{"id":611062,"date":"2026-09-01T09:48:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T09:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/611062\/"},"modified":"2026-09-01T09:48:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T09:48:10","slug":"this-rainbow-chart-has-been-keeping-pro-photographers-in-check-for-50-years-colorchecker-is-celebrating-its-big-birthday-with-a-virtual-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/611062\/","title":{"rendered":"This rainbow chart has been keeping pro photographers in check for 50 years \u2013 ColorChecker is celebrating its big birthday with a virtual museum"},"content":{"rendered":"

The ColorChecker \u2013 a small card featuring 24 color patches \u2013 has turned 50. And, to mark its half century, Calibrite, the manufacturer, has launched a virtual museum exploring the history of the iconic design.<\/p>\n

Calibrite has said that the virtual museum forms part of a year-long celebration of its color-accuracy tool. These will also include a challenge teaching what each of the 24 color patches does and a \u201cperfectionist\u201d quiz matching creators to the right Calibrite products.<\/p>\n

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The original ColorChecker, later known as the \u201cMacbeth chart,\u201d was created by scientists at the Macbeth company, who designed it for the TV and movie industry.<\/p>\n

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To determine the correct paint colors, they used a spectrophotometer to measure the actual spectral reflectance curves \u2013 how much light is reflected at every individual nanometer wavelength of the visible spectrum \u2013 of real-world materials like human skin and leaves.<\/p>\n

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The pocketable Calibrite ColorChecker Passport Photo 2 is the color chart you can take anywhere (Image credit: Lumesca)<\/p>\n

Over the next 50 years, the ColorChecker brand changed corporate hands several times, from the newly merged GretagMacbeth company in the late 1990s, to X-Rite in the mid-2000s, and finally to the current owner, Calibrite, in 2021.<\/p>\n

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As the owners of the ColorChecker changed, so did the technology behind it. These days, ultra-precise laser scanners measure the light of each color patch, translating them into universal digital coordinates that computers and software can understand.<\/p>\n

This enables the digital ColorChecker products to determine correct screen colors beyond the original handheld card. In fact, here at Digital Camera World, we use a ColorChecker Video when editing our Bokeh Face podcastt<\/a> to ensure we don\u2019t get any quirky hues before publishing an episode.<\/p>\n

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Calibrite\u2019s 50th anniversary of the ColorChecker went live today, September 1, and you can check out the virtual museum and other celebratory online activities at the official hub<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Keep your on-screen colors accurate with our review of the best monitor calibrators<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The ColorChecker \u2013 a small card featuring 24 color patches \u2013 has turned 50. And, to mark its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-611062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}