Windows 7, 8, 10 and Mac OS X all have built-in wizards that help you calibrate your monitor so that it’s not too bright or too dark. For me, my monitors were always super bright and I started using a third-party program called f.lux that adjusts the color of the monitor during the night.
If you’re using a computer monitor, it’s important to calibrate it to get the most accurate image. Calibrating your monitor can make the colors look better and reduce eye fatigue. In this article, I’ll show you how to do it on Windows and Mac. ..
Calibrate Display – Windows
To start the calibration wizard in Windows, click on Start and type in calibrate. You can also get there by going to Control Panel, clicking on Display and then clicking on Calibrate Color in the left hand menu. ..
The Display Color Calibration wizard will start. Click on Next to continue. The first thing it asks you to do is to open the menu for your display and reset the color settings to factory default. In my case, I just reset the whole monitor to factory settings because I wasn’t sure what settings I had already changed. If you’re using a laptop, just go through each step.
To adjust the gamma setting, click Next. You’ll need to match the screen to the center image, which is considered the best setting. It also shows you the too high and too low settings so you can clearly see when you’ve adjusted too much. ..
When you try to adjust the slider in the Windows program, the monitor may reset to its own default settings. Most of these settings you have to change via the monitor on-screen menu itself and not using the program (unless you’re calibrating a laptop display). You just use the program to make sure it looks like the image that is considered good. ..
This picture shows the on-screen settings for my Acer monitor. The gamma value can be changed using this on-screen menu.
After gamma, you will need to adjust the brightness in order to distinguish the shirt from the suit and have the X barely visible in the background. You can skip brightness and contrast for laptop screens.
Next up is contrast. Again, adjust the setting on your monitor. For contrast, you want to set it to the highest value possible before the buttons on the shirt start to disappear. To get the best contrast possible, you should adjust your monitor’s settings to the highest value. ..
The next screen will help you adjust the color balance. You want to make sure all the bars are grey and that there are no other colors present. In newer monitors, this is taken care of and if you try to adjust the sliders, the monitor will just reset to the default values, so you can just skip this part if that is happening to you.
After completing this calibration, you will be able to click on Preview and Current to see the difference between the original image and the new image.
ClearType Tuner box: I would also leave the ClearType Tuner box checked before clicking Finish. This is another short wizard that will make sure the text is appearing crisply and clearly on your monitor. You basically have to go through five screens and choose which text looks best to you.
calibrating a Windows monitor
Calibrate Display – Mac
Calibrating a Mac can be a bit different depending on the version of OS X you are using. For example, OS X 10.11.2 EL Capitan has a new calibration wizard that is different from earlier versions of the operating system. This article will show you how to calibrate your Mac using the new wizard. ..
In System Preferences, you can control how your computer behaves. This includes things like how it starts up, how it looks and sounds, and how it works.
Displays in the list show you all the displays that are currently active on your computer.
Now click on the Calibrate button at the right to calibrate your monitor.
This will bring up the Display Calibrator Assistant introduction screen that will guide you through each of the steps.
The Mac wizard is a tool that can remove any of the steps that your monitor cannot support. For example, I ran this on my MacBook Pro laptop and the only adjustment I could make was to the target white point. It skipped brightness/contrast, native luminance response curve, and gamma curve. If an external display is connected to your Mac, you’ll get the other options.
To adjust the white point of your display, you can either use the native white point or uncheck the box first. I found that using the native white point gave a better color tint to my display than using an adjustment setting that was set when the OS was installed.
I couldn’t get the other options like luminance, gamma, etc, but you can probably figure it out as you go through the wizard. The Admin step just asks if you want to make this color profile available for other users or not and Name step lets you name your new profile.
The summary screen will give you some technical details about the current color settings for your display. OS X also has another tool called the ColorSync Utility that lets you repair color profiles, view all profiles, and calculate the RGB values for any pixel on your screen. Just click on Spotlight and type in ColorSync to load it.
Most people don’t need to calibrate their monitors, but if you’re picky about how everything looks, it’s worth trying. If you have any questions, post a comment. ..
