Calman vs DisplayCAL

Calman is paid color-calibration software for improving display accuracy in production, broadcast, and home-viewing workflows. Calman Professional targets film studios, broadcasters, post-production facilities, display manufacturers, and content creators. Studio provides automated SDR and HDR calibration, ICC profiling, 1D/3D-LUT creation, and display-validation wizards. Ultimate adds customizable workflows, advanced reporting, automated calibration, multi-display environments, and Design Mode. Calman Home is a simplified product for supported TVs, using a laptop, colorimeter, and reference video source. Hardware support includes displays, colorimeters, spectroradiometers, and video test-pattern generators from multiple manufacturers. Calman Ready support depends on the display manufacturer and may vary by model. Professional and Home downloads are for Windows, with requirements specifying Windows 7 or later; Patterns for Mac is also listed. The Home Software Bundle costs $449, paid once, and the Professional Software Bundle costs $1,399, paid once. Licenses include one year of updates and technical support.

DisplayCAL is a free display calibration and profiling solution built on ArgyllCMS, available for Linux, macOS, and Windows. With a supported measurement instrument, it measures displays and creates calibrations and ICC profiles, including for multi-display setups. Users can verify profiles and display devices, measure screen uniformity, and create video 3D LUTs with optional CIECAM02 gamut mapping. Colorimeter corrections can be imported from vendor software or created from measurements when a spectrometer is available. A test chart editor makes patch charts and accepts pasted data from CGATS, tab-delimited CSV, and spreadsheet applications. Documented pattern generators include madVR and DaVinci Resolve 10.1 or later; Chromecast support is optional. DisplayCAL requires ArgyllCMS 1.0 or newer and a supported measurement instrument. The software is licensed under GNU GPL version 3 or later and comes without warranty. The download page provides SHA-256 checksums, while the site links to forums, a wiki, documentation, help, and an issue tracker.