ZBrushCentral

Monitor Calibration

ZBrush Artworks
#1

I just updated my video driver, and it erased my monitor calibrations. I noticed this when I looked at ZBC tonight and saw dark pictures with lots of lost detail. I don’t know how many of you have taken the time to calibrate your monitor settings for color, contrast, brightness, etc. but it is well worth the few minutes it takes.

:qu: My question is does anyone know how to do it? I did it several months ago, but I can’t remember if I went to a website that stepped me through the process, or if it was a program I ran on my PC. If anyone knows of a website for this, please post it. Thanks,

#2

I found a site that has lots of stuff about color, including a color calibration routine for your monitor:

Easy RGB

I still need something for Brightness/Contrast.

#3

Some video cards already have their own settings for monitor calibration - although it’s pretty much personal preference, for your eyes. :cool:

Also, my monitor came with a cd for setting up a color profile… It’s supposed to load true color on startup, but I think all that info is stacked up in my video card.
Don’t wanna mess with it anymore. :stuck_out_tongue:

(ATI Radeon 7000 64megs)

#4

Here is a good site for stepping you through the calibration of your monitor’s gamma, brightness, and contrast:

Monitor Calibration

Also, if you have Adobe PhotoShop installed, there is a calibration tool installed in the Windows Control Panel called Adobe Gamma. (This is what I used before, but I had forgotten about it.)

Either of the two choices above should yield good results.

#5

I use the Adobe Gamma applet in the control panel.

#6

I just learned that Mac monitors have a default gamma of 1.8 and PC monitors used to have a default of 2.5. A standard of 2.2 has been put forward, and the latest PC monitors are now using this standard.

This is important in the creation of art, of course, but also for internet shopping. Some Mac users think they are ordering a red sweater, for example, and get bourgandy instead.

I’ve noticed that some ZBrushers’ art tends to be very dark, and this is probably due to their monitor having a gamma setting much higher than mine. Of course, mine is at 2.2, so the problem is even worse for users who happen to have monitors set at 2.5.

Maybe this will encourage more of you to check your monitor calibration. :slight_smile:

#7

os X comes with really good software for calibrating the rgb… letting you see how it’d look on a standard pc monitor display and suchlike… it runs you through a set of calibration tasks with ending up looking like a mac monitor in mind… running a mac at PC-like levels though just looks wrong. My pictures are often v dark, the colours do sometimes come out much richer on PC displays from experience… Saying that I’ve got it pretty damn closely calibrated to Pan-tone standards, so they /print/ pretty much how they are on the screen…

I dont think anyone’s going to come up with a solution to this problem… If it is a problem… Photoshop ha it’s web-graphics standard mode… which is all very well but different looking on my mac setup to my windows one, hehe…

What’s even weirder is Virtual PC running in a window on my mac does look like its about normal pc RGB and stuff… Which i dont really understand.

Oh well. :slight_smile: maybe it’s just on my old PC the fact that it’s an awful monitor that’s making it look different.

#8

Here is a ok pic I made to check if the greyscale is correct in the monitor, feel free to download it it is usefull for us to have the same settings on our monitors when study and given comments on others art.
Take care and have a nice day, Alf I.
:roll_eyes: :+1:
Further bescription on my web:
Calibration of your monitor
Calibration-pic I attached are done using Windows and not mac. The log vertical colored down to right in the pic have clean 100% Magenta + Red + Blue + Yellow

#9

Mixel,

From the info I have read, old PC monitors default to a higher gamma than the latest PC monitors. A gamma of 2.5 was the old standard. A standard of 2.2 has been proposed for use with the internet. So the latest PC monitors have begun to use a standard of 2.2. Mac monitors have always been 1.8, apparently.

According to what I have read, a gamma of 2.2 is pretty accurate for ink-jet printing, which would be what most of us would be concerned about. I’m not sure about whether 2.2 works well with Pantone colors.

Anyone can go to this site to use an interactive screen to measure the gamma of their monitor.

What gamma setting do you use on your Mac for accurate Pantone colors? Use the site I mention above to determine what your gamma is if your calibration software doesn’t give you a number. I believe that there are two issues: the gamma/brightness/contrast of the monitor, and the rgb calibration. They are related, of course.

#10

By the way, a Mac at a gamma of 1.8 is ‘lighter’ than a PC at a gamma of 2.4. This means that a bourgandy-colored object on a PC will appear as a red object on a Mac monitor. A bourgandy object on a Mac monitor may appear almost black on a PC monitor with a gamma of 2.4. Therefore, pictures created on a Mac with a default gamma of 1.8 will appear very dark on an older PC monitor with a default gamma of 2.4.

Kokoro’s German Knight is a good example of this. On my newer PC monitor, set at a gamma of about 2.2, the back wall is 95-99% black. I could not tell that it was a ‘stone’ wall. The fur vest was also almost entirely black. On my older monitor, which I cannot adjust but have measured at about 2.0 gamma, I can make out individual stones and mortar in the wall, and much more detail in the fur vest, but the picture is still very dark over all.

#11

Funny that this should come up now. Just around Christmas I found out that my monitor was way off. Everything was too dark, I wondered why some posts seemed to have a whole lot of black and very little detail. Fortunately a friend told me about the calibration page mentioned earlier here. As the photoshop tool didn’t work well with my monitor for some reason. I enjoy darker posts much more now!

:smiley:

#12

Sorry to bump up this topic so much… looking at it closely, when i run web-colour mode on photoshop it does drop the brightness to a level approximately the same as my pc’s display, so that’s what I use to make sure i havent made things /far/ too light. I’m using a standard reasonably new VGA monitor on my mac, which isnt exactly normal either…

I dont actually have the pantone booklet thing to compare it to anymore, but as i only do web-graphics that’s no biggie i guess… It wasnt mine in the first place, hehe

LCD screens have really weird colour too, my fiancŽe’s ibook is really… well… bright! deep colours. shrugs Problem’s always going to be, regardless of standards, people will change their calibration settings for their own tastes to make reading things easier and visiting the sites they like… so can never really ensure anyone’s going to see anything right short of giving them a hard-copy… :confused:

here’s my current monitor profile stats (if it makes any sense to anyone!) it just looked… right… ?

Native Gamma: 2.48
Target Gamma: 2.07

Chromaticities___x______y
Red Phosphor__0.64___0.33
Green Phos.____0.30___0.60
Blue Phos._____0.15___0.06

Native White:___0.31___0.33
Target White Point: Native…

I guess this still means i’ve got a much brighter display than everyone else? the calibrator runs you through a very similar RGB routine as that page, but at the Gamma stage it lets you pic any level you want, with a slider ranging from linear (1.0) through Mac Standard (1.8) through Pc standard (2.2) and going up as far as 2.6! Gaarr. :slight_smile: I’d like everything to look right for everyone I guess, i suppose it’s no big deal. :smiley: