I’m working on getting my setup ready for color accurate work and am planning on purchasing a calibration tool (such as a Spyder X Pro), but am struggling to definitively prepare my setup for calibration. For reference, I currently work on a laptop and have, in the past, messed around with various different color calibration/management settings (windows settings, Nvidia settings, 3rd party calibration software, you name it).
I didn’t really understand how it worked back then, and as such eyeballed these various tools without much thought, not paying attention to the defaults and uninstalling them without changing things back. There were almost definitely ‘overlapping’ calibrations made.
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What all do I need to ‘reset’, so to speak, throughout my system to ensure that calibration with the tool I purchase is accurate? Would these all be software related or is there stuff that more directly effects the hardware of my computer I should know about?
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Are there any 3rd party calibration software that make changes ‘beyond’ simply creating ICC profiles? I don’t recall the various software I used but I worry that the changes made could still be around on my device even after uninstalling it (and removing the ICC profiles created).
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Many non-laptop monitors include physical buttons that allow you to make image adjustments that specifically effect the monitor itself (as they are separate from Windows and the rest of the system). Is there any equivalent to this in a laptop display (despite the lack of physical buttons) and could it need reset prior to calibration?
I’m still learning about color management and calibration, drivers, etc. but would like to get things properly color-accurate prior to continuing to work on stuff. I’m just concerned that some change I made in the past, if unaccounted for, is going to throw off any colorimeter calibrations I make and I won’t be aware.