The 6 Best Photo Color Calibration cards (2023 reviews)

Datacolor has been making great card for years, thanks to a combination of clever design and high-end materials. If you're a photographer or cinematographer and want to quickly match different cameras, this is the best way to go if you're going to spend less than $. The Datacolor Sck200 spyder is a plastic cardboard series of colors to help the photo software find the right color balance for your photos, so it's sort of a go between your eye and the camera eye. It offers full size, spectrally formulated pigment patches, and highly accurate hsl correction software. It provides camera and post-process white balance and exposure adjustment.

It feels quite durable, it's incredibly thin, and comes with it's own plastic sleeve to protect it further. It comes with a plastic sleeve for travel and storage. It provides full size, spectrally formulated pigment patches, and highly accurate hsl correction software. It can be used for advanced color editing or as a color check card.

Why We Like This:

Colors are accurate / cheaply made
Color accuracy/white balance is crucial for anyone working with photography/video
Excellent color consistency, easy to use and transport
Practically essential tool for photographers and videographers

Best With any Camera JPEG: DGK Color tools Photo Color Calibration card

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The dgk color tools photo color calibration card should be able to handle its purpose and duties with ease. If you are a "professional" photographer, you'll want to find another set but for most photographers, these are handy, inexpensive, and handy with the lanyard. It's compact enough to throw in a camera bag, and durably made of a tough plastic.

These cards are great for post-processing. They're plastic coated, so they're durable. It is great for in your pocket or camera bags. It includes three color calibrated reference cards, carry strap, and user guide. It's great for post-processing.

Why We Like This:

Very nice small convenient easy to carry cards
Perfect for the videographer in the field
Helpful tool for shooting indoors in yellow light
Speeds up picture editing and saves huge amounts of time in post production

Best For studio work: Datacolor Photo Color Calibration card

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Next on the list, we've got yet another card that manages to win our hearts. It's the datacolor photo color calibration card and it's widely considered as card that has the most suitable features. It is great for many outdoor shoots. It delivers scene light color and intensity data for precision editing. It allows photographers to color calibrate their cameras, perform precision in-camera white balance and record known-color samples. The reverse side shows grey scales, and this is useful for a quick camera custom white balance setup.

It comes in a nice case that has female and male adaptors to connect to a tripod. You can take pictures of this product using different cameras or camera/lens combinations and they will all show slightly different colors. The case has connectors for a tripod mount and accepts either male or female connections. These can be useful when you shoot portraits (you tend to want to go a bit warmer) or landscapes (you tend to want to go a bit cooler) than neutral.

Why We Like This:

Sturdy and thick but on a big size
A well thought out color calibration tool
Make color management so much easier
Handy color card with good protection

Best Quality card: Pixel Perfect Photo Color Calibration card

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Best part: pixel perfect photo color calibration card costs comparatively low and it is available to ship in 24 hours. This "Pixel Perfect" calibration tool fits the bill as it is a x-rite clone of the ColorChecker Classic. It allows great camera balance and it is perfectly with davinci resolve. The standard layout used by many (not Datacolor through) is the Macbeth color chart. It's thin cardboard. It does make for fast color grading and trueness in davinci resolve.

The colors are duller than professional cards and the back is not pure black. This card matches the macbeth standard. There are two in the pack and they are printed on good quality card stock.

Why We Like This:

Light can pass through and throw off readings
Laminated card stock, flexible just like a playing card in a poker card deck
New and hot release

Best Color grading tool: Calibrite Photo Color Calibration card

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We would, of course, be remiss if we didn't mention calibrite photo color calibration card for daily usage. This color checker takes all the guess work out of color grading by eye, and after you use it, you won't want to go back to eyeballing your color grading and white balance ever again. It includes 6 chromatic color chips aligned with video production, 6 skin tones chips, 6 gray balance chips, and 6 highlights and shadow chips (including a high gloss black) to achieve the ideal color balance. It doubles for video which makes it a convenient reference tool.

It’s designed for the video production workflow with a 4-in-1 colour target that’ll enable you to get a better camera-to-camera match, achieve perfect exposure and easily shoot and edit for mixed lighting. It’ll speed up your colour correction process and save you hours in post. The software experience is pleasant and easy to use, especially when compared to the Datacolor Spyder Checkr Photo.

Why We Like This:

Color and focus accuracy is extremely important
Lot of satisfied buyers

Best For Good Quality: DGK Color tools Aperture reference

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Dgk Color Tools offers a variety of card for personal choice and yet maintaining quality in all the variants. It is engineered for today's HD camcorders and digital video slr cameras. It features the 6 vector color test patterns to evaluate and adjust the color matrix with waveform or vectorscope displays. The skin tone (first of the two) hits the skin tone line on the vectorscope nicely. It can assist with calibration of broadcast or recording equipment, especially in a multi-camera installation where all camera signals must match.

This card can be used to set up, test, and align your dslr or digital videocam. It's nice to have a color chip chart but it's so small that if you're cameras at FOH, the card isn't very helpful.

Why We Like This:

Small, flimsy almost does the job
Includes two large 14 by 788 inch (365 by 200 mm)
Good for amateurs and students, but pros
Works with picasa, aperture, photoshop lightroom, photoshop elements and photoshop cs