Ed Walker Loc: Eclectic, Alabama U.S.A.

There is a distinct difference in the appearance of pictures between my laptop and my wife's. Reds appear much more saturated on mine and quite unsaturated on hers. What is the best way to calibrate the monitors so that pictures appear the same on both and the same when posted online? Thanks in advance for the infinite wisdom of this group and your helpfulness.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Calibrate both yes, but calibration might not make both look alike. Calibration will make both correct for printing and web publishing for a good number of other viewers. But not all computers or monitors display color identical. So same is a relative and imprecise term. For the web you want your image files as sRGB. But for printing there are other higher standards you might use for your own printer or lab. Others on the UHH can advise on calibration tools, again there are a few good products. Good luck.

camerapapi Loc: Miami, Fl.

Lamiaceae is correct, different monitors will tend to show colors in different ways. sRGB is the universal color space and although it is a small color space it has millions of colors that our eyes cannot see. I just wonder if the resolution of a monitor is capable of reproducing them all. Most probably not.
Datacolor is one of the companies that offers color calibrators for monitors. I use their Spider 5 Express, a rather inexpensive unit and I have been very satisfied with the results. I am sure others will use a different calibrator with the same level of satisfaction.

In short, buy a calibrator to calibrate both monitors but do not expect to see the same colors in them.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

charles tabb Loc: Richmond VA.

Look into Data Color's Spider X Pro.
Works great for me.
What I see on my monitor matches what I see in my prints.

PhotogHobbyist Loc: Bradford, PA

The same thought crossed my mind. I picked up a Spider X Pro a few months ago and found it to give an improved color to my photos. Watch for it to be on sale if you wish to save a little. I think it is worth the full price.

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

This is a bit of a complex issue, but depending on the age and price of the laptops, there may be a bit depth and color space issue. Older laptops are 6 bit/channel, and not capable of wide color gamut. Newer ones are 8 bit/channel. The color spaces in both displays and the bit depth need to be the same for the best chance. Newer laptops can even display "high dynamic range" but I haven't explored that possibility in mine.

There are two ways to deal with the differences in color rendition - one is DataColor and the other is Xrite. I prefer Xrite mainly because I find their products more flexible and accurate, and they offer better tech support. Lastly, the Datacolor products do not support displays with hardware programmable LUT (look up table), while the i1 Display Pro, one step above the entry level ColorMunki, does provide that capability.

Technically speaking, these devices create a color profile to map the colors produced by the display system to a known standard. The displays are calibrated at the factory in a different process.