There is always going to be some color disparity between the image on your screen and the prints that you receive. But there is a way that you can reduce this color disparity. Calibrating your monitor may sound like a scary term, but it doesn’t have to be! You will grateful that you did it, and we are going to tell you how you can calibrate your monitor with CatPrint!

What does it mean to calibrate my monitor?

Calibrating your monitor with CatPrint means that you change the settings of your monitor screen so that the colors that you see on your monitor will be as close as possible to what the colors on your prints will look like. Most people don’t realize that the colors they see on their monitor screen may not end up looking like the colors on the prints.

How do I calibrate my monitor with CatPrint?

The first step you need to do is email support@catprint.com and request for a free calibration print to be mailed to you at no cost!

After you receive your free calibration print in the mail, you need to download the image file located here.

You will also need to download QuickGamma, which is a free program that you will be using in order to adjust the gamma on your monitor. You can download it for free at the QuickGamma website, located at http://www.quickgamma.de/indexen.html. Please be advised that CatPrint is not responsible for any content on external third party websites.

Now you need to make sure that the following are true for your monitor:

Make sure that the screen resolution is set to the highest resolution possible.

Your monitor needs to be set to at least 24bit color or higher.

If you just turned on your computer screen, make sure that your monitor has been on and warmed up for at least 15 minutes.

When starting the calibration process, make sure that there is no glare or direct light on the screen as this can cause even more color disparity than we actually want.

Open up the image file that you downloaded from the CatPrint website and hold the calibration print next to your screen. Open up QuickGamma and adjust the monitor gamma until the file on the screen closely resembles the calibration print. Save the changes that you made on QuickGamma and exit!

Congratulations! You have now calibrated your monitor with CatPrint!

After your monitor is calibrated, the colors in your design files should appear more true to how the files will print on CatPrint’s machinery. CatPrint recommends that you do the monitor calibration at least once a month.