Hatrack River Forum: Monitor calibration

This is topic Monitor calibration in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.

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Posted by vwiggin (Member # 926) on :

Have you ever designed a web page that looks fantastic on your monitor and then when you see it on another monitor it looks like crap?

Well, it just happened to me goshdarnit. I spent a lot of time looking for just the right shade of green for my website and just when I perfected it, I found out that it looks like crap on my friend's CRT monitor.

I have never calibrated my monitor for web design before. I've always tweaked the contrast and brightness levels for my personal comfort without any thought of how it may affect my designs.

So what can I do to fix this problem? I tried adobe gamma adjustment, but I'm not quite sure it helped.

I don't care whether my monitor displays the "true color" of a photograph. My main concern is that I want to see colors the same way the majority of other web surfers will see them. Are there any standard monitor settings that I can use to ensure that I am seeing the same color that my audience will be seeing?

My monitor is a Sony SDM-S71 17 inch LCD, currently set on

Brightness: 43
Contrast: 100
Color: 6500k
Backlight: 50

Thanks in advance for any suggestions! [Smile]

[ December 20, 2004, 04:07 AM: Message edited by: vwiggin ]

Posted by Troubadour (Member # 83) on :

The problem with LCDs is that any change in viewing angle usually changes the entire brightness/contrast/colours of the screen. Then you have the reality that while there *is* a default standard of gamma for PCs (2.2) and Macs (1.8) very few people perform a calibration that sets their monitor at those standards, and most will have adjusted their brightness & contrast at some point.

So really the best you can do is to try and calibrate your own LCD for a PC standard of a gamma value of 2.2 and be done with it.

As a side note, my professional mentor is one of the best broadcast designers around. He started in print design on computers before you even had colour screens, so he has the entire range of Pantone and CMYK colours memorised.... Saatchi & Saatchi used to give him free office space just so he could hang around and give them advice occasionally. When I visited him recently I noticed that he had one of the nicest CRT montiors I'd ever seen - huge, hi-res and incredibly crisp.... but that it also had a very odd whitepoint, one that was noticeably blue.

When I questioned him about it he scoffed at the idea of any kind of colour calibration - only Pantone colours are every going to be truly accurate, and then only in print. CMYK printing will always vary from printer to printer - and sometimes from batch to batch and monitors don't even have a look-in when it comes to any kind of accuracy.

So he doesn't bother with calibration at all. He knows what it's supposed to look like, and just works with Pantone colours to ensure accuracy. Obviously not with his broadcast work, that is.

Posted by vwiggin (Member # 926) on :

quote:
The problem with LCDs is that any change in viewing angle usually changes the entire brightness/contrast/colours of the screen.

That's a good point. Thanks for sharing the story about your mentor. It does make me feel a little better. [Smile]

BTW, the color for this forum is purple and black on everyone else's monitor right?

Posted by Wonder Dog (Member # 5691) on :

Uh... maybe. Depends on what I've been doing the night before. [Big Grin]