Monitor Calibration

[anonymaus]

Disclaimer: Not my fault if you break it.

Purpose:

Since we can't all afford, or be bothered, to buy one of these I thought I'd provide some user-friendly resources to help people get their displays looking their best.

This thread is primarily intended for LCD users, since most still-functioning CRTs are decent quality and good CRTs usually require very little adjustment, but the websites linked to below will still be helpful for CRT calibration!

Resources:

If you already know more or less what you're doing, you can hop to these links and give it a go:

http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/
http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/m...alibration.htm

For everybody else:

Please keep in mind as you go through the process that unless you have spent extravagantly on your display you will NOT be perfect on every test and it is silly to imagine you will: you should simply aim to achieve the best out of your display.

My personal preference is for better accuracy on the whole rather than a blindingly bright and colourful display.

I begin with colour accuracy, adjusting the settings until they are the way I like them. I prefer my colours slightly warm (less blue), and they are calibrated so that each individual tone show definition across the board. If you have a properly printed and accurate colour wheel this can aid you.

Next for me is Black Levels, so that dark tones are not disappearing or all looking the same; after that I adjust contrast so that White Saturation is appropriately white, not grey, and I see definition in the higher levels.

Last but not least is Gamma adjustment, which shifts the mid-tones, adjusting the curve between dark and light for the appropriate combination of deep blacks and rich colours but not making the whites overly bright or bleeding.

Onto the steps!

1) Uninstall any nonsense software which came with the display, such as Samsung's "Natural Color" or anything else which will interfere with any changes you make. If you've made changes to "desktop color" in nVidia control panel or ATI CCC, please revert them to defaults.

2) Reset the display to its factory settings in the OSD menu. This usually comes in a few flavours: "Reset Image" "Reset Color" or an all-in-one "Reset". If the split options appear, reset both.

3) Start reading Lagom LCD test pages and going through the tests in order, making sure to read the blurbs on each page so you understand exactly what the intent is.

4) Open up Dry Creek Photo's calibration page and check your work at Lagom against the two tests, Black point and Sensitivity (a very useful chart!).

5) If you haven't had a result you're happy with, you can now use your nVidia CP or ATI CCC to make software adjustments to your liking. These are obviously reversible with a couple of clicks so feel free to play around.

6) If you feel like you've adjusted too wildly in one direction and fouled up a different aspect of the display, repeat beginning with step 3.

7) Write down your settings so you can re-apply them if needed!

8) Congratulations, with any luck and some hard work you can now see everything properly and as it was intended by its authors/creators. (And see that banned people are grey, not white!)

Feel free to ask any questions. I will do my best to answer and help.