Monitor calibration, I HATE IT

Scott Salisbury · 5 Apr 2009 at 17:29

I have 2x20" monitors. One is a 3.5 year old Dell and the other is a 2.5 year old LG, they weren't cheapo budget things, but they weren't top of the line either.

I've always considered the Dell to look the best, crisp whites, dark blacks and good default white balance.

I do a lot of graphic design work and website design work for friends/family and my hobby in photography is becoming more serious. Lately I've started to find that my photos look way off after printing and on other monitors. So I thought it would be time to calibrate the monitors properly and got hold of a HueyPRO.

It's a nice easy tool to use and both monitors passed the circle tests, only just though. While I could see the rings I would have expected them to be a bit more defined. However, after more than 5 attempts at recalibrating each screen, reading the instructions carefully each time - my Dell monitor comes out with a strong blue tint and my LG monitor comes out with a slight pink tint, but this time my LG monitor looks better out of the two. Maybe it only looks pink because I'm comparing it with a considerably blue monitor?

Sitting here, doing research on my issue, I have tried to get used to either of the monitors but always telling myself in my head, "AHHH, this monitor looks pink", then I move my browser over to the other and think, "AHHH, this monitor is bloody blue".

I can't get used to either configuration and I don't know which one is supposed to be "correct".

I feel like now I've lost faith in either of the monitors and I've lost interest in doing anything graphics related until I can afford some new monitors and the best calibrator money can buy, but I'd rather avoid this unless absolutely required.

What can I do?

growse · 5 Apr 2009 at 18:27

If you calibrate it properly, an image should look exactly the same on both. Are you sure that once you calibrate and create the right icc profile for each monitor, they're actually being loaded and used?

Scott Salisbury · 5 Apr 2009 at 20:34

Nope, all I know is that if I switch Huey between the corrected and uncorrected profiles, I can see a difference between the two but neither monitor looks the same as the other.

This is really started to frustrate me, I just don't know what's going on. :mad:

Scott Salisbury · 5 Apr 2009 at 20:57

Alright just confirmed, just ran Huey again and the correct ICC profiles are being used. The screens still look exactly the same.

I've spent about 5 hours trying to sort these stupid monitors, I was supposed to be designing a website today. What I've started looks so different on either of the monitors. The LG is warm and the Dell is cold. The stuff on the LG looks more correct than the Dell, yet I hate designing with the LG because the viewing angle isn't as good.

unknowndomain · 5 Apr 2009 at 20:57

Call the manufacturer for help, sounds like it might be faulty, however you should note that different equipment will behave differently but the huey should be able to cope with this, I hope you get it sorted as its kind of put me off the idea of one for my two LCDs.

Messiah Khan · 5 Apr 2009 at 21:39

What options do you have in the Huey software? Can you chose the white point target? If its on auto it may be trying to calibrate to the native white point of the monitors, which may be different. If you can, calibrate both monitors to 6500K (or 5000k for soft proofing), the luminance values to 100-120 and the gamma to 2.2