How To Color Calibrate Your Monitor with Calibrize (Windows)

So you gave in and finally went out and bought that shiny awesome new ridiculously big flat panel monitor. We know that you are officially in love with it. There is no hiding it. Your girlfriend is jealous, your friends hate you…

You mounted that beautiful monitor on your wall above you desk. You are oh so proud of it. Your graphic designer buddy stops by and destroys your world with the notion your monitor is not calibrated.

You stutter and answer whhaaaaa?

Don’t worry about your geek cred being on the line because you don’t know how to color calibrate your monitor. We are here to offer you a free application called Calibrize 2.0. It will color calibrate your monitor so that colors look the same as they do on commercially calibrated machines. It messes with your Windows settings so you don’t have to do it manually. Thanks Calibrize!

There should be one standard after all so everyone’s machine can show color the same way.

The application is portable just like we love. So once your download is finished extract the portable files to your memory stick or a favorite folder on your local hard drive. When you run it for the first time, it will ask you when you want to be reminded to run it again….presumptuous ain’t it?

Go ahead and click next when you are ready or you can click help or about at the top of the application for a little more background. Hey wait! That is what you are here for isn’t it?

We are about to embark on a journey – a journey that is calibration… Are you ready? Now that you pressed next, our first step is to get the contrast and brightness straight. You start this step by setting the contrast on your monitor to the maximum level. You may have to refer to your owners manual for this one (or press the menu button on it and wing it).

Now adjust the brightness so that the black circle is the least visible. Make it so it blends in with the background like in my picture below. You want the light circle to be visible inside the white. You can adjust the contrast to get the right balance.

This may seem a little tricky but it will either be real easy or it will not work for you at all. Now we want the colors in the center circles to blend with the background color. This didn’t go so well for me as you can see below but adjust those sliders back and forth until the colors blend (better than mine at least).

That’s it! Give yourself a  pat on the back – that is how you can color calibrate your monitor. Then click save and enjoy your new color calibrated monitor. Your eyes will thank you! Your friends will thank you and your graphic designer buddies will no longer ridicule you!

You can grab this file from Calibrize. Do you have another tool you use to color calibrate monitors? Let us know in the comments!