a good way to calibrate your monitor, is to use a color printer, make a color image that squares of the 3 primary colors (RGB) along with several shades of black grey and white, each square with one free block beside it print this one out from your app, best with a true color profile if it is available for your printer (or best quality setting if not) now cut out the free blocks, and hold it up against your monitor (still with your painting app open and the same image shown), adjust brigthness, contrast and color so that the blocks match as good as possible. that way you get a WYSIWYG print view, and your color setting should be in par with your contrast and brightness setting (if i remember correctly, there are several of these color correction charts available on the net, some monitor manufacturers have them available on there websites), and this works for both CRT and TFT