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- #CALIBRATING MONITOR WITH SPYDER 3 PRO WHAT ARE THE SETTINGS SOFTWARE#
- #CALIBRATING MONITOR WITH SPYDER 3 PRO WHAT ARE THE SETTINGS PROFESSIONAL#
Certainly, if you’re a professional photographer or videographer, you’ll spend what you need to get the tools necessary for precise calibration. Thankfully a host of automated calibration tools exist, ranging in cost from $80 to thousands of dollars.
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Some professional calibration tools coupled with certain professional-grade displays can actually adjust the LCD panel itself, but those combinations are often very pricey–though they do ensure very accurate calibration. If you’re working with an automated calibration tool, such as the Spyder 3 Express I’ll use as an example later, typically it will load all the calibration data into the graphics card instead of the monitor.
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I turn the brightness and contrast down fairly low, as well if I have the option, I’ll set the brightness level to roughly 200 cd/m 2 (you may see this setting reported on some sites as 200 nits, though the units aren’t exactly the same). I prefer to put the monitor at some standard setting if, for instance, it has a default setting for D6500 (which means a color temperature of 6500 kelvins), I use that. My personal preference is to avoid relying on the monitor controls. This can lead to adjustment confusion: Do you use the monitor controls for brightness, contrast, gamma, color, and so on? Or do you use the graphics card control panel? Most monitors do have built-in video processors, and give you a host of physical controls for the display.
#CALIBRATING MONITOR WITH SPYDER 3 PRO WHAT ARE THE SETTINGS SOFTWARE#
AMD, Nvidia, and Intel all offer software controls to tweak color balance, contrast, and so on. You handle any other adjustment through the graphics card’s software controls. This monitor lacks a built-in video processor, so the only physical adjustment you can make on such a model is the brightness of the backlight. The display I’ll be using as an example is the HP ZR30w. The point isn’t to focus on the LCD tech as much as it is to pay attention to better color depth.īefore diving into the act of calibration, it’s worth discussing monitor settings. Both technologies are more costly to manufacture, but you can find relatively good, 24-inch IPS-based displays for around $400. Most of the higher-end displays that support 8 bits per pixel use either a version of IPS (in-plane switching) or some flavor of PVA (patterned vertical alignment). A few monitors capable of 10 bits per pixel are shipping now, too. That’s why, if you’re looking at an image with finely shaded color gradations, you may see color banding.Ī dramatic example of color banding illustrates how important it is to own a monitor with better color depth.You really want a monitor with a color resolution of 8 bits per pixel, since such a display is capable of showing over 16 million simultaneous colors. Such displays simulate higher color depths via dithering–a process that digitally simulates greater color depths than are really available. With three pixels representing the red, green, and blue primary colors, this means the number of simultaneous colors on screen is limited to 262,144. The response time of TN displays can be fast, but most of these monitors are limited to a color depth of 6 bits per pixel. Most low-cost LCD screens use TN (twisted nematic) technology. At first blush, it’s a great time to be a computer user: Big, bright displays with very fast response times cost a couple hundred dollars. Before diving into the minutiae of monitor calibration, I’ll talk a bit about displays themselves.