Print
Even the best screens can use a little help in achieving peak performance
Calibrating your monitor will make certain your photographic prints match what you see on your display. It will also ensure that the games you play and the movies you watch will look as their creators intended. The most foolproof means of calibrating your monitor is to use a colorimeter, an instrument you attach to the front of the display and control with related software running on the host PC. The software sends various colors, shades of gray, and brightness levels, to the display, and the sensor analyzes and evaluates them. These devices used to be quite costly, but we’ve achieved terrific results with Pantone’s inexpensive HueyPro. This colorimeter/software combo is currently street-priced at less than $100.
If only a free solution will do, there are several excellent options. Tom Niemann, of ePaperPress.com, has produced an online application that can step you through the monitor-calibration process by making adjustments to your display’s brightness and contrast settings. He’s also developed a tool for determining your monitor’s gamma setting. Niemann has also developed a free tool for calibrating your printer. You can find his tools at http://epaperpress.com/monitorcal/index.html.
Torben Rasmussen, of Flatpanelshd.com, has developed a larger collection of test images for evaluating backlight contamination, defective pixels, color uniformity, banding problems, text reproduction, and lots more. You’ll find his online monitor tests, including a downloadable executable version, at http://tft.vanity.dk.
Whether you calibrate your monitor using a hardware colorimeter or one of the free alternatives we’ve described above, it is essential that you first prepare your display and your work area to achieve the best results.
1. Set the monitor to its native resolution, and make sure your videocard is operating in either 24- or 32-bit mode.
2. Clean your monitor thoroughly. If the manufacturer doesn’t provide cleaning instructions, try this: Turn it off and let it cool. Remove any surface dust and loose contaminants with a can of compressed air, and then wipe the surface with a soft, clean cloth. Now, mix a little isopropyl alcohol with tap water (the alcohol will help dissolve grease and fingerprints), sprinkle a little onto the cloth, and wipe the screen. Never spray liquids directly onto the display.
3. Turn the display back on and let it warm up for 15 to 30 minutes, but turn off any screensaver or energy-management utilities you might be running, so that the calibration process won’t be interrupted.
4. Remove any color profiles you might have previously created for the display. In Vista, right-click on the desktop, select Personalize, choose Display Settings, and then Advanced Settings. Click the Color Management tab and then the Color Management button, select any color profile listed, and click Remove. Restart the computer.
Flatpanelshd.com has a very useful online collection of test images for calibrating and measuring the performance of your display for free.
5. Set up your ambient lighting so that it’s consistent with the environment you typically work in. Make sure the display is not reflecting light from a window or other strong source of illumination. Close any drapes or angle the monitor to eliminate reflections.
Move any brightly patterned, shiny, or colorful objects off your work surface, or at least out of your direct line of sight, so they won’t compete with the display for your attention.
6. Launch your calibration tool of choice and follow its instructions.
7. Primarily interested in calibrating your display so that the colors in your digital photos match those you print out? Here’s one quick-and-dirty solution: Find a photo you really like, print it out as an 8x10, and place it next to your display. Tweak your monitor’s brightness, contrast, and color values until the image on your screen looks as close to the print as you can make it.
Winging it this way won’t produce results as accurate as you’d achieve with a colorimeter, but it’s certainly better than nothing. You should also be aware that your monitor’s performance will change over time and decline as it ages, so you can’t just set it and forget it. A good rule of thumb is to recalibrate your display once each month.
Next, on to the reviews!
Comments are closed on this article
QUINTIX256
November 11, 2009 at 11:48am
I don't quite understand the advantage of Grey-to-Grey timing over Black-to-White-to-Black timing.
How do you know that the manufactures are measuring from the same grey levels?
You can have your recession. I'm not participating.
RyanMM
November 11, 2009 at 10:08am
I'm really disappointed by this article. MaximumPC passed up a good opportunity to dig into these things and expose how crappy LCDs have become by their commodification. Also, it neglects to mention H-IPS, S-PVA, and S-MVA/A-MVA/P-MVA.
Almost all of these (I didn't look at every review) are crappy 6-bit TN panel at 1920x1080, and I'm sure several of them are based off the same panel. It would've been useful if on the spec-sheet for each monitor you listed the panel type and which specific panel the monitor was based on.
I suspect for a few of those you wouldn't be able to though, because manufacturers can get away with playing the panel lottery and stick consumers with anything ranging from a decent screen to something awful depending on your luck of the draw (or lack thereof).
I'll also take this time to piss and moan yet again about the continually reducing pixel density of screens and the deceptive screen sizes that result from the move to 16:9 panels from 16:10 panels. Reviews like this could point out the total screen surface area as a more accurate size measurement for comparing monitors to each other. That way people who have a 22" 16:10 LCD don't see a 23.6" 16:9 LCD and buy it thinking they're getting something noticeably bigger. It's actually smaller.
Additionally, pixel densities have been falling as these screens have been getting larger. Instead of coming up with higher resolutions for bigger monitors, a lot of screens don't break 1920 pixels wide until they hit the 30" mark. I want to see 2176x1360 and 2304x1440 as stepping stones to 2560x1600.
Dear LCD makers: Please make me a 25-27" monitor with a minimum pixel density of 108 pixels per inch (preferably in the 115 ppi range), on a S-IPS/H-IPS panel at 16:10 ratio with dynamic LED backlighting. I will buy it yesterday. Thank you.
Muerte
November 11, 2009 at 1:40pm
Yep, they were mentioned. 8 bit color slower response time. Yep right there on the last page.
merrygoround
November 11, 2009 at 9:59am
geez this article should be called 8 Widescreen Monitors Trashed. I like to know what monitors not to buy, but it would also be nice to know which ones I should buy. I'm not the most knowledgeable when it comes to choosing some hardware and MaximumPC has never really let me down. I usually buy things that have atleast a 9 rating. So, I was hoping this article would have a maybe a 9 and perhaps even a kickass.
JohnP
November 11, 2009 at 11:58am
I mean where is the DELL 2407 (or whatever it is these days). Notice that there has not been a monitor greater than 22" on the best of the best for a while now. For me 24" 1920 by 1200 16:10 is the sweet spot. Got to be a monitor out there somewhere...
Muerte
November 11, 2009 at 9:00am
I'll stick with my CRT's until they fail. I'm not all that interested in saving space, which is the only good reason to switch.
QUINTIX256
November 11, 2009 at 11:40am
What's your refesh rate? 60Hz? Enjoy your retina murdering ciliary muscle straining strobe light.
You can have your recession. I'm not participating.
Pball1224
November 12, 2009 at 4:12pm
I'm still using a 19in CRT... Gasp! 75Hz in case your wondering. Unfortunately it's not very "Maximum" but it's what works until I can afford a very high quality LCD that's both quite a bit larger, and can reproduce most of the sRGB color space since I do quite a bit of photo editing. For now, I just have to do a lot of zooming in and out while making edits, but at least my colors are accurate. For anyone wondering, I do calibrate about every six months, and this old CRT has been rock solid.
dag1992
November 11, 2009 at 1:56pm
The advantages of a LCD outweigh those of a CRT nowadays, the gap between deep blacks and color depth in general has been closed up. Now if this was 2004; maybe a completely different argument.
ethanajs
November 11, 2009 at 8:45am
Sceptre X24 IS the best widescreen monitor for any purpose for the best price. It has HDMI, VGA, and DVI and costed me a mere $225 after tax and shipping. With a 2ms response rate and full 1080P HD, there's no argue.
QUINTIX256
November 12, 2009 at 12:05pm
There is also no tolerance for spammers who can't speak proper english.
You can have your recession. I'm not participating.
DBsantos77
November 10, 2009 at 11:20pm
So in reality there is no "great" monitor. I think I'll stick my $250 back in my pocket and stick with my 17' TFT till I see something promising.
-Santos
Pball1224
November 10, 2009 at 9:39pm
Sure NTSC is the right way to go about judging a monitor for video output for Movies, but Photography relies on percentage of RGB or sRGB coverage. Don't video games also render in the RGB color space?
MPC is usualy on top of their game, but this is one article that let me down, and is rather unusable for me.
QUINTIX256
November 10, 2009 at 9:44pm
This is discussing the color range, not the format. The input color format (YUV, RGB) is irrelevant, because it is always converted to RGB in the end.
You can have your recession. I'm not participating.
Pball1224
November 11, 2009 at 2:42pm
Maybe I am mistaken... I'm specificaly speaking about the range of color the monitor can reproduce. The article mentions percent of NTSC color reproduction but RGB is a slightly more inclusive color space, and it is that level of reproduction that I think matters more for photographers and maybe even gamers. Am I way off base? Any monitor review I've ever read in relation to photography or print layout reviews based on sRGB reproduction.
cheeseglue
November 10, 2009 at 8:15pm
This is a great introduction to the world of LCD Monitors, but on with the reviews? Did I miss something or should it have read on with the pictures?
jrocknyc
November 11, 2009 at 7:08am
And whoever did the layout/nav for this article needs to be re-trained... making us click on a monitor, then back, then the next monitor, then back... put a fuckin' "NEXT" button in their, son!
