Where can I learn how to properly calibrate a monitor?

Adium

Adium

Adium

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Joined
17 Nov 2010
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My new monitor arrived yesterday and I'd like to calibrate it properly. I understand I need a hardware calibration device for best results so I'm currently reading through TFTCentral's reviews to help me select a good one. I'm also interested in learning about technical ratings and measurements such as luminance, black point, contrast ratio, Delta-E etc. I often see these in monitor reviews but don't really understand what they mean or how to differentiate between good and bad figures.

Until I buy the hardware and gain some knowledge, I'll use the LCD monitor test pages on lagom.nl.
 
well it really depends on what level of calibration you want to get to and for what purposes. It's a real mine-field when you get into it, and there's so many different options.

What display do you have?
what are your purposes?
is it just for a correct display set up or is it for colour matching with output devices and inter-instrument profiling?
have you got a budget in mind?
how professional do you want it?
are you looking for a professional reference grade device, or a consumer grade device?


as a starter, you could probably read through some of the calibration instruction guides for various devices on X-rite's website which might give you a flavour
 
Baddass said:
well it really depends on what level of calibration you want to get to and for what purposes. It's a real mine-field when you get into it, and there's so many different options.

What display do you have?
what are your purposes?
is it just for a correct display set up or is it for colour matching with output devices and inter-instrument profiling?
have you got a budget in mind?
how professional do you want it?
are you looking for a professional reference grade device, or a consumer grade device?


as a starter, you could probably read through some of the calibration instruction guides for various devices on X-rite's website which might give you a flavour
Click to expand...

I have the NEC EA231WMi which will be used for digital design and gaming. I'm looking for a consumer level device, say around £100, to calibrate the monitor with accurate colours. Nothing more. More importantly though, I want to understand what I'm doing and what the various measurements and values mean.

I'll check out X-rite's website.
 
ok well for a consumer level device your best bet would probably be an X-rite i1 Display 2 device. Very good device and can be combined with all kinds of software packages. X-rites own i1 Match 3 software is easy to use and produces good results. There's instructional videos on their website on how to use it for profiling and calibration but it's very easy once you get into it.

The validation reports you will see in reviews on TFT Central are produced using LaCie's Blue Eye Pro software. The X-rite software has a "report" feature built into it as well to verify the target settings have been met, and things like your resulting colour accuracy

Do you want me to give you a quick summary of any of the targets used in reviews (and recommended for LCD monitors) and what some of the results tell you? anything in particular you want clarification on?
 
Baddass said:
ok well for a consumer level device your best bet would probably be an X-rite i1 Display 2 device. Very good device and can be combined with all kinds of software packages. X-rites own i1 Match 3 software is easy to use and produces good results. There's instructional videos on their website on how to use it for profiling and calibration but it's very easy once you get into it.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the recommendation. Consumer reviews on the X-rite i1 Display 2 seems positive so I think I'll go with that.

The validation reports you will see in reviews on TFT Central are produced using LaCie's Blue Eye Pro software. The X-rite software has a "report" feature built into it as well to verify the target settings have been met, and things like your resulting colour accuracy

Do you want me to give you a quick summary of any of the targets used in reviews (and recommended for LCD monitors) and what some of the results tell you? anything in particular you want clarification on?
Click to expand...

Yes please :) Any information you can provide will be helpful and I'll use it as a basis for further research.
 
+1 for the X1. For photo editing, it does exactly what it says on the tin. What it doesn't say is how much better games and video will also look! The software is pretty idiot proof too, which helps.
 
Sorry to slightly hijack this thread, but that X1 looks like the dogs danglies for home use and have been looking for something like this for a while. Could this be use on an LCD TV to calibrate that up?
 
At work we use an x rite i1 and it does the job although ours can do acreens printers scanners cameras but cost a grand! Have a look at a colour monky does the same job. Aworth a look anyway. x rite is a good product anyway and as stated above the software is very simple
 
Ginger-Menace said:
At work we use an x rite i1 and it does the job although ours can do acreens printers scanners cameras but cost a grand! Have a look at a colour monky does the same job. Aworth a look anyway. x rite is a good product anyway and as stated above the software is very simple
Click to expand...

suspect thats maybe the i1 Pro spectrophotometer package as opposed to the i1 Display 2 colorimeter?
 
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