How cynical.

As a former digital products manager of a huge school portrait lab, I can assure you that there ARE standards. It just takes time, patience, knowledge, and diligence to implement them.

We had 40 mini labs, two large format silver halide printers, three 44” Epsons, 18 ID Card printers, a NexPress, two Konica-Minolta high speed digital electrostatic color printer/copiers, and nine color-matched reference monitors in the color correction department.

Everything was color managed with custom ICC profiles. The Epsons were “dumbed down” to the much narrower color gamuts of the Noritsu mini labs, via simulation profiles.

No, everything was not a *perfect* match. But we used statistical process control and kept all devices within a reasonably rigid range of deviation (+/- 2 points from aim on any primary color, with no more than a 3 point spread between colors).

That was ONLY possible with calibration and profiling.

Before implementing color management practices, we wasted over 15% of our paper, chemistry, and labor on remakes. That dropped to 5.6% afterwards. Since we bought two 53’ truckloads of paper each fall... that was a HUGE savings.

Our monitor cal kit cost $250. Our printer cal kit was a few thousand. They paid for themselves almost instantly!

Yes, many people have uncalibrated monitors. But “studies show” that images color corrected on calibrated monitors consistently look better on UNcalibrated monitors than images improperly corrected on other uncalibrated monitors.

Out of the box, most Apple devices and some other premium brands are quite well-corrected. But the moment a user starts pushing buttons without a calibration tool kit involved, things get ugly.

These are the ones that compatible.
My question is that if I pay for the higher price one do I get better accuracy since I don't use the software that came with the "puck"

• NEC MDSVSENSOR3
• NEC SpectraSensor Pro
• X-Rite i1Pro and i1Monitor
• X-Rite i1Pro2
• X-Rite i1Studio
• X-Rite ColorMunki *
• X-Rite i1Display Pro
• Datacolor Spyder3
• Datacolor Spyder4
• Datacolor Spyder5
• BasICColor Discus
• Photo Research PR-655, 670, 680, 730, and 740 Spectroradiometers

Probably, only photographers calibrate their PC so when putting your images onto the internet what is the point.
Studies have shown that the companies that produce prints for the general public - produce markedly different prints of the same image sent to them.
Unless you use the same paper and ink consistently, you will get differences in the printed image. Also if you use a different program to print you will see differences.
If you use a single image in more than one Post processing program they can look different both on screen and when printed.
Depending upon the intensity of the light in the room and the brightness of the PC screen 'what you see' is not going to be 'what you get.'

We talk about 'Individuality' in photography. We also Post process images to individual tastes. There is no 'standard'.

The advice is to print an image and reprocess the file to correct any discrepancies in the first printed image. As part of your workflow ensure consistency in paper used, ink supplied, and which program you use to 'send to printer'. Look at your printed image in soft daylight (early morning or late afternoon).

You will gain recognition from people who 'like' what your images look like - not how they got there.

have fun