If you’re worried about the process being complicated or requiring extra tools, don’t be.
Image via Omar Tomaino.Įven if you’re not a colorist or a professional editor, you should still calibrate your monitors. With a properly calibrated monitor, the color grade on a video will appear more accurate and consistent across various displays. The Primary Wheels in DaVinci Resolve are one of the tools used to color grade footage. Luckily, calibrating a monitor is easy, quick, and doesn’t cost anything except for a few minutes of your time. Color grading on an uncalibrated monitor may give you a false grade that appears very different when seen on a separate screen. Having a calibrated monitor ensures that the colors are accurate and the “grade” is also accurate, making it possible for the finished video to appear similar across many different devices. It’s a process that’s often under-appreciated, yet requires a lot of work to get right.
But, why should you calibrate your monitors? For video editors, the answer is simple: color grading.Ĭolor grading is the process of using tools to change how the colors in a video appear, and can totally change the mood of a scene. Windows and macOS have dedicated monitor calibration tools that can adjust how the monitor displays color, with color accuracy being the goal. Calibrating your monitors using your computer’s built-in tools is a cheap and easy way to improve color accuracy.