Dropped $120 on a screen color reader last month and it roasted every piece in my portfolio
I do digital painting on a cheap monitor I got at a pawn shop in Reno for $60 back in 2022. My colors always came out looking muddy once I posted them, and I blamed my technique for months. So I bought one of those little puck shaped color readers for $120 and ran it on my screen. Turns out my monitor was showing everything way more green than it actually was, by like 15 percent on the tint slider. Every skin tone I painted for the past two years had this sickly swamp look to anyone with a normal screen. I went back through my DeviantArt posts and just stared at them feeling dumb. Recalibrated the thing and redid one old piece last Tuesday, and the difference was night and day. So now I'm curious, does anyone here bother calibrating, or do you just eyeball it and hope for the best?
Man that swamp skin tone struggle is so real, been there with my old laptop screen that made everything look way too blue. Sucks that it took two years to figure out but at least now you know and your new stuff is gonna look right everywhere. Calibration is one of those things nobody tells you about starting out and it sneaks up on you.