MONITORS HAVE TAKEN QUITE A FEW STEPS FORWARD

IN RECENT YEARS. 4K DISPLAY, CURVED MONITORS, AND OTHER INNOVATIONS ALLOW PEOPLE TO SEE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL IMAGES ON THEIR COMPUTER SCREEN AND TELEVISION.

So I’m in the market for a monitor calibration tool. The firmware update for my PG35VQ reset all of the SDR color settings to some whacked out values. HDR still looks acceptable but I need to retune the colors. I’ve looked around and the X-Rite i1Display Pro seems to have a good price and quality. Can anyone suggest any others? The best and the most basic way to color calibrate your screen is via the inbuilt Windows color calibrator. Just go to the Start menu and type “ Calibrate Display Color “. This is the good old Windows 7 color calibration tool and one of the few tools which are left untouched in Windows 10, for good reasons. Graphics professionals will pick up serious color accuracy test tools for the job like the Datacolor Spyder5Elite S5EL100 Monitor Calibration System. Some of you will go with the default monitor calibration software built into the OS. Color Perfection. Fine tune the colors on your screen to absolute perfection with the Color Calibrator. Create multiple color profiles to adjust the color temperature, brightness, color space, and more to best match the specific color settings you need for any type of content or situation.

If you haven’t calibrated your monitor, though,you might not be getting the most out of it. There are ways to tweak the colorsettings to allow for an even brighter, crisper image that will take yourgaming, watching, and photography to the next level.

Ahead, we’ll cover some of these tools and tellyou a bit about how to use them.

GETTING STARTED

monitor for calibration before jumping right into using your monitor colorcalibration tool. Prepping this way will give you a chance at the best and mostconsistent results.

Turn your monitor on and let itsit for about a half hour before you start calibrating. This will allow themonitor to settle into a comfortable state and will display the colors how theyalmost always look to you.
Make sure the lighting isn’toverly harsh in the room where you’re calibrating. Some light is fine, but youdon’t want any glare messing with your results.
Locate the display settings onyour monitor, and cycle through them to understand what they do. These settingsare often on the monitor’s control panel, but you might have to open externalsettings yourself.
Restore your monitor to itsdefault resolution. Don’t mess around with “Theater” or “Reading” mode justyet.

Calibration Tools for Windows and Mac

Those who are serious about using a monitor color calibration tool will probably look for an external device, but that doesn’t represent the majority of computer users. The built-in tools from MacOS and Windows will work just fine if you just want to make your monitor look as good as possible with limited work and cost.

Even those who might want a professional touch should start here, and make sure they’re fully optimizing the monitor’sresolution before turning to an external monitor color calibration tool.

Of course, the number of display choices you’ll have will depend on the type of monitor you bought and how much customization it allows.

You might see a lot of terms that are foreign to your throughout this process. Thankfully, these operating systems will beable to help with some brief explanations. Don’t get intimidated by the options at first glance – you don’t have to be a tech wizard to calibrate the color on your monitor properly.

MacOS Calibration Tool

Photo credit by: howtogeek.com

You will find the MacOS monitor color calibration tool displayed as the Display Calibrator Assistant under “Display.” Do a quick search in Spotlight if you can’t find it right away. The term “calibrate”should bring it up.

The Mac monitor display settings are a bit more intuitive than the Windows ones. They will provide you with step-by-step instructions on how to create the display settings you want. You can fiddle with gamma, white target point, brightness, contrast, etc.

Once you’re done, just hit continue and make sure to save the changes you’ve made. Vuala! You’ve optimized your monitor’scolor settings in only a few minutes.

Windows 10 Calibration Tool

Photo credit by: iristech.co

If you’re using Windows 10, search “Display Color” in the search bar and click the result that pops up. You can find the same calibration tool under the “Appearance and Personalization” tab on olderversions of Windows.

Windows has a step-by-step guide as well, but it isn’t quite as easy to navigate as the Mac one, in our opinion. You’ll see the same options here: gamma, color balance, brightness, etc. After you lock-in, your settings Windows will give you a sample image to use to make sureeverything is to your liking.

Your calibration settings will save as a .ics file on your computer. You can revert the changes you made at any time, and cycle through different calibrations you’ve saved over time.

Type “color management” into the search bar if you want a full view of the options you’ve saved. Choose the monitor attached to the computer, and you’re all set!

Online Calibration Tools

Photo credit by: lagom.com

Several websites allow you to customize your monitor’s color settings even further than the operating system tools can. These are a bit of a step up, but still, don’t have the same possibilities ofthe hardware we included below.

Here are some of the more popular and useful websites you can visit to get more customization over what you see when you look at your computer screen.

The Lagom LCD Monitor Test Pages

Photo credit by: mixinglight.com

The Lagom LCD Monitor Test Pages is particularly useful because of its ability to save settings for test purposes.

These can be useful when you’re on the market for a new monitor, as you may be able to test the image quality in the store before you buy. Just save the images to a USB drive and take them with you onyour monitor search.

The site uses patterns to begin testing your monitor’s response time, contrast, and other settings. You can cycle through these tests in any order, but it’s probably best to stick with what the websiteprovides.

The Lagom LCD Monitor Test Pages are comprehensive and detailed, which can be intimidating at first. Once you get over the website setup, though, it should be easy to understand and complete.

Photo Friday

Photo Friday

Photo credit by: lifehacker.com

Photo Friday isn’t as detailed as The Lagom LCD Monitor Test Pages, but some people prefer simplicity. As you can probably guess, this website is geared towards photographers and allows you to adjust the contrast and brightness of your screen on a single page.

Once you’re finished, you’ll notice the most difference in black and white tones. These will be a lot crisper than they were before you made the changes using Photo Friday.

Online Monitor Test

Photo credit by: raymond.cc

The Online Monitor Test is very similar to the Photo Friday site, but with a few different styles and display options. You’ll be mostly dealing with brightness and contrast here, which are the most common settings these online monitor tools provide.

Online Monitor Test is specifically useful because it can alert you to damaged pixels and other problems with your monitor. You can also utilize this tool across a dual-monitor setup.

Best Color Calibration Tool For Monitors

W4ZT

Photo credit by: windowsreport.com

The W4ZT tool isn’t anything special when you compare it to the likes of Photo Friday and The Lagom LCD Monitor Test Pages, but it offers a lot of the same features. We included it here because it’s extremely intuitive and easy to use. You might want to try this tool out if you’re having problems with some of the other websites we’ve suggested.

THE MONITOR CALIBRATION AND GAMMAASSESSMENT PAGE

Photo credit by: makeuseof.com

The Monitor Calibration and Gamma Assessment Page specifically focuses on gamma, which is a massive benefit to this tool. In fact, you might want to use this one in addition to something like W4ZT or Photo Friday to make sure you’re getting the best of both worlds.

This site is easy to understand as well, so you shouldn’t have much of a problem navigating the options. There are some test patterns here that will give you the best gamma settings your monitor can hope for (without using external hardware, that is).

Calibrati