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A properly calibrated monitor and printer is a very important aspect of digital photography. Otherwise, you may not be able to see all the colours (or the lack of them) that your digital camera produces and your printer is capable of printing. Windows and Mac use different gamma 2.2 and 1.8 respectively and two different colour space (if you need help with terms please Google them) as I am not a technical expert regarding these matters. I just know enough to advise as to what is important and point toward the right directions for more precise help. While I use Windows, I would prefer the Mac as it is somewhat better suited for graphical environment. However, since my computer set up initially was based upon a business environment requirements with the ability to connect servers (most large organizations run a variety of Windows on their servers) and complementary Windows based software at the time, it would be just too expensive to switch to Mac, eventhough Mac with the intel made processors can run Windows based programs. Anyhow, back to calibration. Windows uses a gamma of 2.2. This is important to remember and also that the the colours of printers use the Adobe sRGB colour space usually by default. Make sure that your digital camera uses this setting and when you edit your images this is the default value of your photo editor, or if you use a different one -- your monitor, printer and photo editor all use the same. There are other choices, feel free to experiment, but if you want consistent colours, stick with Adobe sRGB. Even if you do not wish to spend a lot of time to set up your monitor or printer, the proper calibration of both can be very time consuming and somewhat confusing. The very least you should do, is try to adjust your monitor so you can see all 17 different levels on the gray chart below. Before though, make sure that the lights are off in the room, or the ambient light is quite dark and not reflecting in your monitor, in order to clearly see all the levels. When you can see all the 17 different levels at least you're on the right track.
The strip I made is based upon the Adobe sRBG values: when all 3 channels [R=red, B=blue, G=green] indicating 255, 255, 255 the colour is pure white and when all 3 channels indicates 000, 000, 000 it is all black. You can get excellent information about calibration, both your monitor and printer, just click on this link here! You can also invest on monitor calibration spider, but not all LCD types of monitors can be adjusted with the spider easily -- since I happen to own one of the calibrators, in fact, it was much more suitable to use when I owned a CRT type of monitor.
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