Caved in an ordered LG L2000C... Color calibration?

[003]

I finally caved in and ordered an LG L2000C -- it was just to sexy. Here is where I got it BTW:
http://www.backuptapes.net/L2000C.html
Cheapest place on the net. Anyway, while I am waiting for it to get here, I have read things about color calibration, and that you should always do it when you get a new monitor. Now, I have always owned CRTs, this will be my first LCD. I have never heard of color collaboration, what is it exactly, and how would I go about doing it? What exactly does it do? This is all really confusing. I also ordered an ATI Theater 550Pro TV tuner, this should be fun! Any input would be helpful. Also, what is the best refresh rate to use with this monitor? After reading this:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17533619
It would seem 60Hz is best, but that was with a TN panel. The LG has an S-IPS panel, is 60Hz still best?

 

[xtknight]

It's color calibration actually. It just makes colors more accurate and contrasty. CRTs need geometric calibration and LCDs need color calibration the most.

60 Hz is all that monitor will run at, I think.

 

[003]

I thought I had it wrong... OK, so how do I do this color calibration? Is geometric calibration possible on an LCD? I just like to make it look as good as it possibly can.

 

[xtknight]

On an LCD, it's always perfect geometrically if you use DVI. VGA you can calibrate a little.

For colors, I use NVIDIA's control panel (Color Correction). I then load up scales of cyan, magenta, yellow so I can easily see what I'm calibrating and also so it's easy to see how even the scale is. Red, green, and blue scales are too dark for me to see what I'm doing. I use advanced mode in the NVIDIA thing and then calibrate each of the colors to my liking, until the gradients are perfect and even. I've gotten stellar results doing this with CMY (vs. RGB), almost to the point of one of those Spyder hardware calibration things I'd say. I made a program to do the CMY scales but I'll have to get that to you tomorrow. If I forget just PM me.

You can still do basic brightness/grayscale calibration. LG has a program called forteManager that works with your monitor, I think. That will help you with it. But it will only be linear adjustment probably. My gamma is just like a straight line, except curved in at places where I manually adjusted the color points in NVIDIA's advanced mode. That will turn out the best results.

 

[003]

Alright, thanks a lot. I will be using DVI. That program should be interesting.

 

[xtknight]

CMY calibration: http://xtknight.atothosting.com/tools/gradlin-cmy-v0.3.exe
CMY calibration (fullscreen): http://xtknight.atothosting.com/tools/gradlin-cmy-v0.3-fs.exe

Press ESC to end the fullscreen program. Use NVIDIA advanced mode to calibrate. All the colors should be evenly stepped, or purely even, depending on which row in the program you're looking at. And there should be no signs of other colors in the scales. If there is, then you need to calibrate some more.