piccolo_909 opened this issue on Oct 03, 2012 · 36 posts
cspear posted Thu, 04 October 2012 at 2:05 PM
Just for clarity:
the whole point of monitor calibration is to ensure that they are as close as possible to a standard: typically that standard will be sRGB, maybe AdobeRGB if you have a wider gamut monitor (you will have bought it for this ability).
Both sRGB and AdobeRGB standards specify a gamma of 2.2 and D65 (6500° Kelvin); the difference is in the RGB mapping (AdobeRGB has a wider gamut).
The calibration procedure involves (a) defining your target values within the calibration software and (b) with the measuring device in place, adjusting a variety of values via your monitor's OSD while watching the feedback provided by the software. The software prompts you through the process. It can be fiddly. Once you're as close as possible to your aim points, the software will measure a series of colour patches and the results will be encoded into an ICC monitor profile: this should be set as your system profile (by the software in most cases). This profile is used by both the Operating System and ICC-compliant software such as Photoshop to display colour accurately.
Fancier solutions such as i1Display Pro are able to manipulate your video card's LUTs (Look-Up Tables) to save the hassle of farting about in the OSD, but are about twice as much as entry-level packages.
At the top end, graphic arts monitors from NEC, Eizo etc. ship with their own calibration software which interfaces directly with hardware within the monitor, going through several iterations of measuring grey levels, white point, black point and colour values, adjusting them all, re-measuring, re-adjusting etc. until everything is within very tight tolerances: the adjustments are saved in the monitor's hardware. Then it does a quick series of measurements to create the system profile.
On my NEC monitor the calibration phase happens in a linear colour space. At any time I have the option to make the monitor emulate AdobeRGB, sRGB or anything else I might feel like. Lucky me.
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