The process can take a few minutes to do. It's a pretty quick and painless operation, and the software is usually of a decent standard so that a complete novice can use it.

The advantages of this are that it removes all the previous problems. Your eyesight is no longer an issue. Light falling onto the monitor does not affect it. Due to individual colours being measured, older or less accurate monitors will be compensated for in the profile, and the individual colour casts will be removed. With hardware calibration, you will have removed any guesswork from the whole process, which has got to be a good thing!

So what is avaliable to you? There are a number of devices to choose from, particularly from the "big guns" of the colour management world - Monaco and GretagMacbeth. However, they're not cheap (£150-£200+). We would recommend another company with a very good reputation for providing cheap yet accurate calibration, and that is ColorVision - the next three pages show their current products.