drklrd Loc: Cincinnati Ohio

I hear a lot of discussion over jpeg and raw but I usually do not hear much about printer and monitor white balance. If the camera is the source then should we not be looking for monitors being white balanced before we even assume the pic we shot as being too off color? Same goes for the print. That is if you are making the print yourself and not sending it to an outside print source. Outside print sources will white balance automatically and you may never know if your image was off color unless they tell you about it. Do outside sources tell us how to calibrate out monitors? Since digital showed up I have not been a to a lab for prints. I used to calibrate my monitors within Adobe as it used to have a color balance setup inside it.

Nikonian72 Loc: Chico CA

Any monitor used to edit digital photographs should be calibrated using a monitor calibrating device, such as a DataColor Spyder5Pro, or an X-Rite ColorMunki Smile.
Read more here: FAQ: How to Calibrate and Profile a Monitor for Color Printing (and accurate image viewing) at http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/monitor-calibration.htm

Linary Loc: UK

The tools mentioned by Nikonian72 include setting monitor white balance, but the gear required to calibrate printers is quite expensive and as far as I am concerned, unnecessary for amateurs with relatively low cost printers. (If you print art to sell, that could be a different story.) My own methods are to calibrate my twin monitors, set the print colours to be controlled by ICC profiles, run a test print from both Lightroom and Photoshop and compare the print to screen. For obvious reasons the print will never match the screens (backlit) exactly, but by using the ICC profiles and soft proofing its not very difficult come to an agreement with the printer.

Of course, there are different kinds of paper with many different surfaces, each type should have its own profile, but sometimes it's easier to say to hell with it, if the paper is shiny then its Epson Premier Gloss and if it doesn't shine its Epson Matte. (Admittedly not the most professional attitude, but I might be printing on six different gloss finishes in one session.)

As I mainly do all my own printing, very few people, if any, are going to compare the print with the screen version. I design and print greetings cards and postcards amongst other things. If the finished print looks good, then its fine.

Linary Loc: UK

I have used Photoshop since the 1990's and not really seen any method of calibrating the display within the software. The Color Balance tool can certainly be fiddled around with, but if the monitor is not calibrated to a standard, how would you know the colour in the PS display is the colour you should be seeing?

In Windows 7 there are calibration tools but they are highly subjective and I have never succeeded in matching two monitors using this method. Now I use a X-rite device once every three weeks and most of my problems re-colour mismatches have gone away.

bdk Loc: Sanibel Fl.

colormunki, is what I use. bought it here on UHH

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

You are absolutely right, but it is not white balance, you're talking monitor and/or printer calibration and it is a valuable part of the whole picture taking process (which in my mind includes the end product, the print)!!

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

I always compare my prints with the screen version, I always make test prints, before I make the final print!! It's just part of the whole process!!

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Calibration is usually done at the factory - to ensure adherence to a known neutral standard - sRGB, AdobeRGB, and 5000K or 6500K for starters. Some displays, like the higher end Dells, Eizos, Necs and HPs have hardware programmable LUTs (Look Up Tables) that the proper profiling tools with the correct software can actually write color configuration data to the display. But for the vast majority of displays, the Spyder, ColorMunki and for a few more dollars, the i1 Display Pro will do the profile that is stored in the computer as a monitor profile.

In common usage, the word "calibration" has incorrectly replaced profiling.

If you have a less expensive photo printer and you use the printer mfgr's paper and inks, it is likely that the results will be pretty good. If you use a third party fine art paper from Moab, Red River, Hahnemuhle or Canson, there is a good likelihood they already have a profile for the printer and inkset, and all you have to do is set the printer's paper type to get really good prints. You would use that profile, btw to soft proof your images on your profiled computer display, to see if there are any discrepancies in color gamut between the printer/paper/ink and the display. This would allow you to make the necessary adjustments to properly handle out of gamut colors.

Display white balance is generally not an issue when you run a profiling session, as part of the process involves setting the starting white balance. The print profiling process, if you choose to do that, also makes the necessary corrections for proper neutral color.

Outside sources do not provide display profiling suggestions. It would be impossible to do that, since displays will drift within several weeks of burn-in time, and continue to drift throughout the life of the LED or other backlit/edge lit or full array type screen. This is why profiling is done routinely, just to refresh the profile to account for the drift.

The Adobe built-in calibration is awful. it only looks at RGB color and none of the nuanced tones the displays are capable of. It's like using a 15 lb sledge to fasten a 4d finishing nail in a piece of wood.