Most popular monitors are supplied with factory-adjusted settings, adapted to standard applications in the office environment. Screens with such settings do not meet the requirements necessary to view photographs. In most cases, it takes no more than a few minutes to adjust a monitor for the purposes of displaying photos.
The instructions set forth below apply exclusively to basic calibration, involving correct setting of brightness and contrast of the screen, and do not apply to colour adjustment. However, if you adjust those two parameters properly, it usually improves the quality of the display of photographs on your screen.
Below, you will find a stepwedge, which will help you adjust your screen.
If you can differentiate between all 24 fields of the stepwedge above, you do not have to adjust anything: contrast and brightness of your screen are set properly. If you cannot, you will have to perform a simple adjustment procedure.
The first field on the left is pure white (nothing should be brighter than this field), whereas the last field is pure black (nothing should be darker).
In order to adjust brightness and contrast, stick to the following procedure:
- if your monitor enables the adjustment of colour temperature (expressed in degrees Kelvin), set it to 6500K, as it is the standardised value
- in the graphics card properties, set the colour depth to 24 bit (at minimum)
- set the monitor contrast to its maximum value (100%)
- set the monitor brightness to its maximum value (100%)
We begin with reducing the contrast, so that the first (white) field does not shine too brightly. Too bright and too contrasting image is not good for your eyes.
Watching the above stepwedge, reduce the brightness of your monitor until you can differentiate between the two first fields on the left and the two last fields on the right. This task can be difficult with poor-quality LCD screens or used CRT monitors. In such cases, try to reach the parameters that are as close to what you expect as possible.
Having completed the calibration, check the effect on the stepwedge below.
If the fields marked with 0 and 10 and the fields marked with 95 and 100 look identical, the calibration process must be repeated. The difference between fields 0 and 10 and fields 95 and 100 should be very slight, but visible. If you can differentiate between all the fields on the first and second stepwedge, your monitor has been calibrated correctly.
In most cases, setting the contrast to 90-100% and the brightness to 50-100% ensures the best results.
Important! Before starting the calibration process, the monitor should be turned on for at least 15 minutes.