Monitor Profiles/Settings Thread

[ConBas]

I would like to request a profile for the Samsung 206BW. I haven't got the first clue on how to calibrate my new LCD monitor. And if anyone knows a good resource where manual calibration is explained (without use of a colorimeter) that would be much appreciated as well.

EDIT: Thanks for the links below, BernardP! :thumbsup:

 

[BernardP]

Originally posted by: ConBas
I would like to request a profile for the Samsung 206BW. I haven't got the first clue on how to calibrate my new LCD monitor. And if anyone knows a good resource where manual calibration is explained (without use of a colorimeter) that would be much appreciated as well.

This web site has test images for non-colorimeter calibration:

http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

And this one too:

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/calibrating.htm

 

[adrianmariano]

I got got a NEC 20WMGX2 and am now trying to figure out the calibration---what I can do without special equipment. I picked one of the sets posted by xtnight at the top of this thread (6500K with the lower luminance value, I think 160). Does the ICM profile make much difference? When I was doing this I didn't have a good calibration pattern to look at, but I didn't notice any change when I ran xcalib to install the ICM profile.

Also, how does gamma relate to these calibration procedures? It doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere above, but everybody talks about it, and when I looked for calibration patterns I found ones that said things like "if the left image looks uniform your gamma is 1.8; if the right image looks uniform your gamma is 2.2" and of course neither image looked anywhere close to being uniform. Does this mean I haven't got it right?

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: ConBas
I would like to request a profile for the Samsung 206BW. I haven't got the first clue on how to calibrate my new LCD monitor. And if anyone knows a good resource where manual calibration is explained (without use of a colorimeter) that would be much appreciated as well.

EDIT: Thanks for the links below, BernardP! :thumbsup:

LCD Thread Section VI.

Originally posted by: adrianmariano
I got got a NEC 20WMGX2 and am now trying to figure out the calibration---what I can do without special equipment. I picked one of the sets posted by xtnight at the top of this thread (6500K with the lower luminance value, I think 160). Does the ICM profile make much difference? When I was doing this I didn't have a good calibration pattern to look at, but I didn't notice any change when I ran xcalib to install the ICM profile.

The ICM does stuff for me (it changes stuff slightly but it can end up making a big difference if you have a good eye). It usually just makes your screen more balanced and less washed out which is in fact a big bonus.

Also, how does gamma relate to these calibration procedures? It doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere above, but everybody talks about it, and when I looked for calibration patterns I found ones that said things like "if the left image looks uniform your gamma is 1.8; if the right image looks uniform your gamma is 2.2" and of course neither image looked anywhere close to being uniform. Does this mean I haven't got it right?

L* is a linear gamma where every tone [0,255] is one brighter than the next.

sRGB, which is close to exponent 2.2 but not exactly 2.2, has a slightly different method to make sRGB media look better (such as the web or videos).

Please note that calibration can and will vary depending on your particular unit. For me, gamma sRGB looks almost perfect on lagom.nl, and it should, since I'm using sRGB.

Try some other profiles if your squares don't look right.

 

[adrianmariano]

When you say L* is linear gamma does that mean that the various calibrations you posted above for the NEC 20WMGX2, which all say the target tonal response curve is L*, are trying to achieve a linear response (e.g. gamma exponent of 1)? But then you say that you're using sRGB?

I understand that individual monitors will vary, and that if I don't use a calorimeter under local illumination conditions I can't expect to get it absolutely right. But when I look at the squares at lagom.nl it looks like my gamma is about 3. The 2.9 row is the closest to looking uniform. The sRGB row has pretty high contrast between inner and outer regions of the squares. Does this represent unit to unit variation? Or does it mean I botched something in duplicating your setup?

 

[clickynext]

Thanks for creating the thread, xtknight.

If anyone had some settings/profile for 2007WFP, that would be much appreciated.

 

[1ManArmY]

great thread especially for a LCD noob, just picked up a 216BW Samsung.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: adrianmariano
When you say L* is linear gamma does that mean that the various calibrations you posted above for the NEC 20WMGX2, which all say the target tonal response curve is L*, are trying to achieve a linear response (e.g. gamma exponent of 1)? But then you say that you're using sRGB?

I use sRGB now actually, the profiles in the OP for the 20WMGX2 are all L*. L* will reveal more detail but I mainly browse the web so I use sRGB. I'll probably get around to posting an sRGB profile one day.

I understand that individual monitors will vary, and that if I don't use a calorimeter under local illumination conditions I can't expect to get it absolutely right. But when I look at the squares at lagom.nl it looks like my gamma is about 3. The 2.9 row is the closest to looking uniform. The sRGB row has pretty high contrast between inner and outer regions of the squares. Does this represent unit to unit variation? Or does it mean I botched something in duplicating your setup?

Could just be unit variation unless you didn't apply the profile. I'd expect a little better results than that but sometimes you don't get lucky. Give some of the other profiles a try, though.

 

[adrianmariano]

Originally posted by: xtknight

Originally posted by: adrianmariano
When you say L* is linear gamma does that mean that the various calibrations you posted above for the NEC 20WMGX2, which all say the target tonal response curve is L*, are trying to achieve a linear response (e.g. gamma exponent of 1)? But then you say that you're using sRGB?

I use sRGB now actually, the profiles in the OP for the 20WMGX2 are all L*. L* will reveal more detail but I mainly browse the web so I use sRGB. I'll probably get around to posting an sRGB profile one day.

I understand that individual monitors will vary, and that if I don't use a calorimeter under local illumination conditions I can't expect to get it absolutely right. But when I look at the squares at lagom.nl it looks like my gamma is about 3. The 2.9 row is the closest to looking uniform. The sRGB row has pretty high contrast between inner and outer regions of the squares. Does this represent unit to unit variation? Or does it mean I botched something in duplicating your setup?

Could just be unit variation unless you didn't apply the profile. I'd expect a little better results than that but sometimes you don't get lucky. Give some of the other profiles a try, though.

Shouldn't I get similar results from the other profiles? You're the only one who has posted profiles for this monitor, presumably all for the same unit, so if it's unit variation I should see similar results from other profiles. Similarly, if I did something wrong in software and I have double gamma correction happening or something like that, it'll still be happening with other profiles. Either way, I won't learn anything.

Note that I did install the profile using xcalib under Debian Linux. Documentation for xcalib is kind of weak so I'm not sure I know what's going on. Does X have any other controls that affect the output?

I reread the top post and realized that L* isn't linear gamma it's linear perception. So I went off and did some more reading. The question is, what should I see if my monitor is correctly set to L*?

http://www.poynton.com/PDFs/Rehabilitation_of_gamma.pdfhttp://www.poynton.com/PDFs/Rehabilitation_of_gamma.pdf

This article gives the formula for L*. I graphed it and observed that it matches the curve y^2.5 from about y=0.2 up to y=1. So this means that if my display system is set to L* I should observe a nonlinearity of about y^2.5 at the display side.

So is this what I should observe in the gamma test patterns with my monitor calibrated to L*? Or is there some other lurking factor?

According to that article it's not desirable to have the end to end response of the imaging system be linear. (In other words, the camera takes the picture and encodes it and the display decodes it and displays it. That's the end to end system.) Apparently people prefer the end to end system to follow a y^1.2 or something like that. So traditionally monitors had an exponent of 2.5 and image files were encoded using 2.2 so that the result would be a slightly nonlinear output at the end. It appears that sRGB has preserved this arrangement, at least that the encoding is done with gamma of 2.2. It's a little unclear to me if the monitor is supposed to respond as 2.5 (which would be close to L* and would match historical behavior) or if it should respond as 2.2, which would give a linear end to end reproduction but would deviate from historical behavior.

I think I will attempt to set gamma on my system to 1 and set the monitor to sRGB and see what the test patterns look like.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: adrianmariano
Shouldn't I get similar results from the other profiles? You're the only one who has posted profiles for this monitor, presumably all for the same unit, so if it's unit variation I should see similar results from other profiles.

Not necessarily. Different brightness/contrast settings have to be taken into account. If you try a native profile, it's possible your native temp is roughly the same as mine. If you try a profile with R/G/B settings, it's possible your R/G/B is setup differently (or varies).

I think we're thinking too hard about it anyhow, sometimes it's just a matter of luck what will work. Certainly some will work better than others.

Similarly, if I did something wrong in software and I have double gamma correction happening or something like that, it'll still be happening with other profiles. Either way, I won't learn anything.

Note that I did install the profile using xcalib under Debian Linux. Documentation for xcalib is kind of weak so I'm not sure I know what's going on. Does X have any other controls that affect the output?

X by default has a gamma of 1.0. Check it by typing "xgamma".

You shouldn't have to worry about double correction unless your graphics card's LUT has somehow been overwritten or your monitor has a LUT (not the case for the 20WMGX2). I don't think either case is likely.

"xcalib -c" will wipe your profile. If it looks anything semi-normal chances are you don't have LUT adjustment anywhere else.

"xcalib -s 0 /profile/name.icm" will apply name.icm to screen 0. Screen 0 is default, you can also specify screen 1 if you desire. I believe it won't work in Xinerama (span) where XRandrR is not supported, but it should be fine on a multi-screen config.

I reread the top post and realized that L* isn't linear gamma it's linear perception. So I went off and did some more reading. The question is, what should I see if my monitor is correctly set to L*?

That's right, it's perceptually linear but since the human eye isn't perfectly linear and nor is the monitor, it will certainly have an exponent value, but more accurately a 256x3 LUT.

http://www.poynton.com/PDFs/Rehabilitation_of_gamma.pdfhttp://www.poynton.com/PDFs/Rehabilitation_of_gamma.pdf

This article gives the formula for L*. I graphed it and observed that it matches the curve y^2.5 from about y=0.2 up to y=1. So this means that if my display system is set to L* I should observe a nonlinearity of about y^2.5 at the display side.

Not sure, the article is kinda over my head. The way I understand it is that each tone is measured and the monitor comes up with a 256x3 lookup table through extrapolation. It only tests 20-50 tones or so with a colorimeter (unless you choose to make it really long) so it has to guess on some of them. It usually does a decent job. So for L* it comes up with a table where 0-255 have linear nit levels (or, linear nits at least to the human eye).

So is this what I should observe in the gamma test patterns with my monitor calibrated to L*? Or is there some other lurking factor?

With L*? Basically dark tones are a lot more visible than with sRGB. So, your gradient looks a lot more linear. I recommend testing using the darker tones on that page (gray level 0,1,2,3,etc). You should be able to see them quite well with L* on. It depends how good the monitor is too of course.

According to that article it's not desirable to have the end to end response of the imaging system be linear. (In other words, the camera takes the picture and encodes it and the display decodes it and displays it. That's the end to end system.) Apparently people prefer the end to end system to follow a y^1.2 or something like that. So traditionally monitors had an exponent of 2.5 and image files were encoded using 2.2 so that the result would be a slightly nonlinear output at the end. It appears that sRGB has preserved this arrangement, at least that the encoding is done with gamma of 2.2. It's a little unclear to me if the monitor is supposed to respond as 2.5 (which would be close to L* and would match historical behavior) or if it should respond as 2.2, which would give a linear end to end reproduction but would deviate from historical behavior.

Eh, I'm not sure it's clear to anybody what's going on. L* can look weird on sRGB material (artifacts in JPEGs, low dynamic range in photos more apparent, etc). At the same time, it can help you see the darker tones if you're working with higher dynamic range material such as OpenEXR HDR format.

I think I will attempt to set gamma on my system to 1 and set the monitor to sRGB and see what the test patterns look like.

 

[adrianmariano]

Originally posted by: xtknight

Originally posted by: adrianmariano
Shouldn't I get similar results from the other profiles? You're the only one who has posted profiles for this monitor, presumably all for the same unit, so if it's unit variation I should see similar results from other profiles.

Not necessarily. Different brightness/contrast settings have to be taken into account. If you try a native profile, it's possible your native temp is roughly the same as mine. If you try a profile with R/G/B settings, it's possible your R/G/B is setup differently (or varies).

I think we're thinking too hard about it anyhow, sometimes it's just a matter of luck what will work. Certainly some will work better than others.

I understand the role of luck. But what I've been trying to figure out is whether I was unlucky or not.

When you say "different brightness/contrast settings" do you mean my unit having a different brightness/contrast response than yours? Because I set the brightness contrast to the settings you specified in the profile. I must admit that I find it plenty bright enough with the 160 cd/m^2 profile and didn't really want it brighter, which was one reason I hadn't tried your other profiles yet. (I haven't had much time to play around either.)

I reread the top post and realized that L* isn't linear gamma it's linear perception. So I went off and did some more reading. The question is, what should I see if my monitor is correctly set to L*?

That's right, it's perceptually linear but since the human eye isn't perfectly linear and nor is the monitor, it will certainly have an exponent value, but more accurately a 256x3 LUT.

http://www.poynton.com/PDFs/Rehabilitation_of_gamma.pdfhttp://www.poynton.com/PDFs/Rehabilitation_of_gamma.pdf

This article gives the formula for L*. I graphed it and observed that it matches the curve y^2.5 from about y=0.2 up to y=1. So this means that if my display system is set to L* I should observe a nonlinearity of about y^2.5 at the display side.

Not sure, the article is kinda over my head. The way I understand it is that each tone is measured and the monitor comes up with a 256x3 lookup table through extrapolation. It only tests 20-50 tones or so with a colorimeter (unless you choose to make it really long) so it has to guess on some of them. It usually does a decent job. So for L* it comes up with a table where 0-255 have linear nit levels (or, linear nits at least to the human eye).

Well, I think you're basically right here, except that you really shouldn't talk about "linear nits to the human eye" because they aren't nits any more at that point. Calibration to L* should produce a table so that 0-255 correspond to the L* perceptual curve. This curve is pretty close to y^2.5. So it means that as you increase the values in the image from 0 up to 255 the response in nits should follow the y^2.5 curve which will look to the eye like a uniform response. (This is like a gamma of 2.5.)

On my unit with your L* calibration I think it looks fairly uniform until the high end where separation is still present, but just barely.

I think this part is fairly clear. Where things start to get less clear is where I start to interact with the other standards and tests. Because what matters in the end is not the response of the monitor alone, but the end to end response of the system. So for example if you had a digital camera and it took pictures and recorded the nit values and then you viewed it on an L* calibrated display it would look terrible.

There are two points I would say in the article I cited. One point is that the choice of monitor settings is not something you can do in isolation. It must be linked to the "settings" used for the production of the image data. If the camera stores nits linearly then the display should reproduce nits linearly. If the camera does some funky transformation to the nit values before storing them in the image as 0-255 then the display (or something) needs to undo that funky transformation so that what you see looks like what the camera saw.

According to that article, human vision (L*) follows a y^2.5 response (approximately), so in order for something to look twice as bright it needs to actually be 2^2.5 times as bright in nits. (That comes out to 5.7 times as bright.) By some total amazing coincidence, CRTs naturally follow a response that is close to human vision, around this y^2.5 curve. So if you want to use a CRT (think TV) and have the colors come out right, you have two options. You can compensate for this y^2.5 when you go to look at the picture. That means every TV has to do it. Or you can code the data with the inverse transformation, y^(1/2.5) so that when it gets processed by the monitor everything comes out untransformed. It turns out that this latter scheme has a host of advantages. One is that because it corresponds to human perception, you need fewer bits to cover the range of perceptual color variation. Another is that the TVs can be dumb and don't need to do any fancy transformations. This probably wouldn't matter at all now, but probably did 40 years ago.

Ok, so there's one thing I didn't mention. According to the article, humans actually don't like to look at pictures that exactly reproduce the luminance of the original scene. For some reason, they prefer the image to be slightly stretched. When they designed TV they built this slight stretch in at the encoding side. Even though they know that TVs responded like y^2.5 (gamma of 2.5) they coded the signal with a value of 2.2 instead. This gives a total response which isn't quite linear but which is supposed to be good for humans.

Anyway, I hope that summary of the article helped somebody. The upshot is that the settings you calibrate your monitor to should be determined by how the content has been encoded. The sRGB standard is meant to standardize this so that cameras encode in sRGB and then devices (like you rmonitor) know how to interpret the images that come from the cameras. Supposedly sRGB was picked in a legacy fashion to match the above mentioned TV encoding method because it meant that you could assume all the content around was sRGB unless it was otherwise tagged. (I guess really good image data has its own encoding profile included with the data.)

Now the one problem with all the above is that reading that article leads to the conclusion that sRGB should correspond to a gamma setting of 2.5, but it doesn't seem to. Everyone is talking about 2.2. So what's the story? Did somebody decide to go for true linearity instead? Or is the extra little nonlinearity still hiding somewhere in the system, concealed? (That article predates sRGB and I didn't find a good detailed discussion of sRGB anywhere.)

So is this what I should observe in the gamma test patterns with my monitor calibrated to L*? Or is there some other lurking factor?

With L*? Basically dark tones are a lot more visible than with sRGB. So, your gradient looks a lot more linear. I recommend testing using the darker tones on that page (gray level 0,1,2,3,etc). You should be able to see them quite well with L* on. It depends how good the monitor is too of course.

According to that article it's not desirable to have the end to end response of the imaging system be linear. (In other words, the camera takes the picture and encodes it and the display decodes it and displays it. That's the end to end system.) Apparently people prefer the end to end system to follow a y^1.2 or something like that. So traditionally monitors had an exponent of 2.5 and image files were encoded using 2.2 so that the result would be a slightly nonlinear output at the end. It appears that sRGB has preserved this arrangement, at least that the encoding is done with gamma of 2.2. It's a little unclear to me if the monitor is supposed to respond as 2.5 (which would be close to L* and would match historical behavior) or if it should respond as 2.2, which would give a linear end to end reproduction but would deviate from historical behavior.

Eh, I'm not sure it's clear to anybody what's going on. L* can look weird on sRGB material (artifacts in JPEGs, low dynamic range in photos more apparent, etc). At the same time, it can help you see the darker tones if you're working with higher dynamic range material such as OpenEXR HDR format.

I think I will attempt to set gamma on my system to 1 and set the monitor to sRGB and see what the test patterns look like.

With my monitor set to your L* profile, some highly compressed jpeg images seemed to have a more noisy look. (I couldn't pin down exactly what was going on and was wondering if it could be the "screen door" effect.) I also noticed that the banding test on that LCD test web page shows pretty serious banding. I guess this indicates that a better profile, tuned to this particular monitor, would help.

I tried selecting the monitor's native sRGB setting and the result is terrible. When I looked at one of the contrast tests on the LCD test site the bright grays look decidedly blue in comparison to white. My wife complained that I had screwed up the color. At least with your L* settings, the whites look white, even if the gamma seems to be 2.9 or 3.0. (With sRGB selected the gamma test was inconclusive. No row of squares looked good. Some looked good at low luminance and some at high luminance but no row looked entirely good.)

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: adrianmariano
I understand the role of luck. But what I've been trying to figure out is whether I was unlucky or not.

When you say "different brightness/contrast settings" do you mean my unit having a different brightness/contrast response than yours? Because I set the brightness contrast to the settings you specified in the profile. I must admit that I find it plenty bright enough with the 160 cd/m^2 profile and didn't really want it brighter, which was one reason I hadn't tried your other profiles yet. (I haven't had much time to play around either.)

I mean the fact that perhaps backlight decay in mine is different than yours. Or, a different revision or slightly different electronics causing different brightness/contrast response. Maybe different wear and tear on the crystals. A whole host of things that could vary...

Well, I think you're basically right here, except that you really shouldn't talk about "linear nits to the human eye" because they aren't nits any more at that point. Calibration to L* should produce a table so that 0-255 correspond to the L* perceptual curve. This curve is pretty close to y^2.5. So it means that as you increase the values in the image from 0 up to 255 the response in nits should follow the y^2.5 curve which will look to the eye like a uniform response. (This is like a gamma of 2.5.)

On my unit with your L* calibration I think it looks fairly uniform until the high end where separation is still present, but just barely.

I think this part is fairly clear. Where things start to get less clear is where I start to interact with the other standards and tests. Because what matters in the end is not the response of the monitor alone, but the end to end response of the system. So for example if you had a digital camera and it took pictures and recorded the nit values and then you viewed it on an L* calibrated display it would look terrible.

There are two points I would say in the article I cited. One point is that the choice of monitor settings is not something you can do in isolation. It must be linked to the "settings" used for the production of the image data. If the camera stores nits linearly then the display should reproduce nits linearly. If the camera does some funky transformation to the nit values before storing them in the image as 0-255 then the display (or something) needs to undo that funky transformation so that what you see looks like what the camera saw.

According to that article, human vision (L*) follows a y^2.5 response (approximately), so in order for something to look twice as bright it needs to actually be 2^2.5 times as bright in nits. (That comes out to 5.7 times as bright.) By some total amazing coincidence, CRTs naturally follow a response that is close to human vision, around this y^2.5 curve. So if you want to use a CRT (think TV) and have the colors come out right, you have two options. You can compensate for this y^2.5 when you go to look at the picture. That means every TV has to do it. Or you can code the data with the inverse transformation, y^(1/2.5) so that when it gets processed by the monitor everything comes out untransformed. It turns out that this latter scheme has a host of advantages. One is that because it corresponds to human perception, you need fewer bits to cover the range of perceptual color variation. Another is that the TVs can be dumb and don't need to do any fancy transformations. This probably wouldn't matter at all now, but probably did 40 years ago.

Ok, so there's one thing I didn't mention. According to the article, humans actually don't like to look at pictures that exactly reproduce the luminance of the original scene. For some reason, they prefer the image to be slightly stretched. When they designed TV they built this slight stretch in at the encoding side. Even though they know that TVs responded like y^2.5 (gamma of 2.5) they coded the signal with a value of 2.2 instead. This gives a total response which isn't quite linear but which is supposed to be good for humans.

Anyway, I hope that summary of the article helped somebody. The upshot is that the settings you calibrate your monitor to should be determined by how the content has been encoded. The sRGB standard is meant to standardize this so that cameras encode in sRGB and then devices (like you rmonitor) know how to interpret the images that come from the cameras. Supposedly sRGB was picked in a legacy fashion to match the above mentioned TV encoding method because it meant that you could assume all the content around was sRGB unless it was otherwise tagged. (I guess really good image data has its own encoding profile included with the data.)

Right, I've heard of several cases of people using L* for photo editing, but that's probably for RAW images?

Now the one problem with all the above is that reading that article leads to the conclusion that sRGB should correspond to a gamma setting of 2.5, but it doesn't seem to. Everyone is talking about 2.2. So what's the story? Did somebody decide to go for true linearity instead? Or is the extra little nonlinearity still hiding somewhere in the system, concealed? (That article predates sRGB and I didn't find a good detailed discussion of sRGB anywhere.)

Honestly I have no idea at all. It's too much jargon for me to process. I just calibrate to what looks good to my eyes. Getting a decent color flow is a very complicated task. When I simply view images on the Internet, most of them look good with either my L* calibration or sRGB calibration. Each one has its advantages really and I've only found a few cases where L* gives me more artifacts. If the media isn't compressed I think L* reveals more details without giving too many more artifacts. If it's compressed then sRGB is a better idea. I really am not one to read technical articles about color, I just go off of what looks good and balanced. I'm confident enough I have a good idea of what that looks like. Even then, people have different preferences. Some would like more vibrant images at the expense of accuracy, and others want more accurate images.

I tried selecting the monitor's native sRGB setting and the result is terrible. When I looked at one of the contrast tests on the LCD test site the bright grays look decidedly blue in comparison to white. My wife complained that I had screwed up the color. At least with your L* settings, the whites look white, even if the gamma seems to be 2.9 or 3.0. (With sRGB selected the gamma test was inconclusive. No row of squares looked good. Some looked good at low luminance and some at high luminance but no row looked entirely good.)

Right, I don't intend these to be perfect settings, just settings better than the default. So at least this seems to be the case. Similar panels tend to have similar sags in gamma curves. These profiles will correct those sags for the most part, but they won't be perfect.

It's well-established that profiles off similar models will produce slightly or largely better results than default (look at the 226BW dilemma). But, it's also well-known that it probably won't produce results lower than deltaE 94 avg. 2.0 for most people. That's not even that bad though, and it's decent for photo editing. If your unit happens to be quite a bit different from aging or revision reasons then maybe you won't have as good luck, but it sounds like you've got what you can out of the profiles (better than default).

In the end, your results may be suitable for photo editing or they may not. The reason I cannot guarantee it is because of monitor unit variation and because I simply don't understand all the L*/sRGB/camera color flow stuff that well.

If you want accurate calibration you're going to have to get a calibration unit yourself as monitor differences make it too difficult to produce consistent results. Plus my monitor's age is probably quite different from yours (I've had mine for 1.5 yrs and it has also started to burn in a bit). Can't remember when I uploaded each profile, though.

Take a look at your usage patterns and find out if it is worth getting a colorimeter for yourself (if you edit or print-match photos). Stay away from the Pantone Huey though, it may deliver results worse than the OP profiles.

 

[adrianmariano]

If you want accurate calibration you're going to have to get a calibration unit yourself as monitor differences make it too difficult to produce consistent results. Plus my monitor's age is probably quite different from yours (I've had mine for 1.5 yrs and it has also started to burn in a bit). Can't remember when I uploaded each profile, though.

Take a look at your usage patterns and find out if it is worth getting a colorimeter for yourself (if you edit or print-match photos). Stay away from the Pantone Huey though, it may deliver results worse than the OP profiles.

I noticed some pretty strong banding in the colors on one of the smoothly varying test patterns. I imagine that could get removed by proper calibration. On the whole, it's probably not really worth proper calibrating for my usage, but I was curious so I took a look at the options. I noticed that the Huey was not recommended. Is the Huey Pro similarly useless?

Do you know if it is possible to do anything useful with these colorimeters under linux? (I don't have any systems with Windows.) Will the software run under Wine, maybe? I know someone who will lend me one for a short time but I'm not sure how to best make use of it. Another possibility would be to install the software on a borrowed laptop with windows and plug the lcd panel into that, though then I wouldn't be using DVI. (Would that matter for color calibration?)

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: adrianmariano
I noticed some pretty strong banding in the colors on one of the smoothly varying test patterns. I imagine that could get removed by proper calibration. On the whole, it's probably not really worth proper calibrating for my usage, but I was curious so I took a look at the options. I noticed that the Huey was not recommended. Is the Huey Pro similarly useless?

Not sure about the Huey Pro, actually.

Do you know if it is possible to do anything useful with these colorimeters under linux? (I don't have any systems with Windows.) Will the software run under Wine, maybe? I know someone who will lend me one for a short time but I'm not sure how to best make use of it. Another possibility would be to install the software on a borrowed laptop with windows and plug the lcd panel into that, though then I wouldn't be using DVI. (Would that matter for color calibration?)

The latest version of Argyll CMS (I think a CVS/SVN version on a forum post) has support for the Eye One Display 2. I tried it, although it's not as fast, it did quite a decent job. It's definitely a usable Linux solution. It did take a while but it would certainly be a better idea than hooking it up thru VGA.

If you have the Huey Pro then I'm not sure if that's supported or not.

 

[HendraU]

I second the profile request for Dell's 2007WFP. TIA.
Great job on the thread, xtknight. Your LCD thread is like a bible to me. Keep it up.

 

[PascalT]

Nice thread. is there any profiles for the Samsung 244T?

thanks!

 

[demenion]

Does anyone know of a Windows XP program to load icm profiles besides the Microsoft color control panel applet?

because the addon does not work for some reason on a Macbook Pro running bootcamp.

Thanks!

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: HendraU
I second the profile request for Dell's 2007WFP. TIA.
Great job on the thread, xtknight. Your LCD thread is like a bible to me. Keep it up.

Sorry haven't seen any for 2007WFP. It would matter if it was the S-PVA model or the S-IPS model though. If it was the S-IPS model, a 20WMGX2 (same panel) profile might work.

Originally posted by: PascalT
Nice thread. is there any profiles for the Samsung 244T?

thanks!

There's a 244t profile here: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1168121

Originally posted by: demenion
Does anyone know of a Windows XP program to load icm profiles besides the Microsoft color control panel applet?

because the addon does not work for some reason on a Macbook Pro running bootcamp.

Thanks!

Not sure what bootcamp has to do with it. That's not a virtual machine is it? (w/ 'default' graphics drivers that don't allow color correction)

xcalib is another utility you can use to load profiles (mentioned in the OP) even for XP.

 

[Viper GTS]

I've had a few PM's to re-upload my Soyo Topaz profiles (the infamous $299 @ OfficeMax 8-bit 24")

I've re-uploaded the same profiles I posted before.

Use THIS ONE if you stick with the 6500K factory preset.

OR

Use THIS ONE if you use my RGB settings (which may or may not be 38/39/35).

Both should produce good results, as evidenced by their calibration reports:

The custom RGB profile:

ColorEyes Display Validation Log
2007-08-22 13:20:17

Display: M24EI5 1
System Profile: Soyo Topaz 2
Created By: Unknown
Creation Date: 2007-08-22 13:20:17

Validation Results:
# C M Y K Target L a b Measured L a b DeltaE
1 0 0 0 0 100.000 0.000 0.000 100.000 0.287 -0.090 0.30
2 0 0 0 0 94.907 0.000 0.000 94.889 0.464 -0.050 0.47
3 0 0 0 0 89.816 0.000 0.000 89.685 0.028 -0.280 0.31
4 0 0 0 0 84.735 0.000 0.000 84.803 0.106 0.456 0.47
5 0 0 0 0 79.646 0.000 0.000 79.617 -0.020 0.305 0.31
6 0 0 0 0 74.558 0.000 0.000 74.564 -0.108 0.047 0.12
7 0 0 0 0 67.128 0.000 0.000 67.239 -0.003 0.018 0.11
8 0 0 0 0 58.918 0.000 0.000 58.465 -0.269 -0.058 0.53
9 0 0 0 0 50.340 0.000 0.000 50.339 0.247 0.217 0.33
10 0 0 0 0 37.885 0.000 0.000 37.403 -0.081 -0.237 0.54
11 0 0 0 0 25.524 0.000 0.000 25.606 -0.245 0.112 0.28
12 0 0 0 0 17.532 0.000 0.000 16.939 -0.600 -0.056 0.85
13 0 0 0 0 57.281 81.569 88.846 57.230 82.206 90.776 0.41
14 0 0 0 0 86.004 -82.860 82.932 86.089 -83.502 83.495 0.16
15 0 0 0 0 31.331 59.912 -91.618 31.058 60.644 -92.322 0.33

Maximum DeltaE: 0.85
Average DeltaE: 0.37

And the 6500K profile:

ColorEyes Display Validation Log
2007-08-23 18:28:52

Display: M24EI5 1
System Profile: Soyo Topaz 6500K Factory Preset
Created By: Unknown
Creation Date: 2007-08-23 18:28:52

Validation Results:
# C M Y K Target L a b Measured L a b DeltaE
1 0 0 0 0 100.000 0.000 0.000 100.000 0.074 0.166 0.18
2 0 0 0 0 94.910 0.000 0.000 94.616 0.108 0.361 0.48
3 0 0 0 0 89.823 0.000 0.000 89.647 0.151 0.234 0.33
4 0 0 0 0 84.746 0.000 0.000 85.038 -0.201 0.243 0.43
5 0 0 0 0 79.661 0.000 0.000 79.818 -0.399 0.422 0.60
6 0 0 0 0 74.579 0.000 0.000 74.651 0.108 -0.145 0.19
7 0 0 0 0 67.158 0.000 0.000 66.982 -0.164 0.375 0.45
8 0 0 0 0 58.960 0.000 0.000 58.629 0.550 -0.010 0.64
9 0 0 0 0 50.399 0.000 0.000 50.171 0.219 0.388 0.50
10 0 0 0 0 37.985 0.000 0.000 37.898 -0.163 0.188 0.26
11 0 0 0 0 25.702 0.000 0.000 25.569 -0.418 0.229 0.49
12 0 0 0 0 17.810 0.000 0.000 17.600 0.354 0.070 0.42
13 0 0 0 0 57.417 82.288 85.805 57.461 82.921 89.115 0.78
14 0 0 0 0 86.040 -83.325 81.014 86.084 -83.936 81.430 0.13
15 0 0 0 0 30.834 60.423 -91.962 30.513 60.672 -92.803 0.36

Maximum DeltaE: 0.78
Average DeltaE: 0.42

If someone wants to permanently host these that would be helpful, otherwise 4 months from now I have a feeling I'll be doing this again.

Viper GTS

 

[soccerballtux]

Originally posted by: Viper GTS
If someone wants to permanently host these that would be helpful, otherwise 4 months from now I have a feeling I'll be doing this again.

Viper GTS

Sure:

6500K Factory Preset
38-39-35 profile

 

[Engraver]

Settings:
Brightness: 55.4
Contrast: 50.0
Advanced DV Mode: Off
DV Mode: Standard
Color: User {R: 90.1; G: 90.1; B: 100.0}
Gamma Curve: 0.7

I like my colors to be a little cooler, and this is what I came up with to suit me best.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: Engraver
Settings:
Brightness: 55.4
Contrast: 50.0
Advanced DV Mode: Off
DV Mode: Standard
Color: User {R: 90.1; G: 90.1; B: 100.0}
Gamma Curse: 0.7

I like my colors to be a little cooler, and this is what I came up with to suit me best.

Which monitor?

Gamma curve is a video card setting, right?

 

[Engraver]

Originally posted by: xtknight

Originally posted by: Engraver
Settings:
Brightness: 55.4
Contrast: 50.0
Advanced DV Mode: Off
DV Mode: Standard
Color: User {R: 90.1; G: 90.1; B: 100.0}
Gamma Curve: 0.7

I like my colors to be a little cooler, and this is what I came up with to suit me best.

Which monitor?

Gamma curve is a video card setting, right?

Oops, sorry. It is for the 20WMGX2. You can change the settings for gamma under the color correction section of the Nvidia control panel. Not sure where it is for ATI cards though.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: Engraver

Originally posted by: xtknight

Originally posted by: Engraver
Settings:
Brightness: 55.4
Contrast: 50.0
Advanced DV Mode: Off
DV Mode: Standard
Color: User {R: 90.1; G: 90.1; B: 100.0}
Gamma Curve: 0.7

I like my colors to be a little cooler, and this is what I came up with to suit me best.

Which monitor?

Gamma curve is a video card setting, right?

Oops, sorry. It is for the 20WMGX2. You can change the settings for gamma under the color correction section of the Nvidia control panel. Not sure where it is for ATI cards though.

Yup ATI has the option too. Thanks for the contribution.

 

[xtknight]

Thanks Viper GTS, soccerballtux, and Engraver.

Originally posted by: Viper GTS
If someone wants to permanently host these that would be helpful, otherwise 4 months from now I have a feeling I'll be doing this again.

Viper GTS

Do you know the brightness and contrast settings on the monitor for each profile? What target gamma did you calibrate to (native, 2.2, sRGB?)

I assume the software-selected white point for 'Soyo Topaz 2' is D65 (~6500K) because of the manually adjusted settings, and for the '6500K preset', native?