I do photo editing work mainly and I use the Spyder Calibrator from DataColor:
http://spyder.datacolor.com/portfol.....ew/spyder5pro/
It should work with any monitor you have pretty well. It creates a monitor color profile in Windows and adjust the colors that way. But depending on how bad the monitors are it does have its limits! My wife works for a photo lab and they use this on all their PCs once a month.

It's difficult... and expensive.

While I was shopping for an IPS monitor years ago, I got lucky and snapped up one of the rare e-IPS monitors on the market before they all disappeared for a while. Since then, I've found that most IPS monitors on the market are pretty similar, as there's very few panel manufacturers out there. Most monitors in the $500 are pretty good -- far better than the early model I have, and there's plenty of good choices. Make sure the monitor uses at least 8 bits for the pixel color driver, as some monitors are still using cheaper 6-bit drivers and look a tad grainy (it's hard to get this info). I strongly recommend finding a monitor with full controls on the OSD. Monitors that only allow adjustment through software are bad news, as in my experience, the drivers tend to bundle crapware and may not work on future operating systems. Beware gaming monitors that support G-Sync. My dad has one, and the nVidia driver does funky stuff that can mess up your desktop icons and window sizes, especially after the PC wakes up from sleep. I don't know if that's a common problem, but it drives my dad nuts.

The real problem is calibration. I've had a Spyder2 and a Spyder4, and they both had pretty questionable calibration out of the box (Spyder 2 was too red, Spyder 4 was way too blue and contrasty). You can't recalibrate them yourself, so if you get a bad one, you'll have to exchange it. Both of mine drifted VERY badly after a couple years, making them useless. They're great for calibrating your greyscale levels, though, which is the most important thing to me. Spyder models are fully automatic, so you can't "really" adjust hue or luminance yourself after calibration -- use your GPU's control panel to adjust hue. Despite the medium price, Spyder models are definitely a budget choice. I don't recommend them.

I've had much better luck with the EyeOne, as it includes a calibration target and thus it'll work correctly out of the box and won't drift badly over time. It's very costly, so try calling local print shops to see if you can rent a unit. My ex-boss from a photography store was willing to rent the EyeOne overnight for $50.

My monitor has held its calibration very well, so you probably won't have to do a calibration more than once a year. That's despite the fact the my Dell Ultrasharp was horrible out of the box -- totally washed out and way too green. The EyeOne did an amazing job with my display, and after about 4 years, it still looks terrific, though my greys are starting to develop bands, and I'll likely have to recalibrate soon.

I mean, it looks like it's either a spyder or nothing. What you're saying doesn't seem to mesh with the general consensus on them i'm seeing.

Any monitor recommendation in the 400 to 500 ish range? It's irritating how little info most sites actually give about their displays.

-Use your files are CYMK to retain more of the original colors before loading work.
-If you need to print for some reason save it as a PDF.
-Use the Tablet Control Pressure button next to the Opacity percentage on the top middle bar when you select the brush tool, will make a difference.

i'm not sure what you're saying with the first and last ones of those.

I"m talking about display calibration.

Was referring to some photoshop tips < x x > sorry I think I must have read it wrong.

Sall good. I"m honestly pretty competent in photoshop. But all the photoshop skills in the world aren't going to help me pick colors if i can't see them on my display. I really don't want to dive too much farther in this till i got a reference monitor, aka, a monitor with a certain type of panel that can actually display fairly accurate colors and gamma

This kind of advice drives me crazy. It's exactly backwards. CMYK has some serious limitations. If you reveal gamut violations in Photoshop or Illustrator on RGB files, you'll find that RGB files go out of the CMYK gamut at an alarming rate, especially on oranges and saturated blues, where CMYK is really weak (and that's not even using 48-bit RGB). The ONLY place CMYK is useful for proofing is if you're going to be submitting your files to a 4-color printer. My desktop printer is a 7-color printer, so even it has a larger gamut than CMYK.

Thanks for the tip I've make a note on it.

Yeah, i was gonna say. Only time you use cmyk is for printing. You mentioned printing so i figured that was like, the end goal for your work or something.

ColorMunki http://xritephoto.com/colormunki-display

It's a little expensive ($189), but it's what all of my professional friends in the advertising and game design fields use at work for their setups.

I used the XRite i1, which supplemented an earlier purchase of an end-to-end color proofing system (which included targets for my scanner). The original X-rite software came with a suction-cup monitor calibrator which was no use on LCD screens. The i-One is not terribly expensive, but I don't know how good the software for it is, as I used it with my existing proofing software (which was over $600). I think I paid about $130 for the I1.

I got an NEC 23" "EA" series e-IPS monitor some years ago. It has a nice, wide viewing angle and out of the box was not too far off calibration. IPS monitors have come down a lot, and gotten a lot more common (e-IPS is less expensive than h-IPS). Most of the high-end Dell monitors are IPS, now. (e.g. S2316M, which is a 23" monitor for $179) The high-priced monitors give you more resolution and/or faster response times for gaming. Looks like the Eizo EV2336W is about $400. I've heard good things about Eizo, though I've never used one.

Personally looking forward to the AMOLED monitors. The display on my Galaxy S6 is gorgeous and bright enough you can use it as a flashlight.

which i1 did you get? Looking online they seem to be 300 bucks to over a grand.

Well, it was about ten years ago. It was the i1 LT and it was $109 from Newegg (I looked it up). The Colormunki is supposedly the replacement for it.