What is Hardware Calibration and Why Does it Matter?

Photographers, designers, and creative professionals who work with color gamuts, editing software, and color accuracy tools need to maintain the monitors colors to ensure their work is top quality. Over time, a monitor’s colors can change or shift, meaning the colors are no longer accurate and this can directly affect your work. Having a monitor that can be calibrated will help maintain color accuracy over time, and how often you calibrate it depends on its usage. But what exactly is hardware calibration, and how do you hardware calibrate your monitor? In this article we learn the importance of monitor hardware calibration and how to do it.

Monitor calibration is the process by which a monitor’s display characteristics (color gamut and accuracy) are adjusted to the specified target levels using a specialized tool. Hardware calibration, utilizing an external tool, will allow you to directly access the LUTs (Look Up Tables) to accurately color calibrate your monitor. LUTs directly adjust the gamma, contrast, saturation, luminance, and hue of the colors on a monitor, which is why it is important to hardware calibrate regularly. By accessing the LUTs during the calibration process, any colors on the monitor that have faded over time will return to their vibrant and accurate versions. 

Hardware calibration requires a monitor with a built-in LUT to save the adjustments that were made. After hardware calibration, colors on the screen are accurate and maintain the wide color gamut a professional monitor should have. Monitor parameters and LUTs are fairly complex, so monitor hardware calibration takes considerably longer than software calibration, but the results are worth it and far more accurate than software calibration. Hardware calibration offers the ability to adjust the color gamut so you can specify the color coordinates of the RGB (red, green, blue) primaries while maintaining the monitors overall color accuracy and achieving superior color depth.

Some professional monitors will come with a Factory Calibration Report so you can see the RGB range you’re starting out with. Below are two examples of a factory calibration report that come with BenQ Professional Series Monitors.

Within a computers software are the numerical values of the RGB scales, which will stay the same in the programming, but they’ll need to be adjusted periodically to maintain the represented color accuracy. Your monitor will have these values as a representation of what it could display, but if it’s not hardware calibrated regularly the colors will not display their full range. For example, the color cyan is 100% green, 100% blue, and 0% red. These numeric values will never change within the computer, but they’ll need to be refreshed with the calibration process to continue to represent cyan accurately.

All computer monitors incorporate small variations due to the nature of the manufacturing process. For example, the blue pixels on a specific monitor could be slightly bluer than another one, even from the same brand and model. Having a monitor that comes with a calibration report helps you understand the starting point of the monitor, and you can decide when it’s time to hardware calibrate and make the necessary adjustments. Hardware calibration helps reduce the impact of those discrepancies on color performance and makes it easier to work with.

In order to hardware calibrate a monitor, a specialized optical tool measures the actual colors produced by a monitor and compares them to reference values. Whenever differences exist, the computer performs calculations to adjust the color and sends a corrected signal to the monitor, then measurements are retaken. This process is repeated until everything falls within accepted tolerances for the monitor to be considered color accurate.

Professional photographers may calibrate their monitor anywhere from one a month to every six months, depending on usage. If you get a factory calibrated monitor, you don’t have to worry about calibrating right away, but if you’ll be relying on color accuracy daily then it’s recommended to hardware calibrate regularly.

Software calibration is widely accessible on monitors and does not require a special tool. However, while it is done within the monitors specifications, it requires a great deal of manual adjustments, and the results may not provide the correct levels of color accuracy required. If one corner of the RGB scale is off, it will negatively affect the other corners and the overall result will be inaccurate images and color editing. Additionally, if a monitor is rebooted it may undo these adjustments causing you to have to start the process over again.

Hardware calibration is a much more reliable process because it thoroughly adjusts internal display parameters and LUTs (look-up tables) on a much deeper level than software adjustments. It goes beyond the software processing layer to ensure precise color representation. Hardware calibration also offers more reliability because the calibrated changes will be maintained despite the monitor restarting.

Though both hardware and software calibration can provide necessary color adjustments for a monitor, hardware calibration is the better option for the best color accuracy and reliability. 

At BenQ, we strive to reproduce accurate colors in every one of our professional photography monitors and provide the tools needed to maintain these colors. AQCOLOR, a proprietary technology developed by BenQ, is built on meeting industrial standards, emphasizing display details, and providing an out-of-the-box guarantee. Monitor capabilities are backed by third-party qualifications such as a Pantone Validated Certificate and Calman certification. The goal is to create products that will deliver on the promise “Colors You Can Trust” and empower creative professionals in every aspect of their work. 

Get the color accuracy you need with BenQ PhotoVue Monitors, backed by AQCOLOR technology and Paper Color Sync, guaranteeing color accuracy from screen to print. Additionally, SW and PD series purchasers and existing owners can get one FREE year of the new Pantone Connect Premium to bring the benefits of your smart device to your computer. Since 2015, BenQ has worked with Pantone very closely together to ensure BenQ monitors deliver the best color in the world for photographers, video editors, and designers, especially professionals that work on Mac^® devices. BenQ has received several World Firsts from Pantone acknowledging our commitment to color accuracy.