91 lines
3.8 KiB
HTML
Executable File
91 lines
3.8 KiB
HTML
Executable File
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
|
|
<html>
|
|
<head>
|
|
<title>About display monitor settings and targets</title>
|
|
<meta http-equiv="content-type"
|
|
content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
|
|
</head>
|
|
<body>
|
|
<h2 style="text-decoration: underline; font-weight: bold;">About
|
|
display monitor settings and
|
|
targets</h2>
|
|
Setting monitor controls and target behaviour for monitor calibration
|
|
boils down to two things:<br>
|
|
<br>
|
|
What is the equipment capable of without introducing side
|
|
effects ?<br>
|
|
<br>
|
|
What are you trying to do ?<br>
|
|
<br>
|
|
There are three reasons you may want to adjust display settings and set
|
|
calibration targets:<br>
|
|
<br>
|
|
1) You want to change how non-color managed applications appear.<br>
|
|
2) You want to change basic behaviour of the display that the profile
|
|
based<br>
|
|
color management doesn't usually change, such as white
|
|
point and brightness.<br>
|
|
3) You want to improve the behaviour of the device so that the normal
|
|
profile based<br>
|
|
color management does a better job of controlling the
|
|
display.<br>
|
|
<br>
|
|
<br>
|
|
You can make adjustments to a display using it's controls and/or the
|
|
video
|
|
card LUTs. Generally the former are more powerful and have less side
|
|
effects. There can be exceptions though, for instance LCD's have no
|
|
native contrast control capability, only brightness, so contrast is
|
|
usually faked by manipulating the lookup curves, which can introduce
|
|
side effects. The same applies to white point control on an LCD (unless
|
|
it has
|
|
R/G/B LED back lighting). So generally LCD displays are much less
|
|
flexible than CRT displays in targeting some non-native colorspace
|
|
without introducing side effects, so it is generally best to set all
|
|
the LCD controls except back lighting brightness to their default
|
|
settings.<br>
|
|
<br>
|
|
Brightness depends on what you are trying to do. If you are trying to
|
|
do soft proofing for instance, you will have some brightness level in
|
|
mind dictated by the hard proofing booth you are comparing to, or the
|
|
ambient brightens level. For good color judgement and low fatigue it's
|
|
desirable that the display brightness roughly match that of the ambient
|
|
lighting.<br>
|
|
<br>
|
|
In terms of what you are trying to do, it comes down to what colorspace
|
|
you want the display to be, and how far from native for that display it
|
|
is. A CRT can be reasonably flexible in the behaviour it can be given
|
|
without side effects, an LCD less so. If you want to minimize artefacts
|
|
on an LCD you want to set the contrast and white points to their native
|
|
values (ie. where the monitor is not manipulating the digital signal
|
|
levels). It may not be easy to figure out what this is. In this
|
|
scenario you would probably only want calibration to set the transfer
|
|
characteristic and neutral axis, and leave the white point native.<br>
|
|
<br>
|
|
For typical MSWindows/Linux this would probably be the typical CRT
|
|
transfer
|
|
("gamma") curve, or a gamma of about 2.4. For OS X it would probably <br>
|
|
be a gamma of 1.8 for versions 10.5 or earlier, or 2.4 for 10.6 or
|
|
latter ("Snow Leopard").<br>
|
|
<br>
|
|
The nominal white point of a display is D65 (set by Television
|
|
standards), and an LCD's native white point is somewhere near there,
|
|
but this is dictated by their backlight color. The CRT's will give
|
|
maximum brightness with a much higher white point (9000K or so), but
|
|
this can be reduced with fewer side effects (just reduced brightness)
|
|
using typical CRT controls. <br>
|
|
<br>
|
|
If you have specific requirements (trying to do soft proofing) then you
|
|
may want to target a specific white point and brightness, and be
|
|
prepared to compromise other aspects of the display to achieve this. By
|
|
all means use the controls to move the display in the direction you
|
|
want to go, and then use the calibration curves to get there. If you
|
|
are moving far from native (especially on an LCD) you may find the side
|
|
effects unacceptable though.<br>
|
|
<br>
|
|
<br>
|
|
<br>
|
|
<br>
|
|
</body>
|
|
</html>
|