I just got done calibrating my new monitor, so I can relate my experience. My old, dim, blurry CRT monitor just exploded, so to reward myself for waiting to the last minute to upgrade it, I got a 17" LCD flat panel.
You should use that brightness meter posted above to adjust your brightness and contrast, as well as a gamma-correction test image to adjust your gamma. Someone posted these a while ago, but I can't find that thread.
It seems it's all the rage these days to put "color management" everywhere. The monitor came with TWO programs, the video card has it, image viewer and editor have it, and my printer driver even tries to do color correction to match prints with the screen. If all of these are turned on at once, your screen looks like garbage.
I started by turning all of this junk off, then started with just the controls on the monitor's on-screen menu. I got it as close to what I wanted as possible, then made the final adjustments with the video card driver. I used the grayscale chart, a gamma-correct image and then a handful of my own photos and high-rated photos here and on photosig.
I'm pretty happy with it all in the end. The monitor is a ViewSonic VA720, and I'm liking it so far. It is VERY bright compared to my dead CRT, which is something I'm still getting used to. |
