The ColorChecker, photography's most important 24 squares, turns 50
Calibrite is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the ColorChecker with a virtual museum dedicated to the iconic 24-patch chart. First introduced in a 1976 paper by C.S. McCamy and colleagues at Macbeth, the chart's patches were tied to spectral reflectance values, making it a reliable standard for color accuracy across different materials and lighting. Over the decades, the chart has evolved, with the Digital SG version now offering 140 patches, and has been owned by several companies, including Gretag and X-Rite, before Calibrite. The museum features a timeline, fun facts, and a quiz.
Each patch was locked to a spectral reflectance value instead of a printed ink mix, so the card could be measured, reproduced and trusted across different materials and lighting conditions.
- potamic
Pleasantly surprised to see dpreview still running, I thought they had shut down. It was a fantastic site back in the day. Not sure how it fares these days.
- nayuki
I didn't learn much from reading this article. Questions linger in my mind, for example: What are the CIE XYZ coordinates of each colored square? What is the spectral distribution of each square? How were the colors chosen?
- isomorphic
These are great, even for manually-adjusted color workflows.
Fun fact, though: You have to replace them every couple of years (or sooner) because no pigment/dye is stable, especially if exposed to bright light.
Having a test shot with one of these in it saves you untold amounts of pain later.