Here is an excellent test chart from Photofriday.com that I heartily recommend to see how well your monitor set up is. I use an X-rite colorimeter to calibrate and profile my monitor, and I can see all 26 steps on the step wedge. When I first replaced my older CRT monitor with an LCD type, the unit wasn't calibrated and I couldn't see the top and bottom three steps or so.

The round targets on the sides of the screen are for deep shadow and highlight checks. You should be barely be able to see the three steps in the round targets. This chart won't check color for you, but it will get the brightness and contrast going for you.

You don't need a calibrator to get a monitor fairly close. The way to adjust a monitor seems counter intuitive, but run brightness and contrast as low as you can. Set the screen to full display, F11 on PC machines. Adjust brightness until you can see the difference between the bottom dark steps, and then adjust the contrast until the top steps are seperated. It's a good idea to write down any settings before starting in case anything goes awry. That way you can take it back to where you started and you can't blame me ;-)

I realized this was needed after seeing several snow and black water shots on Photosig that are horribly off.

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From cremmins/Ian (463) on February 21, 2010 9:23:15 AM CST I have just bought a new computer and monitor, i know that sounds mundane but sheesh i have such a learning curve heading my way, i am a guy who started out with DOS, 3.11, win95, win98,win98SE and stuck with win98SE so ME,win2000,win2003 and win2007 passed me bye, now i am evolving to win7, i started with 8mb of RAM on my PC now my dang graphics card has a Gig of RAM, my new pc has a 24 inch lcd monitor which is bigger than most tv"s i have owned over the last 30 yrs, is my new monitor calibrated, i dont know, what i do know is the desktop images that slideshow through every 20 minutes or more look far better than i will ever be able to take, so yeah, i think its calibrated Reply

From administrator/Robert (151) on February 21, 2010 9:51:33 AM CST Most new monitors are set "hot" so that they look good; ie bright vibrant colors. They seldom are set up correctly. The best method is with a colorimeter sensor. Lacking that, you can set the luminance (gray scale response) with the chart I've given the link to. Go to it, and verify you can see all the steps. It'll save you a lot of grief down the road. Reply

From hippoart/Stephen (2,627) on June 1, 2010 3:57:54 AM CDT I'm still on a CRT so calibrate my monitor once a month, or if I'm going to print out some important pictures (e.g. for my local photo club). From my experience it's as important to control the amount of ambient light in the room you're working. Reply

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