking at today is called the data color spider x elite which under the cover on the one side has a camera or a spectrophotometer if you want to sound like a real professional on the other side it's got an ambient light sensor and then it's attached to your PC via this USB cord which is a little bit short on this one if your pcs placed under your desk now how this whole process works is you download the accompanying software off of data colors website when you fire up the software it asks you various questions about your monitor like what kind of backlight it uses after that you plug in the little puck which then takes an ambient light reading after it takes an ambient light reading the software gives you either a recommendation on what monitor brightness to use or it chastises you for having way too much light in your room so that you have to close curtains and things like that after you set the monitor to the exact recommended brightness the software will make the monitor flash various colors and brightnesses of stuff which the spectrophotometer will then use to calibrate the monitor when this whole process is finished the software will give you this little report card which tells you the difference between pre calibration and post calibration and it also shows you how close the monitor currently is to the color standard that the software uses in terms of like gamma white point delta ii primaries all these kind of monetary keywords now all of this may not mean very much to you but it is actually very important for anybody who does anything color critical on a monitor so let's say you have two colors to working on color grading a movie and their monitors on set to the exact same color settings if the one person does a bunch of editing and tries to get a certain effect and a scene and they give it over to the other colorist who then looks at it they may not be on the same page of what that looks like because well their monitors aren't displaying the exact same image I actually have first-hand experience with this I add it and color grade all of my videos on that LG 27u d88 monitor and what I've noticed is every time I render the video and watch it on any different display it looks quite different and I never really know which one is the correct representation of the video but if you calibrate all of your monitors you'll get the same representation of that video on various monitors so that's that's quite important another place where this is really important is if you're a photographer that likes to print your work if you color grade a specific effect on an uncalibrated monitor you may print the photo and it looks different and it doesn't quite capture that same feeling that you wanted it to a calibrated monitor will remove all of that guesswork now all of these use cases relate to professionals who color grade and honestly if you're a color grader you know that you need to calibrate your monitor but what about gaming does it actually make a difference for a gamer or for a Content consumer to actually color grade their monitor and that's where the noob test comes in with Anna hi okay so what we're gonna do is we're gonna test three different scenarios on three different monitors the first one is going to be looking at photos watching videos and then playing games so we're gonna see if Anna can tell the difference between the calibrated and the uncalibrated monitors and which one she prefers because there may be a very clear difference between the two but if as a Content consumer she prefers the uncalibrated monitor then yeah we know that there isn't much of a point for like a gamer to get a color calibration tool thing and I'll also do these tests and then we'll conclude so now we have Anna here and we're gonna do a test to see whether or not she can tell the difference between all three of these monitors calibrated and uncalibrated so we're going to do four tests for each monitor and we're gonna see how accurate she is cool are you ready okay so have a look and yeah let me know what you think okay I think that this is calibrated and the previous one was also calibrated now I kind of think they are have all been on calibrated okay okay perfect well then close your eyes okay okay let's let's do a fourth one and then you can make up your mind okay I'm calibrated the second two were calibrated and so now we're doing the old crowd favorite which is doom okay so I actually think this one looks better but I actually think it's uncalibrated so I think the first one was calibrated and the second one is not calibrated but this one I think looks better okay okay okay what we're gonna do is show another results now and then we can see what she thinks so there you go not bad well when it comes to the media consumption you got them all wrong when you came to the photos yeah especially if you didn't know what's a comparative like when you switched between calibrated and on calibrated and I could see you switching yeah it was clear yeah yeah but when I didn't know which one you were choosing when it was like a blind test yeah I had no idea yeah all right you got them all right and you made it clear that you preferred I think with those results we can draw some fairly interesting conclusions with a couple of caveats which we'll get to in a bit the first one is that the effect of color calibration varies from monitor to monitor for example on this Dell monitor behind me the difference was clear it was really easy to tell whereas with the BenQ monitor it was almost identical because the BenQ monitor was very close to these recommended settings out of the box and honestly it's not only the monitors that have an effect on it but it's even the color profile that you use so if you use a very flat gamer profile there's a very big difference between the calibrated result in the uncalibrated result whereas the standard color profile may be closer to what you should be using if you're doing color sensitive work now the second conclusion comes with a bit of a caveat which we'll get into in a little bit but in my opinion there are two types of monitor users there are content creators and content consumers if you're a content creator you should seriously consider investing in a monitor calibrator because it's gonna mean that you get more accurate color grading results from your specific monitor and you know that you can trust them when it comes to something as subjective as content consumption though I don't think you should worry too much about getting a monitor calibrator especially considering the fact that anna consistently preferred the uncalibrated look to the calibrated look on pretty much all of the monitors now let's get to the caveat around that statement because all three of the monitors that are used for this test are IPS panels and they have pretty good color reproduction out of the box they produce a very pleasing image so I don't know necessarily if this point stands for like a low-end TN panel that has pretty bad colors so I want to do a follow-up video where I see whether or not color calibration can actually save a pretty nasty-looking monitor so let me know in the comments section below if you want to see that follow-up video and with that thank you very much for watching if you like this video subscribe to the channel for more videos like this one follow me on whatever social media you're interested and until the next video bye bye