How To Calibrate Your Monitor
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2017-05-06
·
921 words · ~4 min read
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these days it's easy to go a little overboard when you're buying a monitor
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with 4K Ultra wide and adaptive refresh
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displays all jockeying for your attention you might expect to be blown
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away after plugging in your rig's Finishing Touch but wait a minute
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despite your monitor's high price tag something looks a miss the colors are
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all wrong how could this happen on such
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an expensive component well we've
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covered the reasons that monitors can look so different from each other in
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these episodes here but today we're going to talk about ways to calibrate
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your monitor properly to get accurate crisp colors whether you spent a hundred
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bucks or a th000 now there are multiple
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ways to calibrate your screen so let's start with the simplest and cheapest and
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work our way upward but whatever one you pick make sure your monitor is turned on
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for at least 30 minutes before starting so it can warm up and hit its usual
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level of brightness method number one
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for some quick and dirty display correction both Windows and macOS
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provide built-in tools to adjust gamma a
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setting that affects brightness and color ratios as well as contrast and
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color levels this method is fast and
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free but since you're expected to eyeball what the sample image should
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look like without a calibrated reference it's not much better than checking your
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car speed by sticking your hand out the window but if you'd like to go a little
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bit deeper with your monitor settings there's method two check out one of the
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free websites we've Linked In the description that have more test images
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and patterns that you can use to get your display looking nice on your own
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these sites take longer and still rely on you eyeballing things but they'll
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give you more more samples than what's built into your OS for more granular
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fine-tuning and better Real World results of course if you're a little
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more serious about color because you're a graphic designer home theater
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Enthusiast or you run a tech Channel on YouTube you might not trust yourself to
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get these things right just by fiddling with the monitor yourself in this case
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you may want to try method number three downloading a color profile for your
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display color profiles help map color
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information in files and UI Elements which are stored as a series of numbers
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to actual colors that your screen can
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display there are a number of standardized profiles such as srgb a
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common default profile for computers and Adobe RGB Which is popular with
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photographers and designers but there are custom profiles available for
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specific display models to help them reproduce colors more accurately if you
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you want to see if there's one for your monitor there are websites staffed by
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professionals that have created color profiles for many different displays
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which we've also linked in the video description along with a page on how to
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install a color profile on Windows but
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it should be noted that even that might
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not be enough to get your monitor looking its best slight manufacturing
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differences in display panels can result in even two units of the same model
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right next to each other connected to the same computer displaying colors
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differently so if you want to be super serial about your display calibration
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you'll want to try method number four buying a hardware calibrator that you
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place on your screen then run accompanying software the calibrator
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will then be able to tell you exactly how much your color balance luminance
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and other factors need to be adjusted to get your display as accurate as possible
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possible not only that but most calibrators will save a special custom
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color profile for your monitor as well
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the downside is Hardware calibrators can be a little pricey they typically start
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at $100 but electronic shops sometimes
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offer them for rental if you aren't a professional who constantly needs to
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recalibrate displays so while it would be nice if all of our monitors looked
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perfect out of the box the reality is a little leg work can go a long way
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especially if everyone on your screen looks like a talking spray tan right now
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watching guys like dislike leave a comment with suggestions for future
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videos check out our other video here and don't forget to subscribe