Honestly, I'm not bragging about Christmas loot, but I just got a flat screen, 19". I've noticed things are a lot brighter, higher definition, etc (the last was a 17" analog CRT)..thing I'm actually concerned about is color balance.
The thing comes with several modes, including 'game', 'sports', 'internet', etc. I'm wondering what the actual difference in what renders on my screen vs. everyone elses'. Is there anything I should keep in mind, adjustments I should make, etc? (It's a Samsung 930, should that matter). I started out here 5 years ago with a monitor that had a busted blue gun, and found the 'reds' on the screen looked way different..

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If you have DVD-player software you could do worse than getting hold of a THX-1138-qualified DVD. They usually come with some sort of calibration utility for setting up the brightness, contrast, and colour. I'm not going to claim it's ideal for a monitor, but it may be a practical low-cost standard to work from. "Pearl Harbor" is one film with that feature, but I wouldn't recommend buying the DVD for any other reason. "Lord of the Rings" isn't THX-1138, but the range of lighting in the scenes is an excellent test -- "Fellowship of the Ring" has both snowfields and dark caves, and getting both to look good is a good target.

The Incredibles DVD has the abovementioned calibration system, also.

Now, if I remember rightly, the ideal gamma for a TV (which is a DVD's target projection unit) is 2.2. Hmmm, if all you want to do is watch DVD movies then thats fine, but if you want to print your work your images will not look great as printing is done mostly at a gamma of 1.8. Really, to make things easier, you should say what the target meduim is for your renders; print, web, etc ;) Cheers

My Poser PC has a flat screen monitor and all I know is that anything I render where the lighting looks right has to have the lighting and contrast adjusted on our Internet PC because it is way too dark. If you find some good settings, I would appreciate your sharing them. Either that or I can try to wrest my copy of the Incredibles back from the friend who "borrowed" it back in October.

thanks all..I don't have a DVD player in my PC (someday..someday when I have money..;), but there's also no doubt worlds of calibration software our there for free. I'll just put out some pics and see what goes down..thanks for the quick responses..;)

i was checking into this calibration thing awhile back too ... but then I had this thought ... ok, I calibrate my monitor...now, how many of the other 200,000 plus people even here at Rendo have their monitors calibrated .. so there's a high chance that they still won't see what I do.

Well, if your monitor is calibrated at least those who also have calibrated systems will see something like what you wanted, the rest are just uncontrolable. The gamma value of your display won't matter for printing as long as you work in a profile aware application and tag your images with your workspace. Adobe and (I think) Corel tools (certainly painter, I think DRAW has the same setup) do that, Paintshop pro has some kind of colour management, not sure what Quark offers, Freehand is pretty awful unless I'm missing something.

That is a good point Dave, but if you make people aware of what you monitor is calibrated to, they at least have a chance to see the image the way it was intended to be seen.
It is also a good opportunity to really think about what your target media is...mine is print, for example. There is another issue, Macs have a system gamma of 1.8 (which is also about the gamma setting for print), PC's usually 2.2, and the web
"standard" is suppose to have a sRGB colour space and a gamma of 2.2, so my advice is to look at a "go between" gamma setting of about 2.0.

I have a short explanation of it all on my website: Monitor Gamma Cheers

Message edited on: 12/26/2005 09:46