Monitor Calibration

[GKlein]

I have been considering purchasing a monitor calibration device such as those offered by Colorvision. Many of these devices require the user to begin by adjusting monitor contrast, brightness, colour temperature, etc to specific values. I have not seen a discussion of how to adjust the graphic card which usually has similar controls for colour, brightness, gamma, etc.

On another post here, someone recommended setting everything to factory default values and letting the calibrating device do everything.

Is the calibration result dependant on:

How the monitor is adjusted before it is calibrated.
Whether the monitor has controls for all parameters.
The capability of the graphic card or its settings.

Before buying such a device, can someone comment on these?

Thanks
George

[Costas L]

The answer to your question George is simply YES

The way the calibration works is to take the signals generated by the graphics card and map them to the values that the monitor should be displaying. So your options are
1) Change the graphics card to generate the target values
2) Change the monitor to display the target values
3) Put something in between the graphics card and the monitor that changes the values to the target

If you use something like the Eye One Display 2 (and maybe true of other calibrators), then the calibrator will measure things like the brightness / luminance, colour temperature and gama before calibration enabling you to adjust the monitor (or graphics card if your monitor lacks RGB controls) to achieve those targets prior to calibration.

The advantage of this is that non colour aware applications - like some browsers - will also display images with reasonable accuracy. Also, the changes the calibrator has to make in remaping to the target output become smaller, and some say more accurate because there are no large shifts to achieve the correct luminance levels.

[GKlein]

Thanks Costas,

Does that mean that it doesn't matter how I have the monitor and graphics card configured, the new profile will correct their combination to display the proper output. The result should remain OK as long as I don't change either the monitor or graphics card settings, subject to any slow drift of the monitor itself.

George

[bez]

On another post here, someone recommended setting everything to factory default values and letting the calibrating device do everything.

I have an Apple monitor running on a PC so have no access to the usual Mac monitor controls (Brightness is the only button) therefore this method wouldn’t work with my Eye One.
If you have a PC, right click the desktop and you should see your graphics card control panel appear in the list (eg NVIDIA Control Panel) giving access to all adjustments.
ps. before calibration you may also have to disable Adobe Gamma in your Startup tab.

[Costas L]

Thanks Costas,

Does that mean that it doesn't matter how I have the monitor and graphics card configured, the new profile will correct their combination to display the proper output. The result should remain OK as long as I don't change either the monitor or graphics card settings, subject to any slow drift of the monitor itself.

George

That's correct George, with the proviso that the initial settings are not so far out that the calibrator cannot cope. You should at least try and get the temp set to 6500 prior to calibration, although even this is not possible on some systems and calibration still works

[Kevgermany]

I prefer to set everything to default, then let the calibrator do the work. That way if anyone messes with the settings (kids, spouse, guests, myself in a fit of madness ) you have a quick way to get back to the correct settings for the calibration.