Calibration software

[grimm003]

Hello, what software do people use to calibrate the settings on monitors? My new monitor looks great, but I am sure it could look better if I adjusted them from the factory settings. Is Avia good for monitors, or is there anything else, preferably free/cheap?

[Mpegger]

Free/cheap would mean calibrating with your own eyes. Unless your a professional who works with colors all the time and knows what a specific color sould look like, you'll never get accurate colors/lighting. Maybe close, but probably no where near what it sould be (I know I never could).

That being said, the cheapest, fastest, and best bet is this:

http://www.pantone.com/Pages/products/product.aspx?pid=562

I have one and love it, especially the program it comes with to auto adjust for changing lighting conditions for the fact that when I game, it will readjust to the corrected settings.

[Kevin007]

spyder2express works great.

[NewbieOneKenobi]

Actually, what you get with ATI or nVidia drivers will do fine.

[grimm003]

They don't provide an auto-calibration, and also they don't give reference items to look at to calibrate. They do provide the means to adjust a lot. That brings up a new question for me: is it better to calibrate with the video card settings or monitor settings?

[legendary]

I was wonder about this myself. Unfortunately my cd-rom drive can't read the disc that came with my monitor that has the calibration software on it. I have a Samsung 2943HM and it's supposed to work with MagicTune. Unfortunately I don't know which version of MagicTune my monitor is compatible with since they have several versions of the software.

[SolidxSnake]

Actually, what you get with ATI or nVidia drivers will do fine.

To calibrate your monitor accurately, no they won't.

If you want an accurate calibration then get a colorimeter (Pantone Huey, linked above, is good. I have the standard upgraded to pro, got it on eBay for $50 shipped).

Otherwise, if you just want to calibrate your monitor "just because", then don't even worry about it because no matter what you do with your own eyes, you won't get an accurate result.

[7keys]

If I could just get RGB in properly, so when I get my pictures developed the colors would be the same as on my monitor. I guess you need something in hand for a reference.

[SolidxSnake]

If I could just get RGB in properly, so when I get my pictures developed the colors would be the same as on my monitor. I guess you need something in hand for a reference.

You also need an accurate black and white point as well as gamma.

[Mpegger]

Gamma isnt difficult to get very close to by eye. But yeah, forget about getting RGB accurate by eye.