Calibrate and profile your monitor

When you calibrate your monitor, the profiling utility lets you save a color profile that describes the color behavior of the monitor. This profile contains information about what colors can be reproduced on the monitor and how the color values in an image must be converted so that colors are displayed accurately. After Effects and your operating system can use this information to ensure that the colors that you see on your monitor look like the colors in the output movies that you create.

Note: Monitor performance changes and declines over time; recalibrate and profile your monitor every month or so. If you find it difficult or impossible to calibrate your monitor to a standard, it may be too old and faded.
  1. Make sure that your monitor has been turned on for at least half an hour, giving it sufficient time to warm up and produce more consistent output.
  2. Make sure that your monitor is displaying millions of colors (24 bits per pixel) or higher.
  3. If you do not have profiling software that uses a hardware measuring device, remove colorful background patterns on your monitor desktop and set your desktop to display neutral grays. Busy patterns or bright colors surrounding a document interfere with accurate color perception.
  4. Do one of the following to calibrate and profile your monitor:

    • For best results, use third-party software and measuring devices. In general, using a measuring device such as a colorimeter along with software can create more accurate profiles because an instrument can measure the colors displayed on a monitor far more accurately than the human eye can.

      Most profiling software automatically assigns the new profile as the default monitor profile. For instructions on how to manually assign the monitor profile, see the documentation for your operating system.

    • In Mac OS, use the Calibrate utility, located in the System Preferences > Displays > Color tab.