Calibrating displays

[pmolson]

I have read some advice on calibating monitors here and on other forums as well
as youtube etc. and have tried, half heartedly i admit, to get my dual monitor set up
to display the same.

Not much luck. If I drag an image half on one screen and half on the other there is a distict
difference.

If any of you have some suggestions on calibrating techniques or software recomendations or
articals that explain the ins and outs I would very much appreciate your assistance.

After I get my monotors squared away, I will move on to printer profiles so I can more acurately
print what I am seeing on my screen.

Thanks

Paul

one other thing, Is there not a spell check feature on thstopic page?

[brodie]

Software and online calibrations can help you tweak a bit but they won't really calibrate your monitors. The problem, in my experience, is that you have very limited capabilities with just adjusting brightness/contrast etc. on your monitor. Monitor companies don't help because the buttons typically don't really do what they're labeled or don't do it well (Contrast in particular tends to be more of a brightness button). This is create a file with all shades of gray from 0 to 255. On a good monitor you 0-5 and 247-255 or so will all probably look either black or white respectively but you should see differences between all the other colors. If you try this by hand you might get the low end looking good but the high end colors may look all blown out. Or you get the high end colors looking good and all the colors from 0-35 look black. And of course 127 won't be 50% gray but either too dark or light and the whole spectrum will probably have a warm or cool look to it.

To calibrate, you really need a hardware/software combo solution. The hardware will basically read the colors right off your monitor and then it'll produce a profile specific to your monitor so that all the colors are shifted within the OS so what you see is accurate. Since you're talking about profiling your printer later I'd highly recommend ColorMunki. It's gotten great reviews, it's relatively cheap compared to many calibration tools and it includes the ability to create printer profiles as well. I use it at work and it works just fine for me. I have a dual monitor setup and my colors are identical.

I've went through the printer profiling process but haven't really used it. I use an epson printer with epson paper and ink so I just use epson's profiles. The process, though, took some time but was straightforward enough.

-Brodie

[pmolson]

Thank you Brodie for taking the time to explain a couple thinks to me.

I will look into colorMunki.

Paul