Monitor
Calibration
Ever
walked into a electronics store and looked at the wall of TV's,
all showing the same program, and each TV picture looking slightly
different from the one next to it? Here is the problem. No two
brands of computer monitors look alike without careful calibration.
Also, different operating systems have different standards for
brightness, contrast and gamma. Not that very many monitors
come close to conforming to the established standards. Your
monitor most likely doesn't display images the way mine does.
For a sipmlified method of adjustment to the best viewing of my website and others please adjust
to the following...
Brightness / Contrast
This grayscale chart below is surrounded by medium gray.
Use it to adjust the contrast and brightness of your monitor although
this adjustment may not work quite as well for LCD monitors especially
in a bright environment.
- Wait
for your monitor to warm up for 30 minutes before proceeding.
Typically, monitors will not show black properly until warmed.
- Check
your monitor settings to ensure you are viewing at least thousands
of colors (16 bits) or higher. Ideal setting is 24-bit
or 32-bit color (millions of colors).
- Adjust
room lighting so the monitor is somewhat brighter than its
environment. The room should not be too dark so that
the monitor is much brighter than the room or too bright so
that the monitor is washed out by reflections and by room
brightness.
- Set
the contrast of your monitor to 100% - maximum contrast.
- Adjust
the brightness of your monitor so you can see a full range
of black to white steps in the grayscale chart above.
Each step is the same width. The first few steps on the
either the black or white end will be the most difficult to
distinguish, and MAY be impossible to distinguish on your
monitor. The black should be completely black, and the
white should be completely white. There should be no
color cast to the gray surrounding area.
Color Adjustment
Below are three charts of the primary colors. Ideally,
you should see a full range of steps as in the grayscale chart
above. However, they will be more difficult to distinguish
at the ends of the chart. The brightness of each of the
primary colors on the right side of the chart should be equal.
Each step from maximum brightness should be visible, at least
until you get to the bottom third of the chart. The falloff
of brightness for each of the colors as you move right to left
should be equal. Adjustment of color is often allowed
either with a control panel or directly on your monitor, using
built-in controls. The gray around the color
charts should not have a color cast of any type.
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