When it comes to choosing the best monitor calibrator, we find that really it's a toss-up between two very good brands: Datacolor's Spyder X range and Calibrite's ColorChecker (Wacom also has a calibrator of its own designed for its drawing tablets if you're using one of them). You can learn more about why monitor calibration is so important at the bottom of this guide. You should use these roughly every couple of months to keep your screen calibrated. These tools are physical pieces of hardware that actually look at your monitor. There are downloadable apps that claim to be able to calibrate screens, but they really can't compare with using one of the best monitor calibrator tools. The risk this poses for creatives is clear: you can all too easily under or over-saturate or grade colours in a way that looks just fine on your screen but looks terrible to a client or when printed. As a consequence of all this, even while you might think the images you see on your screen look great, they might not necessarily show the colours that you'll get on another screen or printed out on paper. Ambient lighting also impacts on how a display looks.

Even very good monitors all show colours differently straight out of the box, and one monitor will fluctuate in its output over time.