digital tft lcd color monitor free sample

FocusLCDs.com sent me a free sample of a 4x3” TFT LCD (P/N: E43RG34827LW2M300-R) to try out. This is a color active matrix TFT (Thin Film Transistor) LCD (liquid crystal display) that uses amorphous silicon TFT as a switching device. This model is composed of a Transmissive type TFT-LCD Panel, driver circuit, backlight unit. The resolution of a 4.3” TFT-LCD contains 480x272 pixels, and can display up to 16.7M colors.

For this project, you would need the RA8875 driver board (available at AdaFruit for US$35) to interface the TFT display to the Arduino. It comes with a header which you can solder on as needed.

The monitor is your window to the world (or at least to your photos). If you"ve ever been in a television store and looked at a row of sets playing the same program, you may have noticed that the color appearance can vary widely (or wildly) from TV to TV.

If you don"t calibrate and profile your monitor, then your picture"s appearance can vary widely from the way it would look on other monitors, and can mislead you about the actual colors in your image. To address this problem, monitors can be calibrated and profiled. This process makes the device show as accurate an image as possible.

Calibration is the process of setting the monitor to the desired neutral output. It includes settings for luminance, white point and gamma. Once it"s been neutralized as well as the monitor"s controls allow, it"s time to measure the color and help to perfect it with software.

Profiling is the process of measuring the imperfections in the monitor, and creating a "filter" that compensates for those imperfections. Using the parameters set in the calibration step, profiling requires using a hardware device, often referred to as a "puck" (a Colorimeter or Spectrophotometer), that hangs over the monitor screen and reads several sets of red, green, blue and grey patches generated by the profiling software. The color patches are measured by the puck as they are displayed. The differences between the colors the monitor displays in its native state and the true colors of the patches are used to create a monitor profile which will cause the monitor to display the true colors more closely than it did in its native state.

Like high-end stereo speakers, the monitor is a place where you really do get what you pay for. The best systems are precision engineered for added fidelity and evenness across the screen.

The old-school CRT monitors are pretty much out of service. They have been replaced by LCD flat panel monitors. The newest technology is a new form of flat panel that uses LED light behind the screen.

In the 1990s, high-end CRT (cathode ray tube) monitors were considered to be state of the art. That technology has gradually given way to LCD panels. Up until now, these panels have used CCFL (cold cathode fluorescent lamp) back lights. CCFL technology is in the process of being replaced by LED (light emitting diode) backlights. LED backlights have many advantages over CCFL including requiring half the power consumption and, more importantly, they are free of mercury, a toxic material that is emitted by electronic equipment. LED backlights have another advantage: the white light they create is derived from pure red, blue and green LEDs, so the light is purer, brighter and can offer a wider color gamut than CCFL. Some LED panels that are currently available have up to 120% of the Adobe RGB (1998) color gamut, which is 25% more than the very best CCFL panels. Most likely your next LCD will be an LED backlit display.

DDC allows adjustment of the display"s brightness, contrast, white point and gamma through the profiling device and software. This will save time and improve precision when calibrating and profiling monitors. When shopping for a new monitor, it"s best to choose a DDC-compliant display if possible.

Computer monitors started out as 1-bit depth displays – good only for looking at type. Monitor development quickly progressed and now all consumer displays are 24-bit and can display over 16.7 million distinct colors. Twenty four-bit color is based on eight bits per RGB channel, which is why you may see monitors described as having 8-bit depth color. High quality graphics monitors such as the EIZO CG series have 10-, 12-, or 14-bit depth. This results in smoother transitions between tone values and the possibility of using the extra bits to extend the dynamic range of displayed images, allowing more detail to be seen in extremely bright areas and better shadow detail all at the same time. This extra headroom allows for easier editing in wide gamut color spaces. Some of this advantage is still theoretical until Photoshop supports greater than 8-bit depth all the way from the display to the pixels in an image.

Many high-end monitors advertise the fact that they can display all or nearly all of the Adobe RGB (1998) color space. At first glance, this seems like something that you would want, and in many ways it is, but there are a few trade-offs. One issue is that the visible difference between almost identical colors – meaning colors that vary by just one number in an RGB triplet, such as our example in the color management overview section of 255, 133, 1 and 255, 134, 1 – is much greater. This can make color editing more difficult. Another unwanted side-effect of wider gamut displays is that untagged colors and images on the web (which is most of them) will be greatly exaggerated. This neon effect is the result of narrow gamut sRGB images displaying in the monitor gamut space, which is what happens with non-color-managed browsers and/or untagged images. This can make web viewing an unpleasant experience on these wide gamut displays.

We can say unequivocally that this is an essential feature for a monitor to have. When you buy a new widescreen monitor you should check it for evenness. This can be most accurately done by creating a monitor profile, and then use the "validate current profile" function of the monitor profiling software to measure the four corners and side-to-side areas. If you have a spectrophotometer handy, this can be used as well. A quick-and-dirty approach is to bring up an image in Photoshop and move it around on the screen and see if it appears to get brighter or darker as you move it around.

This refers to how quickly a pixel can change colors, measured in milliseconds (ms); the fewer the milliseconds, the faster the pixels can change, reducing the ghosting or streaking effect you might see in a moving or changing image. This feature is important for watching videos or gaming but not very important if you use your monitor for editing images in Photoshop. What is important for image editing is quick screen redraw, which is governed by the amount of RAM available on the graphics card and the image cache level settings.

The best monitors come with calibration tools as part of a package. These include calibration and profiling software, and some include the hardware device or puck. These tools include DDC communication, which allows the calibration tools to adjust the monitor hardware settings directly as opposed to just adjusting the graphics card. This preserves the monitor"s dynamic range better than adjusting only the graphics card.

LCD (liquid crystal display) monitors come in several architectures. One term you may see is TFT (thin film transistor) LCD. Thin film technology improves image quality and is used in all high quality computer monitors.

In addition to TFT, other terms you may see are TN, VA, and IPS. TN (twisted nematic) technology is the most basic LCD architecture. However, TN panels are not the best for photo editing due to a limited viewing angle (meaning that the color and contrast change fairly dramatically if your viewing angle is not dead center), and low bit depth (6-bit depth is typical).

Many professional IPS-based LCD monitors also feature high bit-depth and ultra wide color gamuts, which we define as equal to or greater than the Adobe RGB (1998) color space.

While some monitors have integrated devices for calibration and profiling, you might want to invest in a stand-alone device. You can get great results with many mid-priced monitors and low-cost calibration solutions.

Some software incorporates a verification function that essentially rechecks the profile against the color patches and creates a monitor verification report. This report can be used to check on the accuracy of the monitor profile over time and even to track the performance of the monitor over time.

Best practices also recommend that you check the calibration by comparing a reference file as shown on the monitor to a reference print illuminated under a high-quality light source like a SoLux lamp.

Luminance or brightness of the monitor is the most important setting (outside of creating a good color profile) for screen-to-print matching. Monitor brightness is measured in candelas per square meter (cd/m2), also sometimes referred to as "nits". The acceptable range is 80 cd/m2 to 120 cd/m2, with 100 cd/m2 being the most commonly recommended brightness for pre-press work. The brightness of the monitor is driven to a large degree by the brightness of the working environment. The brighter the working environment, the brighter the monitor will need to be.

The white point is the calibration setting on a monitor that determines the color temperature of the brightest white. Color temperature is expressed in Kelvin, eg 6500K. A more accurate unit of measuring color temperature is the so-called standard illuminant, expressed as D50, D65, etc. For most practical purposes you can use either unit of measure with your monitor calibration software. 5000K/D50 and 5500K/D55 are commonly used in CMYK reproduction, and 6500K/D65 is commonly used for general purpose and images on the web.

The native white point is the default white point of a monitor. Most high-quality LCD monitors are very close to 6500K. Less expensive monitors and many Windows operating system monitors are quite a bit bluer, having a native white point between 7300K and 9300K.

Gamma is less important than white point and luminance for photographers because color managed image editing applications such as Photoshop automatically adjust for gamma and display all images the same, regardless of monitor gamma. The Windows operating system default is a gamma close to 2.2, while Apple operating systems have used a native gamma of 1.8 up until the Snow Leopard version of OS 10. Most monitor hardware is designed to have a native gamma of 2.2 so many Mac users calibrate and profile their systems to 2.2 gamma. A few calibration/profiling software applications use a variable gamma curve called L* gamma. It is a slightly less linear version of 2.2 gamma which can result in slightly more shadow detail.

In order to confirm that the monitor is showing you accurate color, you need to compare it to a print that is of known quality. The best way to do that is to purchase a reference print that is a certified proof of the file that produced the print. The color of these two versions of the image should match. Of course, in order to make sure you are seeing the colors in the print correctly, you need to view it under high-quality lighting. This exercise can help you fine-tune your choice of monitor white point.

A GATF RHEM indicator affixed to the proof will show when you are viewing your color with a light source with an accurate color temperature. The way that this works is that when the print is viewed in 5000K lighting, the indicator will appear to be all one color. In anything less than 5000K quality light the indicator will exhibit a striped appearance

In order to check the quality of your calibration, you need to examine a print under a standardized lighting setup which we refer to as reference lighting. Reference lighting is a high quality light source that is close to the D50 standard for graphic arts. This can be a lightbooth such as those made by GTI or others, or it can be a relatively inexpensive SoLux lamp. The SoLux lamp is very color accurate, but the lightbooth will produce less glare. Some lightbooths are equipped with brightness controls and some even have USB connections to the computer to provide complete control over monitor and reference lighting equalization.

For those who really want to get things perfect, the reference setup can be used to determine which white point is most appropriate for your eye and your workspace. Profile your monitor to D65 and compare the screen to the reference print viewed under the reference lighting. If the print appears to be slightly warmer than the monitor, try D60, D55 or even D50 until you find the best match of monitor to print for your system and your working environment.

To really ensure that your workflow is color consistent, you can print out a copy of the reference image and check it against the reference print to see how well your printer is calibrated.

Figure 4 This image shows how the color of the light source changes your perception of the colors in theprint. Use a known reference light source like SoLux lights to check the print color.

Ambient lighting, otherwise known as your working environment lighting, is a critical component of your color management setup. To a large degree it will influence your choice of monitor white point and monitor brightness, the two most important variables for monitor calibration. We recommend a reasonably dim unchanging ambient light level. Avoid working in conditions where strong sunlight streams in, as it will be too bright and will change continually throughout the day and from day to day.

A term used to describe color temperature as it relates to the luminance of the brightest white that a device can display. It also refers to the reference (or target) white of the illuminant. White point is commonly used to describe the calibration setting on a monitor that literally sets the color temperature (or illuminant) of how white is displayed. Common settings include 5000 or 6500k or the D50 or D65 references. Monitor white point settings are often determined by the viewing environment and color matching requirements of a workflow.

In digital imaging, the term gamma is commonly used to describe the non-linear behavior of a device’s tonal response. Gamma curve is used to describe a curve (sometimes called a tone reproduction curve - TRC) that effects the relationship between the shadow, midtones, and highlights of an image or device. Gamma encoding is used to describe the process of converting linear data (raw capture) into a non-linear color space. Also see monitor gamma.

A display technology used in computer monitors (also called flat panels) that has largely replaced CRT devices. Typically they use a cold cathode fluorescent (CCFL) backlight to illuminate the screen, which is made up of a layer of liquid crystal, further layered with positive and negative electrodes, polarizing film, and protective glass. LCD computer monitors can range from consumer-grade displays with reduced contrast, sharpness and color gamut to high-bit, wide-gamut, TFT (thin-film transistors) active matrix displays designed for digital photography and graphics applications. LCDs are also used on the back of digital cameras to provide an image preview.

LED technology is coming into wider use in computer monitors, replacing the cold cathode fluorescent (CCFL) backlights that have until recently (2009) been standard. Providing higher brightness levels, they are also considered more environmentally friendly because they do not contain Mercury (CCFL does) along with reduced energy consumption. OLED (organic light emitting diode), is an emerging, next-generation display technology that shows great promise and could replace LCD/LED backlit computer monitors in the future.

A thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal display (TFT LCD) is a variant of a liquid-crystal display that uses thin-film-transistor technologyactive matrix LCD, in contrast to passive matrix LCDs or simple, direct-driven (i.e. with segments directly connected to electronics outside the LCD) LCDs with a few segments.

In February 1957, John Wallmark of RCA filed a patent for a thin film MOSFET. Paul K. Weimer, also of RCA implemented Wallmark"s ideas and developed the thin-film transistor (TFT) in 1962, a type of MOSFET distinct from the standard bulk MOSFET. It was made with thin films of cadmium selenide and cadmium sulfide. The idea of a TFT-based liquid-crystal display (LCD) was conceived by Bernard Lechner of RCA Laboratories in 1968. In 1971, Lechner, F. J. Marlowe, E. O. Nester and J. Tults demonstrated a 2-by-18 matrix display driven by a hybrid circuit using the dynamic scattering mode of LCDs.T. Peter Brody, J. A. Asars and G. D. Dixon at Westinghouse Research Laboratories developed a CdSe (cadmium selenide) TFT, which they used to demonstrate the first CdSe thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal display (TFT LCD).active-matrix liquid-crystal display (AM LCD) using CdSe TFTs in 1974, and then Brody coined the term "active matrix" in 1975.high-resolution and high-quality electronic visual display devices use TFT-based active matrix displays.

The liquid crystal displays used in calculators and other devices with similarly simple displays have direct-driven image elements, and therefore a voltage can be easily applied across just one segment of these types of displays without interfering with the other segments. This would be impractical for a large display, because it would have a large number of (color) picture elements (pixels), and thus it would require millions of connections, both top and bottom for each one of the three colors (red, green and blue) of every pixel. To avoid this issue, the pixels are addressed in rows and columns, reducing the connection count from millions down to thousands. The column and row wires attach to transistor switches, one for each pixel. The one-way current passing characteristic of the transistor prevents the charge that is being applied to each pixel from being drained between refreshes to a display"s image. Each pixel is a small capacitor with a layer of insulating liquid crystal sandwiched between transparent conductive ITO layers.

The circuit layout process of a TFT-LCD is very similar to that of semiconductor products. However, rather than fabricating the transistors from silicon, that is formed into a crystalline silicon wafer, they are made from a thin film of amorphous silicon that is deposited on a glass panel. The silicon layer for TFT-LCDs is typically deposited using the PECVD process.

Polycrystalline silicon is sometimes used in displays requiring higher TFT performance. Examples include small high-resolution displays such as those found in projectors or viewfinders. Amorphous silicon-based TFTs are by far the most common, due to their lower production cost, whereas polycrystalline silicon TFTs are more costly and much more difficult to produce.

The twisted nematic display is one of the oldest and frequently cheapest kind of LCD display technologies available. TN displays benefit from fast pixel response times and less smearing than other LCD display technology, but suffer from poor color reproduction and limited viewing angles, especially in the vertical direction. Colors will shift, potentially to the point of completely inverting, when viewed at an angle that is not perpendicular to the display. Modern, high end consumer products have developed methods to overcome the technology"s shortcomings, such as RTC (Response Time Compensation / Overdrive) technologies. Modern TN displays can look significantly better than older TN displays from decades earlier, but overall TN has inferior viewing angles and poor color in comparison to other technology.

Most TN panels can represent colors using only six bits per RGB channel, or 18 bit in total, and are unable to display the 16.7 million color shades (24-bit truecolor) that are available using 24-bit color. Instead, these panels display interpolated 24-bit color using a dithering method that combines adjacent pixels to simulate the desired shade. They can also use a form of temporal dithering called Frame Rate Control (FRC), which cycles between different shades with each new frame to simulate an intermediate shade. Such 18 bit panels with dithering are sometimes advertised as having "16.2 million colors". These color simulation methods are noticeable to many people and highly bothersome to some.gamut (often referred to as a percentage of the NTSC 1953 color gamut) are also due to backlighting technology. It is not uncommon for older displays to range from 10% to 26% of the NTSC color gamut, whereas other kind of displays, utilizing more complicated CCFL or LED phosphor formulations or RGB LED backlights, may extend past 100% of the NTSC color gamut, a difference quite perceivable by the human eye.

The transmittance of a pixel of an LCD panel typically does not change linearly with the applied voltage,sRGB standard for computer monitors requires a specific nonlinear dependence of the amount of emitted light as a function of the RGB value.

In-plane switching was developed by Hitachi Ltd. in 1996 to improve on the poor viewing angle and the poor color reproduction of TN panels at that time.

Initial iterations of IPS technology were characterised by slow response time and a low contrast ratio but later revisions have made marked improvements to these shortcomings. Because of its wide viewing angle and accurate color reproduction (with almost no off-angle color shift), IPS is widely employed in high-end monitors aimed at professional graphic artists, although with the recent fall in price it has been seen in the mainstream market as well. IPS technology was sold to Panasonic by Hitachi.

Most panels also support true 8-bit per channel color. These improvements came at the cost of a higher response time, initially about 50 ms. IPS panels were also extremely expensive.

It achieved pixel response which was fast for its time, wide viewing angles, and high contrast at the cost of brightness and color reproduction.Response Time Compensation) technologies.

Less expensive PVA panels often use dithering and FRC, whereas super-PVA (S-PVA) panels all use at least 8 bits per color component and do not use color simulation methods.BRAVIA LCD TVs offer 10-bit and xvYCC color support, for example, the Bravia X4500 series. S-PVA also offers fast response times using modern RTC technologies.

A technology developed by Samsung is Super PLS, which bears similarities to IPS panels, has wider viewing angles, better image quality, increased brightness, and lower production costs. PLS technology debuted in the PC display market with the release of the Samsung S27A850 and S24A850 monitors in September 2011.

TFT dual-transistor pixel or cell technology is a reflective-display technology for use in very-low-power-consumption applications such as electronic shelf labels (ESL), digital watches, or metering. DTP involves adding a secondary transistor gate in the single TFT cell to maintain the display of a pixel during a period of 1s without loss of image or without degrading the TFT transistors over time. By slowing the refresh rate of the standard frequency from 60 Hz to 1 Hz, DTP claims to increase the power efficiency by multiple orders of magnitude.

Due to the very high cost of building TFT factories, there are few major OEM panel vendors for large display panels. The glass panel suppliers are as follows:

External consumer display devices like a TFT LCD feature one or more analog VGA, DVI, HDMI, or DisplayPort interface, with many featuring a selection of these interfaces. Inside external display devices there is a controller board that will convert the video signal using color mapping and image scaling usually employing the discrete cosine transform (DCT) in order to convert any video source like CVBS, VGA, DVI, HDMI, etc. into digital RGB at the native resolution of the display panel. In a laptop the graphics chip will directly produce a signal suitable for connection to the built-in TFT display. A control mechanism for the backlight is usually included on the same controller board.

The low level interface of STN, DSTN, or TFT display panels use either single ended TTL 5 V signal for older displays or TTL 3.3 V for slightly newer displays that transmits the pixel clock, horizontal sync, vertical sync, digital red, digital green, digital blue in parallel. Some models (for example the AT070TN92) also feature input/display enable, horizontal scan direction and vertical scan direction signals.

New and large (>15") TFT displays often use LVDS signaling that transmits the same contents as the parallel interface (Hsync, Vsync, RGB) but will put control and RGB bits into a number of serial transmission lines synchronized to a clock whose rate is equal to the pixel rate. LVDS transmits seven bits per clock per data line, with six bits being data and one bit used to signal if the other six bits need to be inverted in order to maintain DC balance. Low-cost TFT displays often have three data lines and therefore only directly support 18 bits per pixel. Upscale displays have four or five data lines to support 24 bits per pixel (truecolor) or 30 bits per pixel respectively. Panel manufacturers are slowly replacing LVDS with Internal DisplayPort and Embedded DisplayPort, which allow sixfold reduction of the number of differential pairs.

The bare display panel will only accept a digital video signal at the resolution determined by the panel pixel matrix designed at manufacture. Some screen panels will ignore the LSB bits of the color information to present a consistent interface (8 bit -> 6 bit/color x3).

With analogue signals like VGA, the display controller also needs to perform a high speed analog to digital conversion. With digital input signals like DVI or HDMI some simple reordering of the bits is needed before feeding it to the rescaler if the input resolution doesn"t match the display panel resolution.

Kawamoto, H. (2012). "The Inventors of TFT Active-Matrix LCD Receive the 2011 IEEE Nishizawa Medal". Journal of Display Technology. 8 (1): 3–4. Bibcode:2012JDisT...8....3K. doi:10.1109/JDT.2011.2177740. ISSN 1551-319X.

K. H. Lee; H. Y. Kim; K. H. Park; S. J. Jang; I. C. Park & J. Y. Lee (June 2006). "A Novel Outdoor Readability of Portable TFT-LCD with AFFS Technology". SID Symposium Digest of Technical Papers. AIP. 37 (1): 1079–82. doi:10.1889/1.2433159. S2CID 129569963.

This 3.5" EVE TFT bundle has everything you need to get started with this powerful display. The development kit consists of a 3.5" display mounted on an EVE2 graphically accelerated PCA, a Seeeduino, an EVE breakout board, jumper wires, USB cable and 6-inch ribbon cable.

With a resistive touch screen, full color, and a 6 o"clock viewing angle the display is a great way to offer a full user experience. For more information about the display, including its detailed datasheet, check out the 320x240 3.5" Touch Screen Color TFT page.

The EVE chip really makes this TFT module really shine. EVE (embedded video engine) is a cool new technology from FTDI/Bridgetek that simplifies the process of displaying videos and text in an embedded project. All display, touch sensing, backlight, and audio features are controlled by the FTDI FT810 EVE which appears to host the MCU as a memory-mapped SPI device. The host MCU sends commands and data over the SPI protocol. The module can support both SPI and Quad-SPI.

Out of the box the majority of monitors are far from perfect when it comes to color, brightness, and motion blur calibration. With a few simple tweaks you can fix all that, however, and finally see games as developers intended. One thing to acknowledge though: calibration is a subjective process because our eyes and brains can perceive color incorrectly (see: white-gold, blue-black dress ), and because of color blindness and other issues. So even when a professional monitor calibrator is telling you that settings are correct, you may feel differently.

With the above in mind, try giving recommended and calibrated settings a few days to settle in. If you still feel uncomfortable or unhappy with the results, modify them in small increments until you’re content. And remember, your results will be limited by the quality of your monitor and the panel technology it’s using: IPS typically has superior viewing angles and colors, and TN is more responsive and less prone to motion blur.

You’ve potentially used incorrect settings for several years, and to you they look AOK. The changes we’re making could be drastic, and you may dislike them greatly. As such, go through your monitor’s menus, Windows’ options, and the NVIDIA Control Panel, jotting down old settings and any changes you’ve made in the past. That way, you can revert the changes we’re about to make and return to the incorrect settings you’ve grown to love.

Before you start your calibration efforts, install the latest NVIDIA display drivers from GeForce.com , set your screen resolution to its native resolution, for example 1920x1080 on a 1920x1080 monitor, and let your monitor warm up for 20-30 minutes (some may take longer, others less so) to ensure it"s operating to its full capabilities. If you"re unfamiliar with changing resolutions, right click the desktop, select "NVIDIA Control Panel", navigate to the "Change Resolution" tab, and select the resolution in the list that says "(native)".

In your room, eliminate any glare from windows or artificial lights, but keep the lighting bright enough that you can see the keyboard and your surroundings. If your screen is typically engulfed in glare, look for ways to reduce that on a permanent basis to improve results and reduce eye-strain, and if that"s impossible boost the monitor"s brightness post-calibration to compensate.

All monitors have a listed Viewing Angle in which the picture is supposedly clear and usable. In reality though the quality of some monitors can drop drastically the second you move off-center. Therefore, to ensure you have the best possible picture, and can calibrate your monitor correctly, switch your position permanently to one in line with your monitor, with the entirety of the screen in your field of view.

TFTCentral , Display Lag , and Prad produce some of the most detailed monitor reviews on the Internet, and in those reviews their knowledgeable editors often provide recommended monitor settings and ICC color management profiles .

Step 1) Locate settings and profiles. Check TFT Central’s Database first, and if no luck Display Lag and Prad ’s reviews second. If you’re still unable to find your monitor look on the manufacturer’s support page for ICC profiles, and try a generic Google search using

Step 2) Install the ICC profile. Copy the downloaded file to C:Windowssystem32spooldriverscolor, then run colorcpl.exe to open the Color Management window (alternatively, navigate to Color Management in the Control Panel).

Step 10) Finally, modify each monitor’s settings using their On-Screen Displays (OSD). Some can be unintuitive, so it is recommended to keep the manual on standby. If the panel’s particularly advanced you may be able to create multiple profiles or presets, and tweak power user settings that give you greater control over the picture. If you’re unsure what a setting does, consult the manual or ask online.

The quality and properties of monitors can vary from one unit to the next in production runs, so you may find the recommended settings above are ‘off’, or perhaps you simply wish to tweak to your personal liking. The easiest way to do this is to utilize a variety of online tests, and the “Calibrate display” tool in the “Advanced” tab of the Color Management application we were using above.

Online, the go-to location for any monitor tweaking is Lagom’s suite of test images . There, you can calibrate Contrast, Sharpness, black levels, and many other aspects of your monitor’s display. But what you won’t find is a good motion test, which is particularly important for gamers using modern monitors equipped with motion blur, input delay, input lag, zero lag, and other similarly named modules that reduce blurring on fast-moving objects.

The only way to get 100% technically-perfect results for your monitor is to buy, rent, or borrow a professional color calibration tool, such as Datacolor’s Spyder4 , Pantone’s ColorMunki , or x-Rite’s i1Display Pro . They’re not cheap (prices start at $99), but if you’ve already invested in a G-SYNC Surround setup or 4K monitor the extra cost will ensure you get the absolute best results. Just remember, the technology may say that the calibration is perfect, but your eyes may not believe it, or you may simply prefer a different look.

Please note that some games and applications will override calibrations and Control Panel tweaks. To workaround this problem, you can try CPKeeper and Color Sustainer .

By this point your monitor’s picture should be looking better than ever before. You may initially feel the look is bad or wrong, but give it a few days and you’ll probably change your tune once your eyes adapt. If all else fails, you can always go back to your original setup. If you stick with it though you’ll see games as developers intended, and get more accurate color reproduction in videos, movies, TV shows, and pictures.

If calibration can’t fix your complaints, however, consider a brand new monitor with superior color reproduction, reduced input lag, wider viewing angles, and zero motion blur. At the time of writing, TFT Central rates the Acer Predator XB270HU 2560x1440 G-SYNC IPS-panel monitor as the “new king of gaming monitors”, and on Display Lag the BenQ XL2430T , BenQ XL2420G G-SYNC , and ASUS ROG Swift PG278Q G-SYNC TN-panel monitors are tied in the all-important Picture Quality, Input Lag, and Response Time categories. If you don’t need anything quite as fancy though there are plenty of other great monitors out there that should provide a superior experience, reducing eye strain and making your games and multimedia look better than before.

For more guides that help you get the most out of your PC, and help you build a brand new system, check out the GeForce Garage homepage . And next week we"ll show you how to set up a Surround multi-monitor gaming system in the final episode of our Cross Desk modding series .

* Rewards 3% back excludes taxes and shipping. Rewards are issued to your online Dell Rewards Account (available via your Dell.com My Account) typically within 30 business days after your order’s ship date. Rewards expire in 90 days (except where prohibited by law). “Current rewards balance” amount may not reflect the most recent transactions. Check Dell.com My Account for your most up-to-date reward balance. Total rewards earned may not exceed $2,000 within a 3-month period. Outlet purchases do not qualify for rewards. Expedited Delivery not available on certain TVs, monitors, batteries and adapters, and is available in Continental (except Alaska) U.S. only. Other exceptions apply. Not valid for resellers and/or online auctions. Offers and rewards subject to change without notice, not combinable with all other offers. See Dell.com/rewardsfaq. $50 in bonus rewards for Dell Rewards Members who open a new Dell Preferred Account (DPA), or Dell Business Credit (DBC) account on or after 8/10/2022. $50 bonus rewards typically issued within 30 business days after DPA or DBC open date.

*Expedited Delivery: * Expedited Delivery not available on certain TVs, monitors, batteries and adapters, and is available in Continental (except Alaska) U.S. only. Other exceptions apply. Not valid for resellers and/or online auctions. Offers subject to change, not combinable with all other offers. See Dell.com/rewardsfaq.

With the integration of Bridgetek’s next generation EVE3 BT815/BT816 Embedded Video Engine IC, Matrix Orbital EVE3 SPI TFT"s deliver clean, crisp, full color TFT screens for interactive menus, graphing, graphics and even video..

Audio wave playback for mono 8-bit linear PCM, 4-bit ADPCM and µ-Law coding format at sampling frequencies from 8 kHz to 48 kHz. Built-in digital filter reduces the system design complexity of external filtering