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Author Topic: Monitor Settings  (Read 2290 times)

kenben

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Monitor Settings
« on: November 26, 2010, 07:05:48 pm »

Checking my R G B settings on my monitor I see they are all set at 50.What should they be set at.
Also the best setting for contrast
« Last Edit: November 26, 2010, 07:12:46 pm by kenben »
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stamper

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Re: Monitor Settings
« Reply #1 on: November 27, 2010, 03:24:04 am »

They should be equally balanced. Calibrate the monitor with a calibrator and don't touch the internal workings of the monitor and  the video card.

shewhorn

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Re: Monitor Settings
« Reply #2 on: November 27, 2010, 07:21:43 am »

They should be equally balanced. Calibrate the monitor with a calibrator and don't touch the internal workings of the monitor and  the video card.

While I would use a calibration puck and profiling software, depending upon what you have you do want to touch the monitor's settings. If you have a CRT or a monitor with a high bit monitor LUT then you'll get better results from tweaking the white point manually. On a CRT contrast is actually luminance (or brightness by the commonly accepted definition) and brightness controls the black level. These settings must be set manually on a CRT or you'll get a terrible profile out of it.

Now, if you have a TFT and not a CRT, and it does not have a high resolution monitor LUT then you will want to leave those settings alone. You will have to adjust the luminance (brightness... in the case of TFTs, brightness actually does what it says it does) based upon feedback from your profiling software.

Either way you must have profiling hardware and software to get the job done. It can not be done by eye, and it can not be done with some preset values. Even if someone who has the same monitor tells you what their settings are, those settings will not be correct for your monitor.

Cheers, Joe
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stamper

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Re: Monitor Settings
« Reply #3 on: November 27, 2010, 09:58:56 am »

My reply was in respect to RGB settings. No way do you want to get them out of sync.

kenben

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Re: Monitor Settings
« Reply #4 on: November 27, 2010, 11:06:41 am »

I had to reload my Windows program awhile back.I came to the conclusion that I had not installed the driver for the monitor.I now had excess to  R G B. When I checked they were at 50%.I recalabrated my monitor with Spyder Pro  3. I have not seen any difference in my photos on the monitor.I have not done a print yet.I use the first print as a working print and then I make my adjustments from there for the final print.
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shewhorn

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Re: Monitor Settings
« Reply #5 on: November 27, 2010, 01:27:42 pm »

My reply was in respect to RGB settings. No way do you want to get them out of sync.

This is definitely incorrect. As I said before it depends on what you have. If you have an NEC xx90 or something from their PA series and you didn't get the Spectraview package you ABSOLUTELY want to adjust the RGB settings to tune the white point. Leaving the profiling software to set the white point (especially if it deviates far from the monitor's native white point) would be literally throwing away data (8 bit profiles are destructive). If you have a CRT (I would think most would be so old at this point that they wouldn't hold a calibration very well) you definitely want to adjust the RGB values because those are manipulating values in the analog domain and thus are less destructive than manipulating white point with an ICC profile.

Now, if you have something like an HP 2475 or a Dell, you're dealing with panels that do not have a high resolution monitor LUT and there's absolutely no advantage to adjusting the RGB values internally. In those cases you let the profiling software set the white point.

Cheers, Joe
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shewhorn

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Re: Monitor Settings
« Reply #6 on: November 27, 2010, 01:33:21 pm »

I had to reload my Windows program awhile back.I came to the conclusion that I had not installed the driver for the monitor.I now had excess to  R G B.

Why would installing the driver require this?

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When I checked they were at 50%.

Where were you checking these values, in the driver or on the monitor itself. What make and model of monitor do you have?

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I recalabrated my monitor with Spyder Pro  3. I have not seen any difference in my photos on the monitor.

What settings did you use? If you set the white point to native, if the monitor is well behaved you may not see much difference. In my experience though I've always been able to see a difference when toggling between a newly generated profile and no profile at all.

Cheers, Joe
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ChasP505

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Re: Monitor Settings
« Reply #7 on: November 27, 2010, 01:50:41 pm »

Checking my R G B settings on my monitor I see they are all set at 50.What should they be set at.
Also the best setting for contrast

It depends on the monitor.  At factory default settings, some monitors have the RGB levels at 50%, some at 100%.  Either way, when calibrating you should always start from all factory default monitor and video card settings.  When adjusting RGB levels, you should never adjust to higher values than the default levels, only lower.

Some calibration softwares don't require you to reset the monitor back to default levels after the initial calibration, some do.
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Chas P.
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