SURVEY - Monitor Calibration and Profiling

**MarcT** · 07 December 2007, 02:35 AM

Monitors are taken for granted these days, low-end lcd rules the market and color quality... well it depends on your point of view. (pun!)

I still use my old crt and calibrate it every month or two. I hope it will still hold on a while.

Although much larger formats are available in lcd monitors and sometimes I get tempted.

Regards,

coco

**Xhris** · 09 April 2008, 01:44 AM

Originally Posted by sledger

...Good quality LCD monitors with wide viewing angles using IPS technology for their panels are every bit as good as high quality CRT's were...

Not for gaming they aren't. The fastest, shiniest, newest LCD monitor is still three orders of magnitude slower in effective refresh rate than the poorest, dustiest, old CRT. I recently started using an old lab computer with a CRT monitor, just for office work. How I missed fluid screen motion without even the slightest hint of ghosting. Having a fixed native screen resolution also hammers LCDs for me. Except for their bulk, I prefer CRTs.

**steve.ledger** · 12 April 2008, 11:44 PM

Slightly picky here, LCD's have no refresh rate - they have a response rate.

I think it's still a matter of personal choice. I use and sell a lot of LCD's and I know a lot of gamers who now use LCD's over CRT's for gaming. They prefer them for crispness, clarity, wide-screen and importantly for lanners - they are light to cart around.

**Xhris** · 13 April 2008, 12:38 AM

Yep, when I use the term effective refresh rate, I mean, irrespective of semantics, the time before a new image is shown at some given point, and factoring in the time for the old image to be gone beyond eye detection.

When I hear the term "LCD crispness" used by people in reviews, I see an example of failure to appreciate what that really is saying. "LCDs are better for displaying text because the text is crisper" etc. It's crisper because it's aliased. CRT effectively anti-alias and smooth the horrid, effective pixelation of text which you get on LCDs. I really prefer CRTs for text. This also applies for images in general, but is most obvious for text owing to higher contrast.

It's true about LANers though, the last LAN party I went to, there wasn't a CRT in site. Widescreen I'm not overly fussed about atm. It's possible to buy widescreen CRTs; Sony manufacturers(ed) them.

Most gamers who buy LCDs tend to be either totally ignorant of monitor output properties, or are aware and only play the games in which the problems of LCDs aren't a problem, or just aren't perfectionist enough to be bothered--which is all fine.

LCDs are just inferior technology--by a significant amount--if you're really, and specifically, after the ultimate in monitor output. This is easily observed if you do an objective, physical comparison. They are much more practical however for virtually all non-ultra-gaming situations though.

Even if LCDs overcame their slow image redraw problem in the future, they will never replace a CRT for me due to the fixed resolution problem, which is just an inherent property of LCDs.

**steve.ledger** · 13 April 2008, 12:52 AM

Originally Posted by Xhris

LCDs are just inferior technology--by a significant amount--if you're really, and specifically, after the ultimate in monitor output. This is easily observed if you do an objective, physical comparison. They are much more practical however for virtually all non-ultra-gaming situations though.

I'd have a lot of trouble agreeing with any of that, however we are off topic.
The thread is about calibration and profiling. LCD/CRT it doesn't matter

**AndFarr** · 17 December 2008, 04:52 PM

I"m going to side with Egg on this question.
Why? Because color perception is relative.
Relative to colors around it, to lighting, and to each personal viewer's perception.
Some people like myself ( is this true for everyone?) see color slightly differently in each eye, then the brain averages the input to a color in between.
Try looking at objects of various colors with one eye open, then shift back and forth between your eyes. Likely as not you will see a slight perceptible shift in color.
So If the color we see onscreen is actually a "Fuzzy" value anyway, then the import job of the monitor is to serve up color consistently , even if off slightly from the original. And most monitors can do that quite well~!
- Andy

**RushNP774** · 13 April 2009, 10:10 PM

I can't see any difference between the two lightest whites, nor the two darkest blacks. I'm sure it would help in my post processing of my photography, but I'm not a pro, so I've just never bothered with calibration

Once I get my new computer and monitors, I'll probably be more inclined to make sure I have perfect colors.

**Burpee** · 15 April 2009, 03:44 AM

Hardware calibration. No, I don't use any hardware to calibrate.

Today at www.giveawayoftheday.com (3 hours left) they are giveing away some calibrating software. I chose not to download it either. Mostly because it guarantees to calibrate your monitor to 2.2 gamma and 6500 warmth and I thought that 2.2 gamma was a Mac setting and that PCs should be calibrated to 1.8....but I don't know for sure.

I'm really lost with all of this. I don't understand how to use a profile for my printer even after reading about it numerous threads (never seen the steps to take to do it). I bought a ViewSonic Graphics Series G90fb. The 'b' means that it's black

This monitor was suggested to me by the owner of a 3D site. I love it. It came with custom settings for different temperatures. I chose 6500.

It used to print out from my computer what I saw on screen. I had to lighten my work just a touch but the colors were good. Now they aren't and my colors are off when I print...especially reds.

I used to have an ATI Radeon graphics card but it died and I replaced it with a NVidia GeForce 7900Gt (something like that). Could a new graphics card make the difference?

**handrawn** · 15 April 2009, 07:02 AM

according to my adobe software: 2.2 for Windows 1.8 for Mac Nancy

if you change your graphics card you might well change your default monitor color profile...

**Burpee** · 15 April 2009, 03:33 PM

I'll have to reread my bookmarked sites. I'm easily confused, lol. I'm set at about 2.0 gamma on a PC at the mo...right in between. My blue gamma is set just a touch lower than the red and green. Feel like I should reset everything to default and use an image and print it out until it matches my printer to screen.