8 tft lcd color monitor free sample

In this guide we’re going to show you how you can use the 1.8 TFT display with the Arduino. You’ll learn how to wire the display, write text, draw shapes and display images on the screen.

The 1.8 TFT is a colorful display with 128 x 160 color pixels. The display can load images from an SD card – it has an SD card slot at the back. The following figure shows the screen front and back view.

This module uses SPI communication – see the wiring below . To control the display we’ll use the TFT library, which is already included with Arduino IDE 1.0.5 and later.

The TFT display communicates with the Arduino via SPI communication, so you need to include the SPI library on your code. We also use the TFT library to write and draw on the display.

The 1.8 TFT display can load images from the SD card. To read from the SD card you use the SD library, already included in the Arduino IDE software. Follow the next steps to display an image on the display:

In this guide we’ve shown you how to use the 1.8 TFT display with the Arduino: display text, draw shapes and display images. You can easily add a nice visual interface to your projects using this display.

Hi guys, welcome to today’s tutorial. Today, we will look on how to use the 1.8″ ST7735  colored TFT display with Arduino. The past few tutorials have been focused on how to use the Nokia 5110 LCD display extensively but there will be a time when we will need to use a colored display or something bigger with additional features, that’s where the 1.8″ ST7735 TFT display comes in.

The ST7735 TFT display is a 1.8″ display with a resolution of 128×160 pixels and can display a wide range of colors ( full 18-bit color, 262,144 shades!). The display uses the SPI protocol for communication and has its own pixel-addressable frame buffer which means it can be used with all kinds of microcontroller and you only need 4 i/o pins. To complement the display, it also comes with an SD card slot on which colored bitmaps can be loaded and easily displayed on the screen.

Due to variation in display pin out from different manufacturers and for clarity, the pin connection between the Arduino and the TFT display is mapped out below:

We will use two libraries from Adafruit to help us easily communicate with the LCD. The libraries include the Adafruit GFX library which can be downloaded here and the Adafruit ST7735 Library which can be downloaded here.

We will use two example sketches to demonstrate the use of the ST7735 TFT display. The first example is the lightweight TFT Display text example sketch from the Adafruit TFT examples. It can be accessed by going to examples -> TFT -> Arduino -> TFTDisplaytext. This example displays the analog value of pin A0 on the display. It is one of the easiest examples that can be used to demonstrate the ability of this display.

The first thing, as usual, is to include the libraries to be used after which we declare the pins on the Arduino to which our LCD pins are connected to. We also make a slight change to the code setting reset pin as pin 8 and DC pin as pin 9 to match our schematics.

Next, we create an object of the library with the pins to which the LCD is connected on the Arduino as parameters. There are two options for this, feel free to choose the most preferred.

All the functions called under the void setup function, perform different functions, some draw lines, some, boxes and text with different font, color and size and they can all be edited to do what your project needs.

Uploading the code to the Arduino board brings a flash of different shapes and text with different colors on the display. I captured one and its shown in the image below.

NM080IA-01Eis a colour active matrix LCD module incorporating amorphous silicon TFT (Thin Film Transistor). It is composed of a colour TFT-LCD panel, driver IC, FPC and a back light unit and, with a capacitive touch panel. The module display area contains 1024x768 pixels. This product accords with RoHS environmental criterion.

Hot Tags: 8 inch 1024x768 resolution tft lcd display monitor with capacitive touch screen, China, suppliers, factory, wholesale, price list, free sample

The monitor has abundant functions that can be used for clinical monitoring with adult, pediatric and neonate. Users may select different parameter configuration according to different requirements. The monitor, power supplied by 100-240V~,50/60Hz, adopts 8"" color TFT LCD displaying real-time date and waveform. It can synchronously display eight-channel waveform and full monitoring parameters equipped with an optional external 48mm thermal recorder. The monitor can be connected to the central monitoring system via wire or wireless network to form a network monitoring system.

1)8"" TFT color LCD, multi-language interface (Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, English, French, German, Turkish, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Romanian, Russian, Kazakh, Polish, Czech).

8)Adopt digital SpO2 technology, anti-motion and anti-ambient light interference, and measurement can be performed under the circumstance of weak filling.

A wide variety of 8 inch square lcd touch display options are available to you, You can also choose from original manufacturer, odm and agency 8 inch square lcd touch display,As well as from tft, ips, and tn.

The color range of a computer is defined by the term color depth, which is the number of colors that the equipment can display, given its hardware. The most common normal color depths you"ll see are 8-bit (256 colors), 16-bit (65,536 colors), and 24-bit (16.7 million colors) modes. True color (or 24-bit color) is the most frequently used mode as computers have attained sufficient levels to work efficiently at this color depth.

Some professional designers and photographers use a 32-bit color depth, but mainly to pad the color to get more defined tones when the project renders down to the 24-bit level.

LCD monitors struggle with color and speed. Color on an LCD has three layers of colored dots that make up the final pixel. To display a color, a current is applied to each color layer to generate the desired intensity that results in the final color. The problem is that to get the colors, the current must move the crystals on and off to the desired intensity levels. This transition from the on-to-off state is called the response time. For most screens, it rates around 8 to 12 milliseconds.

The problem with response time becomes apparent when LCD monitors display motion or video. With a high response time for transitions from off-to-on states, pixels that should have transitioned to the new color levels trail the signal and result in an effect called motion blurring. This phenomenon isn"t an issue if the monitor displays applications such as productivity software. However, with high-speed video and certain video games, it can be jarring.

Because consumers demanded faster screens, many manufacturers reduced the number of levels each color-pixel renders. This reduction in intensity levels allows the response times to drop and has the drawback of reducing the overall range of colors that the screens support.

Color depth was previously referred to by the total number of colors that the screen can render. When referring to LCD panels, the number of levels that each color can render is used instead.

High-speed LCD monitors typically reduce the number of bits for each color to 6 instead of the standard 8. This 6-bit color generates fewer colors than 8-bit, as we see when we do the math:

This reduction is noticeable to the human eye. To get around this problem, device manufacturers employ a technique called dithering, where nearby pixels use slightly varying shades of color that trick the human eye into perceiving the desired color even though it isn"t truly that color. A color newspaper photo is a good way to see this effect in practice. In print, the effect is called halftones. Using this technique, the manufacturers claim to achieve a color depth close to that of the true color displays.

Why multiply groups of three? For computer displays, the RGB colorspace dominates. Which means that, for 8-bit color, the final image you see on the screen is a composite of one of 256 shades each of red, blue, and green.

There is another level of display that is used by professionals called a 10-bit display. In theory, it displays more than a billion colors, more than the human eye discerns.

The amount of data required for such high color requires a very-high-bandwidth data connector. Typically, these monitors and video cards use a DisplayPort connector.

Even though the graphics card renders upwards of a billion colors, the display"s color gamut—or range of colors it can display—is considerably less. Even the ultra-wide color gamut displays that support 10-bit color cannot render all the colors.

Professional displays often tout 10-bit color support. Once again, you have to look at the real color gamut of these displays. Most consumer displays don"t say how many they use. Instead, they tend to list the number of colors they support.

The amount of color matters to those that do professional work on graphics. For these people, the amount of color that displays on the screen is significant. The average consumer won"t need this level of color representation by their monitor. As a result, it probably doesn"t matter. People using their displays for video games or watching videos will likely not care about the number of colors rendered by the LCD but by the speed at which it can be displayed. As a result, it is best to determine your needs and base your purchase on those criteria.

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.

As an option, you can order this TFT pre-assembled onto a breakout/carrier board. The board allows easy prototyping through its 0.1" headers. You can also include the carrier board in your end product to simplify construction and assembly.

This kit consists of a CFAF320240F-035T a 320x240 3.5" Full Color TFT LCD module mounted on a carrier board (CFA-10074). The carrier board supports a current driver for the LED backlight of the display.

This TFT LCD display module is perfect for the designer who"s looking to have a graphic and audio processor already embedded in the display unit. Powered by an FTDI/BridgeTek FT810 Embedded Video Engine (EVE) graphics accelerator chip, simply send over a few commands via SPI or I2C and the EVE will put your stored image up on the display. Need to draw a line, create dials/knobs/buttons, or rotate an image? Send a handful of bytes and the EVE will take care of it.

If you have color blindness or other vision challenges, you can use Color Filters to help you differentiate between colors. Color Filters can change the look of things, like pictures and movies, so you might want to use it only when needed.

Open the Settings app, then tap Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Color Filters. You"ll see three examples of color spaces to help you select an option that fits your needs. Swipe left or right on the examples to find a filter that works best for you.

You can adjust the intensity of any of the Color Filters to fit your needs. Use the Intensity slider to customize a filter that"s more intense or less intense.

If you have color or light sensitivity, tap Color Tint to change the hue of the entire display on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Use the sliders to adjust your display"s hue and the intensity of the effect.

An excellent new compatible library is available which can render TrueType fonts on a TFT screen (or into a sprite). This has been developed by takkaO and is available here. I have been reluctant to support yet another font format but this is an amazing library which is very easy to use. It provides access to compact font files, with fully scaleable anti-aliased glyphs. Left, middle and right justified text can also be printed to the screen. I have added TFT_eSPI specific examples to the OpenFontRender library and tested on RP2040 and ESP32 processors, however the ESP8266 does not have sufficient RAM. Here is a demo screen where a single 12kbyte font file binary was used to render fully anti-aliased glyphs of gradually increasing size on a 320x480 TFT screen:

The TFT configuration (user setup) can now be included inside an Arduino IDE sketch providing the instructions in the example Generic->Sketch_with_tft_setup are followed. See ReadMe tab in that sketch for the instructions. If the setup is not in the sketch then the library settings will be used. This means that "per project" configurations are possible without modifying the library setup files. Please note that ALL the other examples in the library will use the library settings unless they are adapted and the "tft_setup.h" header file included. Note: there are issues with this approach, #2007 proposes an alternative method.

Support has been added in v2.4.70 for the RP2040 with 16 bit parallel displays. This has been tested and the screen update performance is very good (4ms to clear 320 x 480 screen with HC8357C). The use of the RP2040 PIO makes it easy to change the write cycle timing for different displays. DMA with 16 bit transfers is also supported.

Smooth fonts can now be rendered direct to the TFT with very little flicker for quickly changing values. This is achieved by a line-by-line and block-by-block update of the glyph area without drawing pixels twice. This is a "breaking" change for some sketches because a new true/false parameter is needed to render the background. The default is false if the parameter is missing, Examples:

Frank Boesing has created an extension library for TFT_eSPI that allows a large range of ready-built fonts to be used. Frank"s library (adapted to permit rendering in sprites as well as TFT) can be downloaded here. More than 3300 additional Fonts are available here. The TFT_eSPI_ext library contains examples that demonstrate the use of the fonts.

Users of PowerPoint experienced with running macros may be interested in the pptm sketch generator here, this converts graphics and tables drawn in PowerPoint slides into an Arduino sketch that renders the graphics on a 480x320 TFT. This is based on VB macros created by Kris Kasprzak here.

The RP2040 8 bit parallel interface uses the PIO. The PIO now manages the "setWindow" and "block fill" actions, releasing the processor for other tasks when areas of the screen are being filled with a colour. The PIO can optionally be used for SPI interface displays if #define RP2040_PIO_SPI is put in the setup file. Touch screens and pixel read operations are not supported when the PIO interface is used.

DMA can now be used with the Raspberry Pi Pico (RP2040) when used with both 8 bit parallel and 16 bit colour SPI displays. See "Bouncy_Circles" sketch.

The library now provides a "viewport" capability. See "Viewport_Demo" and "Viewport_graphicstest" examples. When a viewport is defined graphics will only appear within that window. The coordinate datum by default moves to the top left corner of the viewport, but can optionally remain at top left corner of TFT. The GUIslice library will make use of this feature to speed up the rendering of GUI objects (see #769).

An Arduino IDE compatible graphics and fonts library for 32 bit processors. The library is targeted at 32 bit processors, it has been performance optimised for STM32, ESP8266 and ESP32 types. The library can be loaded using the Arduino IDE"s Library Manager. Direct Memory Access (DMA) can be used with the ESP32, RP2040 and STM32 processors with SPI interface displays to improve rendering performance. DMA with a parallel interface is only supported with the RP2040.

"Four wire" SPI and 8 bit parallel interfaces are supported. Due to lack of GPIO pins the 8 bit parallel interface is NOT supported on the ESP8266. 8 bit parallel interface TFTs (e.g. UNO format mcufriend shields) can used with the STM32 Nucleo 64/144 range or the UNO format ESP32 (see below for ESP32).

The library supports some TFT displays designed for the Raspberry Pi (RPi) that are based on a ILI9486 or ST7796 driver chip with a 480 x 320 pixel screen. The ILI9486 RPi display must be of the Waveshare design and use a 16 bit serial interface based on the 74HC04, 74HC4040 and 2 x 74HC4094 logic chips. Note that due to design variations between these displays not all RPi displays will work with this library, so purchasing a RPi display of these types solely for use with this library is not recommended.

A "good" RPi display is the MHS-4.0 inch Display-B type ST7796 which provides good performance. This has a dedicated controller and can be clocked at up to 80MHz with the ESP32 (55MHz with STM32 and 40MHz with ESP8266). The MHS-3.5 inch RPi ILI9486 based display is also supported.

Some displays permit the internal TFT screen RAM to be read, a few of the examples use this feature. The TFT_Screen_Capture example allows full screens to be captured and sent to a PC, this is handy to create program documentation.

The library includes a "Sprite" class, this enables flicker free updates of complex graphics. Direct writes to the TFT with graphics functions are still available, so existing sketches do not need to be changed.

A Sprite is notionally an invisible graphics screen that is kept in the processors RAM. Graphics can be drawn into the Sprite just as they can be drawn directly to the screen. Once the Sprite is completed it can be plotted onto the screen in any position. If there is sufficient RAM then the Sprite can be the same size as the screen and used as a frame buffer. Sprites by default use 16 bit colours, the bit depth can be set to 8 bits (256 colours) , or 1 bit (any 2 colours) to reduce the RAM needed. On an ESP8266 the largest 16 bit colour Sprite that can be created is about 160x128 pixels, this consumes 40Kbytes of RAM. On an ESP32 the workspace RAM is more limited than the datasheet implies so a 16 bit colour Sprite is limited to about 200x200 pixels (~80Kbytes), an 8 bit sprite to 320x240 pixels (~76kbytes). A 1 bit per pixel Sprite requires only 9600 bytes for a full 320 x 240 screen buffer, this is ideal for supporting use with 2 colour bitmap fonts.

One or more sprites can be created, a sprite can be any pixel width and height, limited only by available RAM. The RAM needed for a 16 bit colour depth Sprite is (2 x width x height) bytes, for a Sprite with 8 bit colour depth the RAM needed is (width x height) bytes. Sprites can be created and deleted dynamically as needed in the sketch, this means RAM can be freed up after the Sprite has been plotted on the screen, more RAM intensive WiFi based code can then be run and normal graphics operations still work.

Drawing graphics into a sprite is very fast, for those familiar with the Adafruit "graphicstest" example, this whole test completes in 18ms in a 160x128 sprite. Examples of sprite use can be found in the "examples/Sprite" folder.

The "Animated_dial" example shows how dials can be created using a rotated Sprite for the needle. To run this example the TFT interface must support reading from the screen RAM (not all do). The dial rim and scale is a jpeg image, created using a paint program.

The XPT2046 touch screen controller is supported for SPI based displays only. The SPI bus for the touch controller is shared with the TFT and only an additional chip select line is needed. This support will eventually be deprecated when a suitable touch screen library is available.

The library supports SPI overlap on the ESP8266 so the TFT screen can share MOSI, MISO and SCLK pins with the program FLASH, this frees up GPIO pins for other uses. Only one SPI device can be connected to the FLASH pins and the chips select for the TFT must be on pin D3 (GPIO0).

Configuration of the library font selections, pins used to interface with the TFT and other features is made by editing the User_Setup.h file in the library folder, or by selecting your own configuration in the "User_Setup_Selet,h" file. Fonts and features can easily be enabled/disabled by commenting out lines.

Anti-aliased (smooth) font files in "vlw" format are generated by the free Processing IDE using a sketch included in the library Tools folder. This sketch with the Processing IDE can be used to generate font files from your computer"s font set or any TrueType (.ttf) font, the font file can include any combination of 16 bit Unicode characters. This means Greek, Japanese and any other UCS-2 glyphs can be used. Character arrays and Strings in UTF-8 format are supported.

It would be possible to compress the vlw font files but the rendering performance to a TFT is still good when storing the font file(s) in SPIFFS, LittleFS or FLASH arrays.

Anti-aliased fonts can also be drawn over a gradient background with a callback to fetch the background colour of each pixel. This pixel colour can be set by the gradient algorithm or by reading back the TFT screen memory (if reading the display is supported).

The common 8 bit "Mcufriend" shields are supported for the STM Nucleo 64/144 boards and ESP32 UNO style board. The STM32 "Blue/Black Pill" boards can also be used with 8 bit parallel displays.

Unfortunately the typical UNO/mcufriend TFT display board maps LCD_RD, LCD_CS and LCD_RST signals to the ESP32 analogue pins 35, 34 and 36 which are input only. To solve this I linked in the 3 spare pins IO15, IO33 and IO32 by adding wires to the bottom of the board as follows:

If you load a new copy of TFT_eSPI then it will overwrite your setups if they are kept within the TFT_eSPI folder. One way around this is to create a new folder in your Arduino library folder called "TFT_eSPI_Setups". You then place your custom setup.h files in there. After an upgrade simply edit the User_Setup_Select.h file to point to your custom setup file e.g.:

The library was intended to support only TFT displays but using a Sprite as a 1 bit per pixel screen buffer permits support for the Waveshare 2 and 3 colour SPI ePaper displays. This addition to the library is experimental and only one example is provided. Further examples will be added.

ER-TFTM080-2 is 800x480 dots 8" color tft lcd module display with RA8875 controller board,superior display quality and easily controlled by MCU such as 8051(C51), PIC, AVR, ARDUINO, and ARM .It can be used in any embedded systems,industrial device,security and hand-held equipment which requires display in high quality and colorful image.

It supports 8080 6800 8-bit,16-bit parallel,3-wire,4-wire,I2C serial spi interface.Built-in MicroSD card slot.It"s optional for 4-wire resistive touch panel with controller and capacitive touch panel with controller,font chip, flash chip and microsd card. We offer two types connection,one is pin header and the another is ZIF connector with flat cable mounting on board by default and suggested.

Of course, we wouldn"t just leave you with a datasheet and a "good luck!".Here is the link for 8" TFT Touch Shield with Libraries, Examples.Schematic Diagram for Arduino Due,Mega 2560,Uno. For 8051 microcontroller user,we prepared the detailed tutorial such as interfacing, demo code and development kit at the bottom of this page.e.

A more intuitive way to configure monitor settings. Simply drag and drop the Dell Display Manager UI menu from one monitor to another. Allows users to control and change monitor settings easily in a multimonitor configuration.

More customization options to view data based on individual preferences. Users can now customize up to 48 max zones easily and assign them accordingly.

Viewing and using Dell Display Manager (DDM) in portrait mode is now possible. Dell Display Manager (DDM) Easy Arrange templates automatically switch to portrait mode when monitor orientation is pivoted vertically.

KVM Wizard to simplify the KVM setup. Follow step-by-step pop-up windows guide at the click of the KVM Wizard icon on the Dell Display Manager (DDM) user interface. (available on select Dell monitors with KVM capability only.)

IT managers can issue specific instructions using command lines to Dell Display Manager (DDM) to perform tasks within specific times to individual monitor or an entire fleet

Remote Control capabilities (includes Power on/off, restoring factory defaults, changing monitor front of screen settings, optimal resolution, display modes, disabling OSD menu access, input switching).

Up to 38 layouts: With Dell Display Manager’s Easy Arrange, you can organize multiple applications on your screen and snap them into a template of your choice, making multitasking easy and effortless.

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.

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 Gamut. This describes the range of colours which the monitor can produce compared with that which the human eye can detect. You can read more about gamut here, but typically the more expensive screens feature enhanced gamut backlighting. As such, it is normally the models featuring IPS and VA panels which feature the wider gamuts. Modern LED backlighting is being more widely used as well, read more about that in this article.

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.

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 issue with LCD monitors, and is something which can be corrected to a comfortable level at least using software methods. Contrast can also be improved to a degree, and colour levels can be evened and at least appear to be at a nice setting. All these methods rely on the human eye, and so the individual preferences and ambient lighting conditions come into consideration here.

The first calibration utility is a simple gray scale consisting of 17 steps between white (255) and black (0). Adjust your monitor’s brightness and contrast controls so that the full range of the scale is visible. The darkest step visible (Step 16) should be just barely visible against the black background surrounding the scale.

The second calibration utility gives a bit more control. You should be able to adjust the monitor controls and, if possible, the system gamma from your GFX card settings, to be able to detect the small squares within all of the larger squares of the array.

Adjust your monitor’s colour levels. If your monitor is properly calibrated you will see distinct steps between all 21 steps of each color strip and the steps will be uniform in appearance.

Adjust your monitor’s colour levels again. If your monitor is properly calibrated you will see distinct steps between most of the 21 steps of each color strip and the steps will be uniform in appearance. Most monitors do not display the lightest end of the scale accurately so the last 2-3 lightest steps may look the same.

There is a very useful website here (http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/) which gives you various tests and methods for calibrating your screen. Well worth a look for some free “by eye” calibration.

There are many different software tools available, and in fact many manufacturers like to package their own software with the screen to allow calibration. For instance, Samsung package some of their screens with Natural Color Pro software which allows the user to calibrate their screen quickly and easily. Further software tools are available which might be worth taking a look at as listed below. There are also various test images available which can be handy for you to test, with the human eye, the colour levels you have arrived at.

Proper calibration of a monitor really requires you to use a hardware calibration device. These come in two varieties, with the more mainstream (and affordable) devices being colorimeters. You can also buy higher end spectrophotometers (such as the X-rite i1 Pro) which read the light differently, but the cost is probably prohibitive for most normal users. There are many different devices to choose from which vary greatly in price, performance and accompanying software packages. These devices are connected to your PC typically via USB, and feature a hardware module which you place over the screen. By running the software suite which comes with the device, the tool sits over a background which displays many different colours. These are then recorded by the device and used to establish how accurate the colours shown on the screen are compared with what is being requested by the graphics card. Once this difference is established, the device can be used to correct the difference as best as possible from the screen, and results in a calibrated profile being produced.

Hardware devices will typically run through the calibration process automatically once you have defined your target settings and been guided through some basic hardware adjustments using the OSD menu (brightness, contrast, RGB values). Apart from these changes, the majority of changes are implemented at a graphics card LUT (Look Up Table) level after that through the creation of the profile. Some higher end screens offer hardware level adjustments to the monitors LUT which can offer an even better level of accuracy. This is normally reserved for high end professional grade monitors.

The accuracy of these calibration devices obviously varies somewhat, and quite often you get what you pay for. Obviously the features and options of the software package come into play as well, and so cheaper devices typically offer limited calibration options and reporting functions, whereas high end devices are far more versatile. For professional grade calibration it is recommended to spend what is a considerable amount of money on a device which is well regarded. Manufacturers like Gretag and LaCie make a series of devices which are widely used on monitor review sites, and their higher end models feature extensive software options and provide detailed analysis and reporting of colour rendering.

If you want high end results, you are probably looking at spending in excess of £150 on a colorimeter, or >£800 if you want a spectrophotometer. The cost will vary depending on the software options taken with the device and anything else which might come in the package. There are of course cheaper options available which have proved popular. These are often more than adequate for most average users, and unless you’re really concerned with top notch accuracy for photo / graphics work, you probably don’t need much more. For example, the Spyder3 or Pantone Huey do a decent enough job of levelling colours and settings for most average users, and retails for around £60 in the UK. See our various reviews for more information about colorimeters, spectrophotometers and calibration software.

Profiles are commonly produced when calibrating a screen. They are preset saved settings for your particular graphics card / monitor combination and can be used to match different devices (e.g a monitor, printer, scanner, camera etc). These help ensure the settings remain consistent across all the devices, so that you don’t see different results on each one. Profiles are simply look-up tables that describe the properties of a color space. They define the most saturated colors available in a color space; i.e. the bluest blue or deepest black your monitor can produce. If you don’t have a profile, the trio of Red, Green, and Blue values (or CMYK) that make up a color have no particular meaning – you can say something is blue, but not exactly which shade of blue. Accurate profiles are the key to a color managed workflow. With accurate monitor and printer profiles, your prints will closely match what you see on your monitor. Without profiles, you need to rely on trial and error combined with guessing.

It should be noted that an ICC profile is produced based on your individual hardware components and set up. As such, it’s not possible to share ICC profiles with other users of the same monitor to achieve the exact same results. However, ICC profiles which are shared can often at least help improve settings and colour accuracy to a certain degree, and so are an easy method of attempting calibration without the need for a colorimeter. It certainly won’t hurt to try them if you can find an ICC profile has produced with a colorimeter and then has been shared by the user for your particular screen.

TFT Central has its own database of ICC profiles and monitor settings, which are taken from our own reviews and from reader submissions. You can view the entire ICC database here

Your display adaptor software should be set to 24 or 32 bit color (True Color). To see the setting, right-click on the Windows wallpaper (the background outside any open windows), then click on Properties > Settings.