calibration photometer for lcd monitors brands

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Monitor calibration tools are essential for anyone looking for precision and consistency in their photography. All monitors will produce slightly–or sometimes drastically–different colors, contrast levels, and degrees of brightness. Left uncalibrated, it could negatively impact your edits and prints. For example, if you are editing on an extremely warm monitor, you may overcorrect and end up with overly cool images, only noticeable when viewing on your phone or other displays. Or, you could go to make prints for a client and end up with dramatically different colors and contrast from what you saw on your screen.

Monitor calibrators are devices that sit on your monitor and measure the colors and brightness of the display. Some will also read ambient light to suggest how bright your monitor needs to be to see accurately in that environment. The best monitor calibration tools will help you get better and more consistent results in your photo editing, video editing, and printed work.

Why it made the cut:The SpyderX Pro has long been the standard for photographers. It provides highly accurate results and allows you to calibrate multiple monitors.

Datacolor, one of the most well-known calibration companies, released its SpyderX range in 2019. It claimed it was its fastest and most accurate monitor calibration tool yet, and indeed, it improved on the Spyder5 significantly. The SpyderX utilizes a new lens-based sensor system which is highly accurate, providing better white balance, color, and shadow detail. And it has a before and after feature, so you can see how much of a difference it makes.

It’s also much faster than previous versions. The first time using it may take about 20 minutes, but after that, calibration should only take around five minutes each time. You’ll only have to go through the process every couple weeks under normal circumstances. The software is easy to use and guides you through the process in an intuitive way. You’ll be able to focus on your edits instead of fussing with calibration.

This tool has an ambient light sensor that can monitor the room you’re working in throughout the day and suggest appropriate brightness and contrast. The software can either warn you to calibrate or automatically adjust brightness and contrast based on custom profiles. It supports multiple monitors, so if you have dual monitors and your laptop screen, you can ensure all three are correct. You’ll also have access to Datacolor’s StudioMatch™, which creates a target to share between monitors for consistency across all your workstations.

Why it made the cut:Though more affordable than other options, the ColorChecker Display provides highly accurate calibration and works with laptops, desktops, and projectors.

Formerly the X-Rite i1Display, this entry-level monitor calibrator offers a lot of value. It comes at a lower price than alternative options though it still has plenty of features and is very accurate. It works with laptops, desktops, and even projectors and can color match up to four displays. So whether you have multiple displays at your desk or your bounce between locations, it will allow you to ensure your entire setup is accurate.

The ColorChecker Display has an ambient light sensor to determine the best brightness level for comparing prints to your display. But, it does not constantly monitor ambient light like the SpyderX Pro, so you will need to do that manually if you work in a room where the light shifts significantly throughout the day. But it will remind you on a regular schedule to re-calibrate, which helps keep your display accurate over time.

For serious photographers who want to fine-tune every aspect of their photography, this kit from Datacolor provides all the tools you need. It includes a Spyder LensCal, which allows you to precisely measure and adjust your DSLR and lens autofocusing. It helps ensure that you miss focus less and that the camera and lens focus exactly where you want them to. Because mirrorless cameras use the main camera sensor to focus, they don’t require calibration. But, it can tell you if your lens isn’t focusing properly.

The kit also comes with the SpyderCUBE for getting accurate exposure and white balance settings by providing white and black values. And the Spyder Checkr helps achieve consistently accurate colors across different shots, days, and even cameras. As a result, your raw files will be in a much better place before you even start editing, cutting down on the time you need to sit in front of your computer.

Finally, the kit comes with Datacolor’s impressive lens-based colorimeter, the device that calibrates monitors. It works with multiple monitors and provides access to SpyderX Elite for unlimited calibration controls. The software is easy to use, guiding you through the calibration process. You can also use Datacolor’s Softproof to preview how a photo will look as a print or on different devices like tablets. You’ll be able to ensure things are accurate before you hit print or walk away from your edits.

Serious professionals need to ensure their entire kit is calibrated for utmost accuracy and consistency. This calibration kit from X-Rite offers an impressive set of features and accessories to meet those requirements. The software allows you to calibrate every step of the process, from your camera to the printer. It has presets specifically for video production, making this ideal if you do a lot of color grading on your monitor. And the included XL ruler enables you to color calibrate even large format printers.

The included polarization filter helps cut down hot spots from reflective surfaces, resulting in better blacks and richer colors. It’s ideal for scanners, allowing you to reproduce artwork at a higher quality. Plus, the spectrophotometer has an 8mm aperture, allowing it to provide accurate results on a wide range of surfaces.

The i1Basic Pro 3 Plus allows you to create profiles for up to four displays that are connected to a single computer. And if you work in a lab setting, you can calibrate unlimited monitors that are connected to different computers. It also has a Kensington Lock port to keep it safe in public or communal settings.

Though other calibrators will work on Wacom devices, Wacom collaborated with X-Rite to design this to work specifically with its products, such as the Cintiq 27QHD Creative Pen Display. It will provide results tailored explicitly to your tablet as a result. You can also use it to calibrate other monitors and displays and even use it on mobile devices.

It allows you to save profiles for your different displays, and you can create custom colors to suit your needs. Everything is very customizable, so while you can adjust based on its recommendations, you can also fine-tune settings as you see fit.

Wacom’s monitor calibration tool allows you to check the quality of your display and monitor its health over time. That way, you can know if it might be failing before things get too bad. It also provides profile reminders to keep your display accurate.

Displays use different types of technology to project an image, from backlight LED to LCD or various types of technology in projectors. While most of the monitor calibration tools we’ve listed here are compatible with a wide array of displays, double check that whichever instrument you are considering will work with your particular display.

The amount and type of light in the space that you have your monitor will have a significant impact on how you view your screen. For example, if you are in a room with lots of natural light, you will need different settings than if you work in a room with minimal windows. Likewise, if the artificial light in your space is very warm or cool, it will change your perception of the colors on the screen.

An ambient light sensor reads all that data and factors it into your screen calibration. Some calibration tools will not have these, however. So, if you want the utmost accuracy, be sure to look for one with an ambient light sensor.

How fast a calibration tool can provide results may not matter to some, but it will be essential for others. It may be especially important if you are calibrating multiple displays on a regular basis. Unfortunately, many manufacturers will not provide speed data in the product specs, but some will. If speed is important, be sure to look closely for that information.

Some entry level systems will only allow you to make automatic adjustments without much insight into the process. That’s fine for the average person who is just looking to improve their monitors out-of-the-box experience, but falls short in high-end professional settings. That’s especially true if you’re doing custom printing work or doing work in less-than-optimal conditions.

Most monitor calibration tools will cost anywhere between $150 and $400. But, there are some premium, professional-level calibrators that will run you upwards of $5,000 or even $7,000. The more expensive options are highly-specific and very feature-rich, and more than what even most professional photographers need.

Need is perhaps a strong word in this situation. Whether you need to calibrate your monitor for photo editing truly depends on what your end goal of the photos is. If you are a casual photographer taking pictures for fun, calibrating your monitor really isn’t necessary. But, if you want to up your game and have full control over your work, then yes, you should calibrate your monitor. And if you are editing photos for prints, you definitely need to calibrate your monitor for accurate and repeatable print results.

Most, but not all monitors can be calibrated. In order for a monitor to be calibrated, you’ll need access to RGB controls, brightness and contrast, and the ability to set profiles on that monitor.

All monitors will shift in brightness, colors, and contrast as they age, which is why it’s essential to calibrate regularly. Broadly speaking, you should calibrate your monitor about every month. But, this somewhat depends on the display. Some are more stable–especially newer monitors–and once every two months will be enough.

Monitor calibrators are worth it for certain photographers, graphic designers, and videographers, but not everyone. Spending money on a calibration tool will not be worth it if you are only posting to Instagram or taking photos casually.

But calibration is worth it for those who want complete control over their images. It is especially essential if you print your photographs. Calibration will help ensure your photos are printed with accurate colors, improving your prints. And if you aren’t printing, calibration tools are worth it if you simply want to ensure consistent quality across your work. It is also crucial if you work with a team and want colors to be reliably accurate across all team members.

Despite being rather technical pieces of equipment, the best calibration tools are easy to use and provide accurate results. For those serious about their photography or video, it is an essential tool that will make a difference. You’ll get better photos, videos, and prints with less work and will have more consistent results over time.

The writers and editors here at Pop Photo have decades of experience in photography and have worked with most major equipment manufacturers, including monitor calibration tools. I have spent the past 10 years or so either working to oversee consistency across a group of editors or printing my own photographs, which has provided me with experience calibrating screens.

When selecting the best monitor calibration tools, we looked at important features such as ambient light sensors and the ability to match multiple monitors. Ease of use was also critical, as calibrating your screen shouldn’t be overly challenging. Lastly, we aimed to provide products at different price points and experience levels to suit different users.

The best monitor calibrator tools are an essential investment for creatives in field such as digital art, graphic design, photography and video. Anyone producing visual work, be it digital or for print, needs an accurate screen, but the reality is that different monitors and laptop screens can produce very different results and even the same screen will change over time. This means that regular screen calibration is vital to make sure you"re seeing your work the way it"s actually going to look.

Failing to calibrate your screen can result in work that doesn"t have the colours or light you intended when you see it on another screen or in print. This is true even of very good monitors and laptops – most need calibration when they come out of the box and then throughout their lives. Ambient lighting also affects how your work looks on a screen, and some of the best monitor calibrators can take this into account.

Some more expensive monitors designed for creative professionals come with their own monitor calibrator tools, but in most cases you"ll need to invest in one of the best monitor calibrator tools, either on its own or in a bundle with other tools. Monitor calibrators are small devices that you place on your screen in order to run a check on the display"s brightness, contrast and colour coverage and accuracy. Some downloadable tools claim to be able to do this too, but they can"t actually "see" your screen like the best monitor calibrators.

You can learn more about the importance of monitor calibration at the bottom of this guide. As for which tools to use, there are really two main brands: Datacolor"s Spyder X range and Calibrite"s ColorChecker (Wacom has a calibrator for its own drawing tablets too). Both Datacolor and Calibrite offer several models: a standard option, a more pro model with extra features and studio packages that can also calibrate printers. They also have bundles that include other tools, often aimed mainly at photographers.

Below, we"ve selected the best monitor calibrator tools at different price points based on our own reviewers" experiences using them, their specs, the types of screens they can calibrate and useful extra features like ambient light detection and multi-screen calibration. As well as using these tools to calibrate their own monitors, our reviewers regularly use them to test displays when we carry out our reviews of new monitors.

Of course, even the best monitor calibrators can"t work miracles. You"ll need a quality monitor to get good colour coverage and accuracy. For suggestions there, see our guides to the best monitors for photo editing and the best 4K monitors. We"ve also made a specific selection of the best monitors for MacBook Pro.

Datacolor is one of the best-known brands when it comes to monitor calibration, and it"s followed up its Spyder5 range of monitor calibrators with SpyderX, which we"ve found to improve on nearly every aspect of the previous models. SpyderX monitor calibrators use a new lens-based sensor system that makes calibration faster while also increasing accuracy so you can be even more confident in your screen"s colour accuracy. If you calibrate your monitors regularly (and we recommend you do), the faster calibration can save you quite a bit of time in the long run.

Previously named X-Rite i1 Display Pro, the brilliant Calibrite ColorChecker Display Pro is a monitor calibrator that offers a whole lot of features and options (although you pay for them). The naming gets a bit confusing here because Datacolor"s SpyderX Pro (above) is its standard calibrator tool, whereas Calibrite reserves the "Pro" tag for this, the second model up in its range, above the cheaper ColorChecker Display but below the slightly more expensive ColorChecker Display Plus.

This monitor calibrator allows you to use your profile across multiple displays (either on the same machine or network) as well as assess the ambient light in your workspace to set your monitor up for best results. A technology called Flare Correct will measure and adjust your display profile for reduced contrast ratios caused by glare on your screen. Video colour standards are also incorporated, so video editors can set up their display for best results, too.

If you"re a professional who has the budget, and space, for the SpyderX Studio, then this is one of the best purchases you can make. It comes with the SpyderX Elite monitor colorimeter (see number six below), as well as a SpyderPrint spectrocolorimeter for checking prints and the SpyderCube, which can be used to calibrate Raw images.

At the top of the Calibrite ColorChecker range is Calibrite ColorChecker Display Plus. We only place it lower on our list because of the price, since it"s more than what many people will need. However, while it"s more expensive, this is the calibrator to go for if you need to deal with super-bright displays. Calibrite"s other calibrators handle up to 1,000 nits while this will manage up to 2,000 nits. It also offers slightly better measurement for darker tones.

Datacolor also has an enhanced model of its SpyderX calibrator that we put at number one in our list. The Spyder X Pro will cover most people"s needs but we found this SpyderX Elite colorimeter does offer some extra features that will be useful for some. It looks identical to its cheaper sibling, but this model can calibrate your monitor not only to conform to a typical 2.2 gamma and 6500 K white point, but also to colour space standards like sRGB, Adobe RGB, NTSC and Rec 709.

This isn"t a general-purpose display calibrator unlike all the others here. Instead it"s designed specifically for use with Wacom"s own Cintiq pen displays (and not all of them, so be sure to check if yours is compatible). If you do use a compatible Wacom Cintiq tablet, then the Wacom Colour Manager is the best monitor calibrator we can recommend to ensure the accuracy of your screen. It"s fairly expensive – comparable to the Calibrite Display Pro at number 2 above, but it"s a specialist tool for a very particular task.What is a monitor calibrator tool?Monitor calibration involves measuring and adjusting the colours on your computer monitor to meet a set standard. The best monitor calibrator tools include two components to do that: hardware and software. The hardware takes the form of a sprectocolorimiter or colorimeter, which measures your monitor and records colour values, brightness and contrast, as well as other variables. The software takes that data and builds a colour profile for your monitor.What"s the purpose of a monitor calibrator tool?The monitor you use and the setting where you locate it can have a big impact on how your work looks. Every screen displays images differently, so the colours you see on a phone screen, your monitor or a client"s monitor will vary. That"s because the internal workings of every screen are different (before you factor in the screen settings and ambient light conditions).

This is a big deal for anyone who works in visual arts and design. Most computer screens give a vibrant, dynamic picture, but this isn’t always the best for editing your photos, for example. If you edit images on a monitor that hasn’t been calibrated, you may end up exporting pictures that look oversaturated, muted or have an obvious colour cast when you see them on another screen or on a printed support.

They can then program your computer then programmed to compensate for the colour inaccuracy of your monitor. Calibrating your monitor also means looking after yourself because it helps reduce eye strain during intensive work sessions.How do I choose the best monitor calibrator for me?How much you need to spend on a monitor calibrator depends to an extent on what you need it to calibrate and what you use your screen for, but there are several features to consider

Screen types:Monitors use different types of technology, and that can affect their colours, so you want a calibration tool that can account for things like LED backlighting. Most of the tools we"ve included in our guide to the best monitor calibrators can be used on any monitor or laptop, and also on projectors, but always double-check the tool you"re going to buy.

If you print your work, you can also calibrate your printer to ensure its colours are also the best they can be. For that, you’ll need a calibrator designed for printer profiling, such as the Datacolor SpyderX Studio at number 3 or Calibrite ColorChecker Display Plus at number 5 in our list above.

Ambient light detection: look for this feature for customised calibration that adapts to compensate for the surrounding ambient light in your room or office.

Speed: how fast your monitor calibration tool works might not seem so important, but if you calibrate your monitor as often as your should, then you"ll be grateful for a fast device. Most options will actually remind you when it"s time for your to calibrate your screen again.

Other features:More advanced features to look out for on monitor calibrators are conformity with the best-known colour standards and screen calibration, which ensures you see the same colours across a multi-monitor setup.How often should I calibrate my monitor?All monitors change in colour, contrast, and brightness as they age. Because of this, the majority of the best calibration software suggests you calibrate your monitor (or monitors) every 2-6 weeks. With the monitor calibrators we"ve listed above, the process only takes around two minutes per monitor.

LCD monitors don’t age or change as quickly as older CRT technology, but you still want to rest assured that colours on your screen are accurate so even an LCD should be calibrated every six months at the very least. For a detailed look at how monitor calibration tools work, see our article on how to calibrate your monitor.Is Calibrite the same as X-Rite monitor calibrators?This is a question we sometimes get asked about one of the two major brands in monitor calibrator tools. Basically, yes; the tools that used to be X-Rite are now Calibrite. X-Rite owns a number of subsidiaries, including the well-known colour specialist Pantone. In mid-2021, it split off its monitor calibrator tools into a separate company, Calibrite.

It"s a rebranding that caused some confusion among users, but despite being a separate company, Calibrite licences the monitor calibrator tech from X-Rite, so they"re described as "powered by X-Rite" and contain the same tech as before.

The LCD sensor analyzes color contrast and brightness in no time and with the highest accuracy. It also automates ambient light measurements in combination with Barco’s QAWeb for DIN 6868-157 software version. The optical system supports displays with all current and emerging backlight technologies, including LED.

The colorimeter’s intuitive and compact design makes it very easy to use with any Barco medical display. The Barco LCD sensor comes with a standard 2-year warranty.

The EIZO-developed ColorNavigator software makes calibration simple and produces predictable color results. ColorNavigator works with a wide range of measurement devices to directly utilize the Look-Up Table of ColorEdge monitors for accurate and reliable calibration in minutes.

Preset values* for web contents, photography, and printing are available. Just select one, click "Adjust", and ColorNavigator will begin calibrating. This takes the guesswork out of assigning values for users with limited color management knowledge.

A paper white measurement function offers better color matching between the image on the monitor and the image on the printouts. By measuring the white of the paper to be used for printing, ColorNavigator will automatically set the target values for brightness and white point accordingly. (This feature is not available for ColorEdge monitors with a built-in calibration sensor.)

Sometimes due to variations in output from different printers or the special requirements of a project, it is necessary to fine-tune an otherwise perfectly calibrated monitor to match target colors. ColorNavigator lets you easily adjust hue and saturation for all six primary and secondary colors (red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow), as well as white balance, brightness, black level and gamma, to achieve the closest possible visual match. You can decide which of the adjustments will be saved to the profile. (6 color adjustment settings cannot be saved to the profile.

For confirmation of calibration results or to achieve more accurate manual adjustments, a test pattern screen can be displayed. The test pattern screen shows a full grayscale ramp, as well as just the low tones (blacks), high tones (whites), gamma values, and the EIZO and ColorNavigator logo areas. Brightness, white point, and gamma can be adjusted manually with the results immediately reflected on the test pattern screen.

With ColorNavigator you and prepare several profiles for different needs and switch between them as needed. You can also use past calibration results to easily adjust your monitor.

ColorNavigator emulates* the color characteristics of other media devices such as tablets, smart phones, notebook PCs, other LCD/CRT monitors and even portable gaming devices. With a spectrophotometer, ColorNavigator reads the emulated device"s color patches as they appear in a web browser and creates an ICC profile. By using this profile with a ColorEdge monitor, content creators see how their customers view color on their respective media devices.

After initial calibration, a monitor needs to be recalibrated at regular intervals to maintain color accuracy. ColorNavigator includes a recalibration reminder that will appear after a certain number of user-determined hours. When the monitor is first calibrated, the date and time are saved. After the time you set has elapsed, an LED on the front panel lights up, and a reminder message appears the next time ColorNavigator starts up.

To eliminate the individual differences in measured values among calibration devices, ColorNavigator conducts settings based on EIZO"s own standards that prioritize color management settings. In addition, when color matching with other ColorEdge monitors, ColorNavigator can give priority to matching between monitors and correct the calibration devices.

With ColorNavigator and a measurement device, you can set your light box"s* brightness to the desired value. ColorNavigator takes the resulting brightness level and sets it as the monitor"s target calibration value to ensure uniform brightness between your monitor and light box when color proofing.

If you want to conduct color management between monitors in a workflow then ColorNavigator lets you load the profile of another ColorEdge monitor and use it to calibrate your own.

ColorNavigator emulates* the profiles of printers, paper, and other monitors. The profile will be added to a drop down menu of emulated profiles where you can easily access it as needed.

To verify calibration results or check to see how much the monitor"s colors have varied since it was last calibrated, ColorNavigator measures the monitor"s color patches to determine the difference between the Delta-E value of the monitor"s profile and the actual displayed values of the monitor. ColorNavigator can also measure CMYK color patches* (GRACoL 2006 Coated #1 and FOGRA39) and output them as Adobe Photoshop or Acrobat files. The measurement results of both the monitor and profile for each color patch are indicated in either CIELAB or XYZ values, and the difference between them expressed in Delta-E. The Delta-E variation can be shown in a graph and compared with previous results.

With Color Navigator, the monitor can be correlated to the measurement results of an external calibration sensor. This is convenient if the monitor is used in a work environment with other ColorEdge monitors and one measurement device must be used as a standard for all calibrating.

The latest versions of ColorNavigator 6 as well as older versions like ColorNavigator 6.4.7 and ColorNavigator 5.4 that support Mac OS 9.2.2, X 10.2 – 10.6.8 and Windows XP/Vista and also older ColorEdge monitors are available for download.

Are you looking for the highest level of on-screen color accuracy for all of your screens, including projectors? Then the i1Display Pro is the solution for you! It’s two user modes, Basic and Advanced, provide serious Color Perfectionists with the perfect combination of unrivaled color precision, speed, options and controls to fit any workflow. You’ll no longer risk spending hours at your monitor perfecting images or video only to find that the display was not accurately representing the digital files. Properly profiling and calibrating your displays ensures reduced editing time and a more realistic no-surprises representation of final output.

Top-of-the-line i1Profiler color management software offers the ultimate in flexibility and control. Basic mode offers a wizard driven interface with predefined options for the quickest path to professional on-screen color. Advanced mode offers user-defined options for more sophisticated profiling workflows to deliver the highest quality color results on monitors and projectors, as well as display testing and quality assurance tools.

Compensates for the ambient light surrounding your workspace with Ambient Light Smart Control. Since the intensity or amount of ambient light in your workspace affects the way you perceive color on your display, take advantage of i1Display Pro to automatically adjust your profile or simply notify you as ambient light conditions change. With the integrated Ambient Light Measurement, i1Display Pro automatically determines the optimum display luminance for comparing prints to your display.

Flare Correct™measures and adjusts your display profile for reduced contrast ratios caused by flare light (or glare) falling on the surface of the display. By accurately measuring your effective display contrast ratio, you’ll have an even more accurate display profile.

Intelligent Iterative Profiling,an adaptive technology,produces optimized results for maximum color accuracy on each unique display every time you profile.

Next generation i1Profiler software for calibrating and profiling all modern display and projector technologies including LED & Wide Gamut LCDs. Advanced user-defined controls support more sophisticated workflows.

Save time by re-using profile settings on multiple displays connected to the same computer or multiple computers within a workgroup. In addition, Automatic Display Control (ADC) adjusts display hardware for increased speed and fewer manual adjustments.

The included i1Profiler color management software offers the ultimate in flexibility and control. Its Basic mode offers a wizard driven interface with predefined options for the quickest path to professional on-screen color. The Advanced mode offers user-defined options for more sophisticated profiling workflows to deliver the highest quality color results on monitors and projectors, as well as display testing and quality assurance tools.  i1Display Pro profiling provides full support for NTSC, ITU-R-Rec.BT.709 and PAL SECAM broadcast video standards.

Calibrating your monitor is essential to get an accurate representation of the colours you want to output on a printer. Calibration is only possible with CRT monitors and some of the more expensive LCD monitors, such as the Eizo GC range and LaCie"s current 300 range of models. These monitors have a 10-bit or better Video Colour LookUp Table (LUT) which also makes them behave better with regards to colour representation.

While you may not always have the means to buy a monitor that you can calibrate - or you simply don"t want to throw out your still perfect performing 4-year old LCD, you can still profile the monitor, which enables you to at least use it for more or less accurate photo proofing with Photoshop. What if I told you there is an application out there that does more with the video card"s LUT than most packages do - even the very expensive ones? It is called basICColor display 4.1.1, it"s a German product, and it works wonders. The secret sauce? Software calibration. Not as good as hardware calibration, but better than no calibration at all.

basICColor display 4.x is a multi-monitor solution out-of-the-box. At startup, the software will detect when you have more than one monitor connected to your computer, and will automatically open as many windows as there are monitors. The main window is easy to use. It has a phased interface, meaning you only get to see what is relevant at each particular phase in the calibration/profiling process.

basICColor display 4.x is fast too. I was stunned by its speed, especially so as the application will go through a calibration round before profiling your display. It should therefore take at least twice as long as with other programs, but it"s actually faster than both MonacoProfiler and ProfileMaker Pro.

You can have the software calibrate or only profile your display. If software calibration causes problems with your video card, you can turn it off. I can"t report any problem with my ATI Radeon 9800 SE, but other cards might dislike display 4.x tampering with their Tone Response Curves. The software is aimed at professionals, and therefore can be set up by the operator entirely. However, beginners - or impatient people - can start calibrating using the "Express" button, which sets the application to manufacturer defaults and is the fastest way to get a profile quickly.

If you know what you"re doing, you can decide yourself what the software is supposed to calibrate / profile against. This is done by going through a column with pop-up menus at the left side of the window. For example, you can decide to calibrate to ISO 3664 and 12646 standards, or use one of the preset calibration settings such as "Office", "Photography", and "Prepress".

The profile can be a LUT-based profile or a less accurate matrix profile. When selecting to calibrate the hardware on a monitor that supports hardware calibration, you can sit back and look at what display 4.x does for you. The interaction between the software and the monitor will be totally automatic, and the calibration curves will be uploaded into the monitor"s lookup tables.

With software calibration, the values of the calibration are uploaded to the video card, and less influence can be exercised on how the monitor itself behaves. Nevertheless, the calibration round is pretty efficient. I"ll get to the results in a minute. What happens when the software calibrates, is that your black and white point are set, and your grey values are iteratively determined and the Tone Response Curve adjusted accordingly.

This iterative process is what makes basICColor display 4.x more accurate than competing products. You can see this for yourself as soon as the whole process is over. The software then allows you to validate your profile and see the deltaE values of measured colour patches - after the monitor has been calibrated and profiled. On my LaCie photon20visionII, the deltaE on the left display was all in the green (less then 2) and on the older right (replacement) display only 3 patches are in the yellow area (less than 4).

This by itself doesn"t tell me how the monitor performs. So, I used a few tricks I learned from the master himself, the now late Bruce Fraser. I created a grey gradient and visually checked the quality of the calibration/profile. The grey ramp should not have any discoloration. On the left monitor, this was the first time the ramp was indeed as neutral as Switzerland. The right monitor had slight coloration - but my feeling is that this is a bad monitor, period.

Then I tested the result visually with a black area shown full-screen and a black patch in the middle that I changed in value by using the Curves in Photoshop. This test shows how well the monitor has been calibrated. Most calibration results will start showing a difference between the black and the grey area in the middle when the Curves value has shifted upwards to +4 or even +5. With MonacoProfiler I managed to see a difference at +3. With basICColor display 4.x the difference started at +1, which is incredibly good.

Finally, you can edit your calibration curves in display 4.x, but as this feature rapidly results in your calibration messed up, I did not play with it.

If you"re serious about monitor calibration and profiling, basICColor display 4.x is an absolute must-have. I am thinking about photographers, prepress people and even graphic designers. This software is vastly superior to even the more expensive competitors, and it works with almost every colorimeter or spectrophotometer. It therefore deserves an Editor"s Choice.

Why do monitors do this? Well it used to be because of the physical properties of CRT displays, but now monitors are actually built to display in this fashion because they make the display look better (possibly a weber"s law kind of thing). In fact, PC makers and Apple typically set their monitors to have gammas and these are different! PC is typically set to 2.2 and Mac to 1.8.

So how do we undo the gamma? Well, when we calibrate the monitor we are trying to make it so that there is a linear relationship between the value we put in our computer programs and what the luminance of the display is. So, we measure the input-output relationship (like the one above) and then invert it so that we can be sure that incrementing values will linearly increment the monitor output. How does that work? Well, you need to know about the gamma table. In your computer display card there is a table that maps each value from 0 to 255 to a finer resolution value (typically in today"s computers this is a 10 bit value - though we are hoping that will change to have finer resolution and all the software and hardware will support that). So, when you tell the monitor to go to say 54, then the value is looked up in the table and would come out as some number, 643 for an arbitrary example. Then the display card uses that value to set the luminance of the monitor to a value between 0 and 1024 (assuming a 10 bit table). What we can now do is manipulate that gamma table so that you can insure that the input values from 0 to 255 will range from 0 to 1024 in such a way as to make sure that the output of the monitor is linear with respect to the input values.

Why is this important? If you care about contrast, for one, it is really important. If the monitor is not linearlized and you display a gray value of say 128 and you want to have equal increments of white and decrements of black to make a grating, you might set your values to sinusoidally change from, say 64 - 128 - 192. But, this would not result in equally bright whites as blacks are dark because of the gamma relationship between these input values and output luminance. You would have an overall change in the luminance of the patch as you change contrast. This would not be good. So, we calibrate monitors.

Our code may work with different models, but we have only tested the above listed models. If you want to use another photometer you can input the readings manually or consider writing a few lines of code in moncalib to support your photometer type.

Note that there are some commercially available devices to calibrate monitor screens which create color profiling information. We have tested one of these called Spyder2Pro which allows you to linearize the monitor output but found that is not yet suitable for psychophysics purposes. The calibration program crashes when you use the default settings to linearize the monitor (an email to the tech support confirmed this is a bug in their software). Using advanced settings it worked but it could only test luminance at 5 output levels. The linearization that it achieved was not accurate enough when tested with the PR650 (it looked like they are doing some sort of spline fit of the points and the luminance as a function of monitor output level looked like a wavy line around the ideal).

You will also need an adaptor to connect the USB on your computer to the photometer. Make sure you have a good device - cause this is typically the reason why you might have a problem connecting to your photometer. Some work, some don"t. Some break when you upgrade your OS. Why? Because they rely on driver software that the developers don"t really spend so much time making sure works perfectly. That is, they are buggy. So, if things don"t work, it is very likely that you don"t have a good USB/Serial device driver. Here is what we know has worked for us and what has not.

Typically you can just connect the USB/Serial device to the Serial cable of the photometer, but for the Topcon you will need a nullmodem connector between the two (this swaps the read/write lines for communication). It looks like this (remember this should only be necessary for Topcon).

any Randeon card for desktop computers above series 7000 has 10-bits DAC resolution (laptop cards don"t have it necessarely or drivers do not access it)

Make sure the device driver for your particular usb/serial device is installed. Also, make sure that mgl is updated. After the installation is complete you need to restart the computer.

Run moncalib in the commTest mode. Run and choose your photometer (the below demonstrates with Minolta and the Keyspan USA-19HS USB/Serial device)>> moncalib("commTest=1")

You will be asked to turn on your photometer and make sure it is in the correct mode (you should have already done this):Please turn on the LS100 and press the white F key at the same time.

It will try to make a measurement. If all is good, it should report no errors and give you a luminance value that looks reasonable (make sure you are pointing at something reasonably bright). Looks like this (moncalib:photometerTest) Trying to make a measurement from your photometer.

4) Check to make sure you have the correct cable (For example, the Topcon needs a null-modem cable that crosses read/write lines, while other photometers may need a simple pass through cable).

5) Make sure that your communication mode on the device is setup correctly. Minolta can only use 4800/even/7 bits/2 stop bits. Other photometers have different settings, but should be set to 9600/none/8/1

Each photometer is a bit different in how you get it setup for serial mode. The section below describes the procedure for each of the photometers we have worked with.

First make sure that the topcon has the correct serial port settings, by pushing the [MODE] key for about 2 seconds to enter the function mode. Then push the [ENTER] key four times to set the RS-232C Parameters. The settings should be Baud rate: 9600, Length=8, parity=NONE, Stop bit=1. Use the [CHANGE],[ROTATION] & [ENTER] keys accordingly.

When using the automated calibration via the serial port, the program will ask you to turn on the PR650 and then press "return" within 5 secs. You might not want to press "return" right away, or you may get something like this on the photometer:

This indicates that you pressed the return while the photometer is waiting for a transfer signal (not sure what it is), and hence entered the XFER mode. If you wait another 2 secs or so it will enter the control mode, now press "return" you should see this:

When doing the automated calibration, turn off screensavers and energysaver, otherwise the screen will go blank after a while and you"ll be measuring luminance of blank sreens.

If you cannot install the serial port interface or don"t want to automatically calibrate using the USB cable you can also use the program to run manually with any photometer by typing in the luminance measurements yourself.

You can just run as follows (the directions are similar to when you tested the comm port above) Note that we also set initWaitTime so that you have 60 seconds before the calibration starts to turn off the lights and leave the room.moncalib("initWaitTime=60");

When you have run the calibration, try running mglEditScreenParams, select “Find latest calibration” for the calibType and click the displayCalib button to see your calibration. If your calibration does not show up there, then it will not be used when you run your stimulus programs, so it is important to confirm. You will also see text that will describe your calibration, like the following(moncalib) Displaying data for calibration file /Users/steeve/proj/mgl/task/displays/0001_sr14-3fa8fef553_141110

tableTest1After getting calibration, tests that calibration by putting the inverse table into the gamma table and running through values. Should give a nice linear relationship between input and output

The program moncalib will save a calibration file in the local directory. For you to use this calibration file, you can store it in one of two places. Either in your own program directory under a directory called displays:

InitScreen should automatically find the correct table by checking your computer name and looking for the file in these two places. If you do not use the standard filename, or have multiple calibrations for the same computer (like if you have multiple monitors calibrated), you can use a specific file by setting myscreen.calibFilename

Where xxxx is a sequential number starting at 0001 and yymmdd is the date of the calibration. This stores a variable called calib which contains all the information about the calibration. You can quickly plot the data in calib by doing:

Most monitors sets a white point at near 6500K by default, which is close to the representative of daylight. It is a standard used in the photography industry. However, you must not rely on default settings, as monitors shift in color and contrast as they age. Different manufactures also have a different calibration standards for their monitor. If your monitor have a shifted color temperature, your picture will look warmer or cooler in other devices.

Every digital image has gamma encoding, it is like a data that store the value of pixel brightness inside a curve. Your monitor reproduce images based on those data. Therefore, your monitor (output luminance) needs a gamma value in order to match the gamma of the camera (input signal) that created the image. If you edit your work with a gamma 2.6 monitor, but you show your work with a gamma 2.2 display, your work will look less contrasty and brighter.

There are many ways to calibrate your monitor, such as eyeball the sample and adjust your monitor accordingly without a calibrated references. For better real-world result, we only recommend using a hardware calibrator.

The first step is to buy a calibration device, such as SpyderX by Datacolor.  It helps you to know the brightness level, ambient light conditions, and current profile of your monitor.

The next step is to know everything about your monitor. For that, you have to visit the manufacturer’s website. It will tell you the type, ambient light intensity, and many moretechnologies it uses.

Your monitor shifts calibration automatically with time. That’s why you have to re-calibrate with regular intervals. It’s best to check your monitor after one month and re-calibrate. Again, your monitor’s display can get affected as it ages.

Spyder Xis one of the most popular monitor calibration tools that professional photographers and graphic designers use. While there are many other options, this brand sticks out as the most reliable and convenient. Here’s why

The whole process takes under two minutes. You can easily do it any time you like with as many monitors as you want. There’s no colorimeter in the market that can do calibration quicker than this.

It uses a lens-based color engine technology that the company has mastered over the last several years. This technology is fairly new in the monitor calibration market, which actually helps it make more accurate than competing devices.

It works with all kinds of monitors, regardless of the brand. Even if you have an old monitor, you can significantly improve the display with Spyder X Elite’s monitor calibration. So even though it uses new technology and profiles, it also accommodates older LCD monitors, which isn’t the case with other popular brands.

It also monitors the ambient light so that the outside lighting doesn’t affect the calibration. It can also monitor ambient light throughout the day to either adjust the brightness or inform you to calibrate again.

This feature comes in handy when you’re working with images. It can check brightness, colors, and other little details in real-time to tell you how your monitor is behaving and whether it can be improved. This makes SpyderX great for professionals.

SpyderX Elite’s new technology ensures that your monitor is calibrated to the most accurate colors. The colors, shadow details, and white balance you see are what they actually are and will appear in print outputs. You can do a test print to see for yourself.

In fact, if you own another calibration device, use both to calibrate and see the difference. SpyderX Elite’s result would likely be more accurate as we’ve tested the product ourselves.

To put it in simple words, monitor calibration is must if you"re a graphic designer, photographer, or an animator. You need accurate and fast monitor calibration to ensure best quality work. This is where tools likeSpyder Xcome in handy.

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Calibrating your monitor is essential to get an accurate representation of the colours you want to output on a printer. Calibration is only possible with CRT monitors and some of the more expensive LCD monitors, such as the Eizo GC range and LaCie"s current 300 range of models. These monitors have a 10-bit or better Video Colour LookUp Table (LUT) which also makes them behave better with regards to colour representation.

While you may not always have the means to buy a monitor that you can calibrate - or you simply don"t want to throw out your still perfect performing 4-year old LCD, you can still profile the monitor, which enables you to at least use it for more or less accurate photo proofing with Photoshop. What if I told you there is an application out there that does more with the video card"s LUT than most packages do - even the very expensive ones? It is called basICColor display 4.1.1, it"s a German product, and it works wonders. The secret sauce? Software calibration. Not as good as hardware calibration, but better than no calibration at all.

basICColor display 4.x is a multi-monitor solution out-of-the-box. At startup, the software will detect when you have more than one monitor connected to your computer, and will automatically open as many windows as there are monitors. The main window is easy to use. It has a phased interface, meaning you only get to see what is relevant at each particular phase in the calibration/profiling process.

basICColor display 4.x is fast too. I was stunned by its speed, especially so as the application will go through a calibration round before profiling your display. It should therefore take at least twice as long as with other programs, but it"s actually faster than both MonacoProfiler and ProfileMaker Pro.

You can have the software calibrate or only profile your display. If software calibration causes problems with your video card, you can turn it off. I can"t report any problem with my ATI Radeon 9800 SE, but other cards might dislike display 4.x tampering with their Tone Response Curves. The software is aimed at professionals, and therefore can be set up by the operator entirely. However, beginners - or impatient people - can start calibrating using the "Express" button, which sets the application to manufacturer defaults and is the fastest way to get a profile quickly.

If you know what you"re doing, you can decide yourself what the software is supposed to calibrate / profile against. This is done by going through a column with pop-up menus at the left side of the window. For example, you can decide to calibrate to ISO 3664 and 12646 standards, or use one of the preset calibration settings such as "Office", "Photography", and "Prepress".

The profile can be a LUT-based profile or a less accurate matrix profile. When selecting to calibrate the hardware on a monitor that supports hardware calibration, you can sit back and look at what display 4.x does for you. The interaction between the software and the monitor will be totally automatic, and the calibration curves will be uploaded into the monitor"s lookup tables.

With software calibration, the values of the calibration are uploaded to the video card, and less influence can be exercised on how the monitor itself behaves. Nevertheless, the calibration round is pretty efficient. I"ll get to the results in a minute. What happens when the software calibrates, is that your black and white point are set, and your grey values are iteratively determined and the Tone Response Curve adjusted accordingly.

This iterative process is what makes basICColor display 4.x more accurate than competing products. You can see this for yourself as soon as the whole process is over. The software then allows you to validate your profile and see the deltaE values of measured colour patches - after the monitor has been calibrated and profiled. On my LaCie photon20visionII, the deltaE on the left display was all in the green (less then 2) and on the older right (replacement) display only 3 patches are in the yellow area (less than 4).

This by itself doesn"t tell me how the monitor performs. So, I used a few tricks I learned from the master himself, the now late Bruce Fraser. I created a grey gradient and visually checked the quality of the calibration/profile. The grey ramp should not have any discoloration. On the left monitor, this was the first time the ramp was indeed as neutral as Switzerland. The right monitor had slight coloration - but my feeling is that this is a bad monitor, period.

Then I tested the result visually with a black area shown full-screen and a black patch in the middle that I changed in value by using the Curves in Photoshop. This test shows how well the monitor has been calibrated. Most calibration results will start showing a difference between the black and the grey area in the middle when the Curves value has shifted upwards to +4 or even +5. With MonacoProfiler I managed to see a difference at +3. With basICColor display 4.x the difference started at +1, which is incredibly good.

Finally, you can edit your calibration curves in display 4.x, but as this feature rapidly results in your calibration messed up, I did not play with it.

If you"re serious about monitor calibration and profiling, basICColor display 4.x is an absolute must-have. I am thinking about photographers, prepress people and even graphic designers. This software is vastly superior to even the more expensive competitors, and it works with almost every colorimeter or spectrophotometer. It therefore deserves an Editor"s Choice.

Calibration is a subject which comes up frequently wherever there is discussion of monitors. As you will hopefully realise from our reviews, there are two important things to consider when purchasing a new screen, and when you might be concerned about it’s ability to render colours accurately: 1) How does the screen perform at default colour settings?, and 2) how can it perform with correct calibration? There are several methods to calibrating your screen which we will discuss below in this article. However, it should be understood first of all that to get truly calibrated settings, and good colour accuracy, you are likely going to need to invest in a hardware calibration solution. This is why we discuss a monitors performance at default settings in our reviews and how the screen is preset in the factory before being shipped. Most users will not have access to hardware colorimeter/spectrophotometer devices, and they are generally not cheap. It’s important therefore to understand what kind of performance you can expect from your screen with basic software configuration.

Panel technology does come into play to a degree when we discuss colour accuracy. There are some common misconceptions however which need correcting. Just because a screen is based on a particular panel technology, does not automatically make it the best for colour accuracy. It is often thought that an IPS panel will offer much better colour accuracy than a TN Film panel, but this is not necessarily a hard and fast rule. Things which do come into play though include:

Viewing angles. For professional colour enthusiast displays, IPS is the most popular choice by manufacturers. This is because the technology offers very wide viewing angles, more so than TN Film and VA matrices. It also doesn’t suffer from the off-centre contrast shift anomaly which you can see on VA panels when moving away from a central field of view. It is also free of the pretty severe vertical contrast shifts you will see from TN Film panels.

Colour Depth – For the best colour reproduction you probably need a panel capable of a full 8-bit colour depth, or perhaps a modern 10-bit panel. An 8-bit module offers a true 16.7 million colour palette without the need for FRC technologies used in 6-bit panels. IPS and VA panels typically offer this, whereas TN Film panels do not. Modern 10-bit panels are becoming more widely used, and most use FRC to increase the colour depth from 8-bit (8-bit +FRC) giving rise to a colour depth of 1.07 billion colours. There are very few ‘true’ 10-bit modules available but there are some out there, usually at a very high cost. Some models offer further enhancements such as a extended internal Look Up Tables (LUT’s) where an even wider colour palette is available to choose from. These can help improve gradients and colour rendering capabilities and are often used in higher end professional grade monitors.

Colour Accuracy Potential. It is true that IPS panels are capable typically of very good colour accuracy, but often you will need to carry out proper calibration with a hardware calibration device to get anywhere near this. However, VA and TN Film panels are certainly capable nowadays of reaching excellent colour accuracy if calibrated correctly. If you look through our reviews, you will see some TN Film panels perform very admirably here, despite the assumption that it is an inferior technology by many people. You will also spot that default colour accuracy really does vary from one model to another, and so you may even find some screens with better default colour accuracy with a TN Film panel, than you see at default for an IPS panel (e.g Acer AL2216W vs NEC 20WGX2). All technologies can offer decent colour accuracy once calibrated, it is the other factors discussed above which normally lead people to chooce IPS if they are doing any colour critical work.

Gamma– This describes the non-linear relationship between the pixel levels in your computer and the luminance of your monitor. Gamma affects middle tones; it has no effect on black or white. If gamma is set too high, middle tones appear too dark. Conversely, if it’s set too low, middle tones appear too light. We aim for a gamma level of 2.2 which is the default for computer monitors and is the standard for the Windows operating system and the Internet-standard sRGB color space. The farther you drag the video system from this optimal level, the more calibration artefacts such as shadow banding and posterization appear. Therefore, a gamma of 2.2 allows for the maximum range of colors your system can display.

Luminance – We aim for a luminance (often referred to as brightness as well) of 120 cd/m2, which is the recommended luminance for LCD displays in normal lighting conditions.

Colour Gamut – Represented by the CIE diagram (on the left of the report), this can’t be calibrated as such, it more gives an indication of how much of the human eye’s colour space the screen can cover in its reproducible shades. The larger the monitors gamut (represented by the triangle), the better really.

Black Depth – is the monitor luminance or print reflectance for value = pixel level = 0; i.e. it is the deepest black in the monitor. The lower the value recorded, the better. We aim for 0.0 cd/m2 (truly black), but in practice it doesn’t reach this low on modern LCD screens.

DeltaE / Colour Accuracy – We aim for the best colour accuracy possible, where the colour displayed by the monitor is as close as possible to the colour requested by the graphics card. On our DeltaE graphs (as shown above), the lower the bars are down the graph’s Y-axis, the better in terms of colour accuracy. For reference, LaCie describe the DeltaE readings as:

These are the settings we aim for when calibrating a monitor in our tests, and is what your calibration process should work towards, regardless of whether you are using software or hardware methods.

Software calibration methods can be handy in helping to adjust some basic settings on your screen. They are most useful in helping to get the screen operating at a comfortable setting, helping to get a decent contrast / brightness level, and a good colour balance. This is a good way to help improve the ‘feel’ and look of the screen, but it should be noted that it does not necessarily result in more accurate colour rendering from a strict point of view. Settings are normally altered either manually through the OSD options (RGB levels, contrast and brightness) or through similar controls at the graphics card level.

Commonly LCD monitors come set with a default 100% brightness which means that luminance is way above the desired 120 cd/m2 we aim for. This is frequently the main