Monitor Color calibration or Color Management is somewhat just like relationships. Have you ever experienced scratching your head looking at your prints and looking at your monitor, figuring out why your prints appear different from what you see on your monitor. Color management makes you more confident with how your print would come out in your printer and your print labs. Monitor Color calibration is essential to all photographers that are keen on details and color accuracy making it more predictable in your prints. What you see on your monitor should also appear the same way with your prints. You and most especially your client wouldn't want a red or a yellowish face.
Relationships should also be the same way. Both should be able to see their goals or direction in the same color and light.
There are two option for calibration, the free and the paid option. The free option is the option online or offline where you need to follow some directions and perform adjustments based on what your eye can see. (E.g.: http://www.displaycalibration.com) The paid option is where you purchase a hardware calibrator, where the unit with the help of a wizard guides you through the process of calibrating and creating a new ICC (International Color Consortium) profile for your monitor or laptop.
I managed to get my hands on the Spyder4Elite by Datacolor, although I was hoping to find the Spyder5, sadly it was not yet available at the time. This will have to do for the mean time. This is my take on the device, first, installing the software was a breeze, using the device and the software was easy. Datacolor did a good job in keeping the interface clean and simple, making it easy to use and understand. I also like the studio match feature, its very helpful for users with multiple monitors.
I first noticed the difference when I had my images printed at the lab. The group picture looked fine on my monitor and the skin tone was fairly accurate, but when I had it printed, the skin tone or the people in the group shot appeared to be close to the color of Stanley Ipkiss when he became the Mask, and the Grinch. A Monitor Color Calibrating tool is very helpful, the images printed was more color accurate and way much better to look at.
Sadly relationships don't have a device similar to a color calibration where both can accurately see what and how each other should clearly see and both can understand. :)
Color management is as important as keeping your cameras and equipment clean and in top condition. Having accurate colors both in prints and on your monitor is very important to better make accurate adjustments on your images and video saving you more time from post processing and image editing. Color perception is subject to ambient light levels, and the ambient white point. Thus ambient light needs to be considered as well in monitor calibration.
If you are very concerned on the accuracy of your photos and prints then I would strongly suggest that you have a decent monitor color calibrator. It doesn't need to be the most expensive one, best to have one rather than having nothing at all.
What Monitor Color Calibration do you use?