• Hardware Calibration. This is by far the best option for accurate colour matching, but it's the option that costs. You might find Adobe Gamma is good enough, and money spent on a hardware calibrator would not be worth it. However, if you are serious about colour management then hardware calibration is the route to take. Likewise, if the environmental factors that blight the past two options are a problem for you (light falling onto the monitor, and poor eyesight), or if your monitor is just not linear enough, then this is also the route to take.

  The hardware takes the form of a mouse like object, or a puck which either sticks to your monitor (for a CRT) or is suspending in front (for a TFT). The device works in tandem with the software. First of all you have to set up the monitor with the brightness and contrast. You'll then have to set up the colour of the monitor - this is where you usually have to set the individual RGB settings until they're all firing at the same rate. Once you've done that, the software then starts flashing different colours. The hardware device measures the colour that your monitor displays, and from this it can work out a colour profile.