Best tips in regard to calibrating a macbook pro screen My eyes hurt a lot since I have a macbook (current is antiglare 15 inch, last one was 13 inch).

What's the best way to calibrate the screen (hardware calibrator, software, internal calibration)?

Other best practices in regard to the topic?
In my experience, with the exception of my first-gen fluorescent backlit plastic MacBook, which has never looked quite right, Apple displays ship with excellent default calibration.

Unlike TVs which are optimized to maximize their brightness in already bright fluorescent-lit showrooms, Apple tends to ship their displays calibrated for rooms with normal levels of incandescent light.

That said, if you'd like to get into color calibration, try calibrating by eye first. Turn on the advanced settings for a load of controls. Just follow the instructions carefully.


  System Preferences > Displays > Color > Calibrate


If you have a good eye, aren't doing color sensitive work, and just want to get your display to "look good", this might be all you need. During the calibration, make sure the ambient (room) lighting matches what it will be while you're using the display normally.

Also, while doing the test, you might want to get some distance from the screen and squint a bit, especially for the tests that have you judging brightness levels.

If you need something more high end, you might want to look into something hardware based like these products: Pantone Huey, Colormunki, Datacolor Spyder.

Depending on which of these you get, you'll be able to not only calibrate your display so that it displays color accurately, but also generate color profiles for proofing so you can simulate what your work will look like when printed on a specific printer, paper, inks etc.