Originally posted by: xtknight
See my tool at the end of this thread:
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=31&threadid=1835601&enterthread=y
I just use Advanced Mode in NVIDIA gamma control panel and customly define a curve that best makes the colors evenly stepped and linear. I add/adjust points on the curve until I'm satisfied. Before I calibrated my monitor like this, I found myself constantly adjusting my settings swearing I'd never get them right. Now that I've used that gamma calibration method I haven't touched my monitor's controls at all. Midtones are saturated enough, black level is low enough, and white level is high enough.
I use CMY to calibrate it because RGB is harder for me to see personally (harder to determine if the darker ends are evenly stepped or not). C is just G+B, M is R+B, and Y is R+G, so you're calibrating the same thing while making it easier to see what/how you're adjusting. I have never gotten my monitor calibrated this well using RGB scales. My monitor's default gamma is dreadful in comparison. Using the ICM color profiles is a bad idea IMO. Custom calibration is better. Unless of course you create an ICM from your custom gamma. If you don't know what ICM profiles are, you're not using them.
Adobe Gamma adjustment has also paled in comparison to my CMY scales from my experience. It's also important to make sure the grayscale is linear, but once you get the CMY scales all linear, the grayscale will also become linear. The only downside is that it takes some time. You have to make sure there's no red/green/blue tinge on the grayscale either. You have to individually adjust every curve of R, G, B in Advanced Mode gamma (or equivalent on ATI cards).
Once you have this calibrated though, ClearType will experience less color fringing on text, and antialiasing will work a lot better. Colors will automatically have more contrast against each other because your monitor has been calibrated to match its abilities. It doesn't make the red more red on your screen per se, it makes the green and blue less red, and you perceive the red as more red, if you get what I mean. This is the same idea as High Dynamic Range tone mapping (definitely not HDR bloom though).
So, overview:
1. Adjust brightness and contrast until black level is dark enough and white level is bright enough. Make sure it doesn't hurt your eyes, and that none of the grayscale becomes clipped because of brightness/contrast instability. (Make sure that no colors disappear into black or white or likewise into black or cyan, black or magenta, and black or yellow, respectively per each scale).
2. Proceed to calibrate gamma with CMY+grayscale program.
3. Readjust ClearType gamma to your liking. There's another program that can calibrate ClearType to 100x the precision of Microsoft's tuner.
4. Write the settings down on paper so you don't have to do all this again. And save the color profile. For NVIDIA I export this registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\NVTweak\Devices\VEN_10DE&DEV_0092&SUBSYS_C5183842&REV_A1&INST00\Color
You will have the same registry key except for a different Device ID (VEN_, etc.). Export that and import it next time you reinstall drivers and you'll be all set. If you change cards, you'll have to change every instance of your current device ID in the .reg file (VEN_,_DEV_,etc) with your new card's ID. If it's a different GPU manufacturer (NVIDIA->ATI change for example you'll have to calibrate again unfortunately, importing it is not easy then). And don't forget, using Digital Vibrance or boosting Saturation is a cardinal sin for calibration. You might have to adjust color components on your monitor's OSD too. Here's what I use now on my VP930b: Red: 94%, Green: 100%, Blue: 89%. The lower blue helps cancel out the fluorescent backlight tinge. Your results may vary though. Generally you should be able to leave all color components at 100% and still get very desirable calibration by using video card gamma and not messing with monitor settings other than brightness/contrast.
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