Monitor display color calibration (affordable) services in UK?

[R McCrorie]

Hello everyone,

I am a beginner (self taught) graphic designer. After playing around with creative cloud apps, I realised that colors of my designs (made in illustrator) are looking different on my monitor than on my cell phone. I exported in different formats, When exported in 'for screens' format, it looked better but colors still don't match perfectly. After looking online for similar discussions, it looks like I'll have to do color calibration of my monitor. I have used basic one which in windows but it hasn't worked that well.
The softwares like CalMan or Spyder are too expensive for me.
Could you please suggest any cheaper way to calibrate my monitor? or are there any cheaper services in UK who can help me with it? I am not well acquainted with calibration technique, if there is a video tutorial or good instructions then I will be able to do it myself but prefer to get it done from someone who has experience with it.

Thanks for your help in advance,

R

 

[Paul Murray]

You could try asking photography suppliers, to see if they have calibration tools you can hire, or if they offer calibration as a service. Or maybe even local photography studios, though it's a long shot. There are software tools you can us to help you calibrate your screen, but from my experience they make everything often look worse as you're still doing it by eye. If you want precision you'll ned to use something like a Spyder as it has a sensor to match colour.

I looked for local calibration rental when I bought an external monitor but didn't have much luck. I'll probably buy a second-hand sensor, as it will probably work out roughly the same price as paying someone to do it.

 

[Levi]

Does you monitor have a built in colour profile... if yes you need to select it in your windows advanced display properties. If not you may be able to find them online if you search, this will not be perfect but will likely be closer than the manual approach.
There are also 'settings' that you should be using your screen at like gamma 2.2, brightness at 50% etc so thats another thing to consider.

Don't assume your pc display is wrong, the odds are that the mobile phone is set up different, very few are set up to represent accurate colours and then there's the things like OLED displays versus TFT etc too.

If you do have to calibrate you should buy one as you ideally need to calibrate every couple of months (yeah I don't do it either lol) and long term it would work out cheaper. You can buy a spyder express 5 for around £85 although I'd personally buy a little higher up the range due to the extra features.