Why calibrate my monitor?

So you've got your paper profiled for your printer. You're using a digital camera that captures to a certain colourspace (for example let's say Adobe RGB). If your camera is pretty accurate with its colour capture, then you can be quite happy that a photo you capture will be printed correctly with true to life colours, or at the very least it's printing the colours that the camera has captured.

Unfortunately that's not the end of it. There's another device in the colour management chain that really needs to be calibrated. If you're going to be doing any image editing, then it's a very good idea to get your monitor calibrated (your camera or scanner can also be calibrated too, but that's a whole new subject, and with the accuracy of the latest digital cameras, it isn't the most critical in the colour management chain).