How to Calibrate your Monitor - 4 Methods

every time i make a monitor review i always get swarmed with comments saying how do i calibrate my monitor well that's what this video is all about i mean duh you read the title didn't you even though hardware and box made a very good tutorial you guys kept asking me in particular make one i have no clue why i just could have watched his but anyways aside from creative professionals why would the average person want to calibrate their monitor well aside from the standard making your colors look accurate response there are a bunch of other reasons why you would want to calibrate your display such as correcting factory calibration issues like white balance gamma and color saturation looking at you samsung and lg it also helps when trying to color match between two different displays for a consistent experience now yes i pretty much paraphrased hardware and box but there's really no other way to put it in this video i'll be showing you four different methods however only one of these methods is the proper way the reason why i'm showing so many methods is because apart from the proper method one method may work best for one person and another method may work better for someone else plus money will be involved in the proper method and some people don't want to or can't spend the money needed for the hardware for a proper calibration that's not to say you shouldn't try though because beauty is in the eye of the beholder and if you're not dealing with color sensitive work then you don't need to worry about if it's 100 accurate as long as you're happy with the results now if you're as impatient as i am well you probably skipped this part already but for those that are still here there are chapters in the timeline so you can scrub to the video lastly before we begin no matter which method you choose make sure that your display is turned on for at least one hour before starting so it can warm up and hit its usual level of brightness normally people say you should leave it on for 30 minutes but i'll tell you why you should leave it on for an hour later on starting with method number one which is one of the free methods there's a built-in calibration tool within windows 10. to use it go to the search menu and search for calibrate display color and follow the instructions here you're able to set your gamma which affects brightness and color ratios brightness contrast and color balance the problem with this method however is that you have to eyeball it and as you may or may not already know it's impossible to calibrate your display by eye but again as long as you're happy with the results then you're fine once you're done adjusting everything go ahead and test out the new colors however you want and see if you're happy with the results if not try again until you are this method is probably the least accurate way so if you're worried about getting better results we'll have to move to method number two in the description there's a link to legoms i think i'm saying that right which is a website that has a bunch of test images and patterns for you to adjust your monitor settings to get your display looking nice or at least better than it currently is each test has a description on what to do so you won't be left wondering what the hell you're looking at just note not all tests will apply to most of you because there are certain tests like clock and phase which only apply if you're using a vga cable not dvi hdmi displayport and so on now again the issue with using a set like this is that you're still eyeballing it so results won't be perfect but at least it should be better than method number one next is method number three this one is pretty simple downloading an icc color profile from anywhere on the internet and installing it this one's pretty hit or miss though because with every display even if it's the same monitor or tv produces different factory calibrations because of manufacturing tolerances however i still think it's worth a shot because in all my monitor reviews i always post the icc color profile in the video description and some people tell me that it made their monitor colors more accurate how do they know it's more accurate or just looks better to their eyes i don't know maybe they have a colorimeter and just wanted to compare my profile to theirs and speaking of colorimeters let's move on to method number four which is the proper way to calibrate a display first let's talk about what you'll need because this is what turns a lot of people off from wanting to calibrate their display you're going to need some form of calibration hardware such as a colorimeter like this one to my left there is another type of tool called a spectrophotometer but i won't be talking about those in this video because they're more advanced and very expensive now there are a bunch of different types of color emitters to choose from but the most popular ones are the x-rite i1 display series and the data color spider series which ranges anywhere from 150 dollars to 300 there's no right or wrong one to choose from as they generally provide the same color accuracy with the exception of some being faster than others and including some other features the one i personally use in all my reviews and in this guide is the x-ray i1 display pro though the tata color spider series works just as fine and is generally cheaper if you want to buy one i'll leave a link in the description if you're using a budget monitor this probably won't make sense since the price of a colorimeter costs either as much or more than your monitor but i'm not telling you how to live your life so you do you booboo next is the monitor setup when you're calibrating your monitor you're creating an icc profile which basically tells your computer how to translate colors so it looks accurate to your eyes however it can't fix all inaccuracies so you don't want to let the color emitter do everything you'll want to adjust as much as you can from the display settings or on-screen display some displays will have more adjustments than others and professional monitors will have the most so don't feel bad if you can't adjust too much first go to your monitor settings or on-screen display and set it to its factory defaults this will set your monitor settings to a nice default position to make it easier to work with at least for modern displays as most manufacturers nowadays have good defaults that are optimized for the display keep in mind that not all default profiles will let you adjust your monitor's image settings some manufacturers lock off your brightness and rgb color adjustments in certain profiles even on the default ones so make sure that you're on a non-gamers profile that lets you adjust your monitor's brightness and rgb gain you also want to make sure that you have any post processing off such as low blue light this includes flux if you're using that black equalizers dynamic contrast elmb or extreme low motion blur and so on you'll also want to make sure that you're not using any eco or power savings mode as that can affect accuracy next set the monitor's brightness to what you use on a daily basis because increasing and decreasing the brightness after calibration will affect color accuracy this won't matter as much for the average person since the changes are minimal but for professionals even a marginal change is not a welcome change now remember in the beginning when i said make sure that your display is turned on for at least one hour before starting so it can warm up and hit its usual level of brightness well the reason why is because some displays actually overheat and will lower the brightness as the monitor gets hotter from staying on longer and if you start the calibration process at the 30 minute mark your monitor may not be overheating yet but may during the calibration process and lower the brightness affecting your results this is why you'll want your monitor on for at least one hour so it hits its usual level of brightness next make sure that the display is clean or at least the center as any dust fingerprints grime etc will have an impact on your results and will be placing the colorimeter in the center of the display next we'll need the software in the description i've posted a link to download display cal it's free extremely good and is quite advanced because of how advanced it is it can be quite overwhelming if you're not familiar with the settings and if you're not using a guide like this video or any other video there are other software available such as portrait calming which is what i use for my reviews however i wouldn't recommend that if you're a beginner since it's more advanced and ranges from 200 for their home edition all the way up to 800 for their single license ultimate edition so display cal will do perfectly fine once you download display cal open the installer don't worry about changing anything and just keep clicking next until the setup is complete once you open the software for the first time you'll see a window pop-up to download the agri-cms color engine click download once that's done check to see that the instruments section shows your colorimeter if not go to tools and click detect display devices and instruments if you're still having issues click on tools instruments and install a grille cms instrument driver then try to detect your instrument again now before we start going through some settings you may notice that my software looks a little bit different than yours if you just installed it basically it just has some extra options i'll be going over at least one of the advanced features so go to the options tab and click show advanced options okay on the left side you'll see which display display cal is going to calibrate if you have multiple monitors make sure that you select the correct monitor one way to tell what monitor is selected is if you see a negative in front of your resolution that's your left monitor if you see a resolution with no negative that'll be your right monitor next make sure that the mode is set to lcd refresh is for plasmas and crts so if you're using that type of display select refresh if you hover over the white and black level drift compensation you'll be able to see when they're necessary to put it in short you'll really only need to enable the white level drift compensation if you're using an oled display otherwise make sure that both of these boxes are unchecked for output level leave it on auto next is the correction this basically adds all the corrections to your device so it can properly calibrate a wide range of display technologies if you'd like you can try and figure out which of the corrections you'd use for your display type although the majority of you that are using your standard lcd monitor will either want to set it to lcd white led family or do what i do and just leave it on auto and let the software do its thing for calibration there's only going to be one thing that we might or might not change but before that make sure that the setting is set to srgb okay now normally it's recommended that you do this in a room with no lights on and with the window shades closed as bright ambient lights can bleed into the colorimeter impacting results however if you have a colorimeter that can check for ambient lighting and you normally edit with the lights on you'll want to set the ambient lighting adjustment so that it calibrates the color of the screen to the lighting conditions of your room what you'll want to do is turn on only whatever lights you normally keep on flip the light diffusion cap on the colorimeter so it covers the sensor push it in so there's no space in between the cap and the sensor face it up and place it somewhere around the monitor go to the display cal software check ambient light level adjustment and click on this little target which will measure your ambient lighting you'll see a long message pop up click ok and that's it you may also get a message that says do you also want to set the white point to the measured value click yes a side note if you're having issues during the calibration process then what may be happening is that your lighting is too bright and your monitor's brightness levels aren't bright enough to compete with your ambient lighting in your room in which case you'll want to turn your room lights down okay now let's calibrate click on the calibrate and profile button on the bottom and you'll see a box pop up this box is where you'll want to put the color emitter the box is movable and you can increase and decrease the size but whatever you do just make sure that the box is on the center of the display if you've moved it around just get it to the center as best as you can or click on the maximize button to full screen it then click on the one button which will center it next grab your colorimeter make sure that your ambient light diffuser is out of the way preferably towards the back hang the cable over the top of the monitor with the counterweight on the back of the display align the colorimeter with the center of the crosshair on the display cal box and if you can tilt your display back so there's as little chance as possible for any ambient light to bleed into the colorimeter's sensor next click start measurement and display cal will pop up another window and start showing color patches underneath the colorimeter as well as some grayed out buttons after a few seconds or minutes depending on the speed of your colorimeter those two buttons will become clickable click the start measurement button it'll start doing some basic color and light measurements and then you'll see a chart showing your rgb gains as well as your screen's brightness what you'll want to do is go to your display settings or on-screen display and start adjusting your brightness and rgb gain so they're all lined up with these arrows once they're lined up correctly you'll see a green check mark as well as some green text to let you know that you're all set once you see that click the stop measurement button if you can't seem to get all the rgb gains exactly where they need to be and don't see the green arrow and text it's not the end of the world don't worry just get as close as possible and you'll be fine okay once you've stopped the measurement click the continue on to calibration button and the monitor will start reading color patches and doing what it needs to do this will take anywhere from 10 minutes to a few hours depending on how fast the color emitter is if the shutter sound annoys you you can click the speaker button to mute it once the calibration is complete you'll see a screen like this telling you your gamut coverage and gamma volume just click install profile and you'll install the icc color profile you've just created and that's it you're calibrated from now on every time you start windows it'll automatically apply the icc color profile to whatever applications support it just keep in mind that the calibration may look weird at first to some of you usually it's not the calibration but because your eyes were so accustomed to how it looked before this calibration may look weird give it a few days and your eyes will become adjusted to a calibrated display and you'll start to notice issues on other monitors that aren't calibrated now if you're 100 sure that it could be better than what the calibration just did for you then you'll probably need a better display an icc color profile can only do so much and it can make the worst monitors look amazing it might be better than no calibration but at this point you'll probably want a better display if you notice no changes after calibration well then you'll either need to get your eyes checked or your monitor already had a great factory calibration that doesn't mean it'll always be like that though displays due to great over time so it is recommended that you recalibrate your display every month or so now i'm hoping i didn't miss anything important but i probably did knowing that i'm me but other than that we're done here if you guys enjoyed the video leave a like if not leave a dislike don't forget to follow me on my socials which are in a pinned comment and in the description and as always have a great day every day peace

Channel: Bijan Jamshidi

Views: 153,894

Keywords: monitor calibration, color calibration, how to, windows 10, display calibration, calibrate monitor for video editing, how to calibrate monitor for video editing, how to calibrate monitor, screen calibration, calibrate monitor, calibrate monitor for photography, monitor calibration tool, x-rite i1display pro, x rite i1 display pro, x-rite, xrite, how to calibrate your monitor for gaming

Id: ypBqJBh0YEI

Length: 14min 5sec (845 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 08 2020