About KaliTrue

This app, named KaliTrue, is the first app release by Jamie Cashin, and I hope you enjoy using it as much as I did creating it!

GET THE APP HERE! << Apple App Store Link for iPhone (iPad coming later)

You can find the apps release notes here

When will it be updated?

I hear ya! We're still at v1.0.0, but life has been crazy busy for me in 2025. The good news is I am working on an update to make the app more presentable for iOS 26, and yes, I have decided to take some of the ideas I was saving for a possible paid version and add them to the free version. I hope to have v1.0.1 out some time in the fall of 2025.

OK, but what is it?

The KaliTrue app is designed to help people calibrate their displays to most accurately reflect colors. The user manually adjusts their display to show a white screen as "pure white", and KaliTrue allows them to measure the screen to see if it's indeed showing pure white, and if not the app tells them what needs to be adjusted to correct it.

The app does not automatically calibrate your display... there are already apps for this but they require specialized hardware. This app is essentially a measuring device that assists you in manually calibrating your displays by showing you what needs to be adjusted. In fact, there can be issues with the automatic calibration solutions--see this article

Why would I want to do that?

What I am about to explain applies equally to video and photography, but to avoid writing photo/video all the time, let's just stick to the term photo.

You may be aware that when taking photos with a digital camera, you need to get your "white balance" correct. You may see terms like white balance, color balance, or color temperature, but for our needs these are all the same and you can read plenty about it in the following Wikipedia article: Color Temperature. We also have our own article on the topic here.

Most modern cameras can figure out the white balance automatically, but more serious photographers know that for best results one should set the white balance manually. When the white balance for an image is incorrect, it will have a color cast when later viewed. Color balance is sometimes expressed using terms like "tungsten", "daylight", or "cloudy" but these are just convenience terms for us humans. White balance is actually set based on Kelvin Temperature, usually just expressed as Kelvin, and each of those terms above corresponds to a specific Kelvin temperature... for example tungsten corresponds to 3,200K. Low numbers are "warmer" (reddish) while high numbers are "cooler" (bluish.) Midday sun with no cloud ranges from 5,000K to 6,500K.

So if you have your camera set to "tungsten", and take a photo outside at noon on a sunny day, because the camera is expecting the light to be reddish, it adjusts the captured image by adding a few thousand Kelvin to the image... making it more blue so that white objects appear white, and not reddish! As a result, the photo you took will have a sickly blue cast! If you had selected "daylight" white balance, the camera would not have had to adjust the image so that white appears white.

You may be thinking, OK why don't I just set my white balance to be "daylight" all the time? Well, you have to adjust for the conditions under which the photo is taken. Otherwise your photo taken indoors under tungsten lighting with a daylight white balance would appear orange!

So now you have a bunch of photos, or video, yours or others, even streamed movies, all captured with the correct white balance, and you want to see them in the way the creator intended. You want your outdoor and your indoor photo to both show correctly on your display.

Well, your display also needs to be adjusted for white balance as well! The good news is this is possible with nearly all displays but instead of setting a white balance like "tungsten", you will either set a Kelvin, or you individually adjust the displays red, green, and blue values. Different displays call this by different things, but nearly all displays allow changing the Kelvin, or the R/G/B, or both.

If your display is set "too cool", i.e., with a Kelvin that is very high, everything will have a blue cast to it. Indoor night-time scenes will look cold, unwelcoming. Snow will look too blue. Conversely if your display is set "too warm", i.e., with a Kelvin that is very low, everything will have a reddish or orange cast to it. Now your indoor night-time scenes will look very orange, as if lit by an orange light bulb, and snow will look brownish!

Now that you know your display can be calibrated, and that it might be calibrated incorrectly, you can see the value of having an app that will let you measure the displays output, so you can adjust it to be correct. That's the purpose of KaliTrue... to measure your display to see if it's displaying white as white, and thus displaying all colors correctly!

Hang on, why don't I just set my display to 6,500K

Look at you, you smart one! You know that the default target white balance for displays is 6,500K, known as D65, which is ideal for video editing or for editing photos that will be displayed on a screen, and also ideal for viewing content. You're thinking all you have to do is set your display to 6,500K and you're done. Well, that value may not correspond to exactly 6,500K. If it does on your display, that's great! But wouldn't you like to know if your monitor is really displaying 6,500K when you have it set to do so? If so, read on!

I'm interested! How do I use it?

Pick a display you wish to calibrate. It can be your laptop screen, your tv, a computer monitor... it doesn't matter what kind of display it is, as long as you're able to set the red, green, and white values for the display. Sometimes you're only able to adjust the "Kelvin" value of a monitor... that's OK, that's actually simpler as you'll only have to adjust one thing instead of three! Some displays have neither, but instead have "color shift", or "hue"... the good news is most displays do have a way to shift the color, and that's all you need!

Now you will need to set your display to show a completely white screen. If you can play YouTube on your display, you're in luck - one of the easiest ways to show a white screen is to go to YouTube and find one of the many "1 Hour White Screen" videos there!

Now that you have your display showing a completely white screen, start the KaliTrue app up, and simply hold your iPhone/iPad up to your screen and the colored arrows will show you which way you need to adjust your screens colors! Use the controls on your display/monitor to adjust each of red, green, and blue (or the Kelvin, or hue) until all three readings (red, green, and blue) match, at which point your display will be properly calibrated to pure white.

If any of the indicators blink, it means that the indicated color is too bright, or not bright enough, as indicated by the arrows. You may have to adjust the brightness of your display to get a better reading. This requirement for the brightness being within a certain range is related to the ability of the app to take accurate measurements.

But what is white?

We go into some detail on what we define as white in our article here, but in short "white" has a defined target... that is, a value that we agree is white. The app actually has more than one definition of white... which is covered in excruciating detail in the linked article.

How accurate is it?

This is a topic unto itself! If you're interested in exploring this topic, please see this page.

Why did you call it KaliTrue?

It's a contraction of "Calibration" (spelled with a "K"... more on that later) and "True", as you use it to help calibrate your displays against a target color temperature (measured in Kelvin) so they display proper ("true") colors. So why the "K" spelling of Calibration? Well "K" is also short for Kelvin, which is an industry standard measurement unit for color calibration.

So what does it look like?

Well, it's still a work in progress, but here's what you would see if your display on on the green, needs a little more blue, and has too much red to give an accurate reading:

It's not exactly exciting to look at... but that's because the author had a goal of making the app easy to use, and that means the main screen was designed to be uncluttered, and to present only those elements that help the user accomplish the objective: measure the color accuracy of their display, so that they may adjust it for better accuracy.

Issue Tracking (Bugs, Features)

The best way to see the existing bugs and outstanding features is to visit the issue boards here. Don't forget to select the desired board with the drop-down in the upper left.

If you would rather just see a list of all bugs and features (including closed ones) the tracker is here.

Release Notes

Click Release Notes to be taken to the Release Notes page.

Is there any way I can help?

YES! If you like the app.... leave me a review on the App Store. And if you don't like it, reach out to me (KaliTrue direct email) and tell me why and I will do my best to improve the app.

About The Developer

Click here for my digital business card.