On Sun, 19 Aug 2007 03:00:51 GMT, "Lief" <> wrote:
>
>"Beladi Nasralla" <> wrote in message
>news: oups.com...
>RTFM!
>
Unfortunately RTFM doesn't always work.
I have always prided myself on calibrating most any monitor that has come my
way. I don't think twice about opening up the back of a CRT and tweaking the
individual guns and HV section's gain to make sure I get a proper ramp on all
channels for smooth grays across the board. I mostly do photo editing so I've
avoided LCD monitors all these years. However I recently bought a lower quality
LCD Acer AL1706 monitor. An emergency purchase because my last good monitor just
died and I didn't have a replacement hi-power tranny it needed. Between the
nVidia control panel, finding an ICM profile for it (or making one), and its own
built in adjustments this was a real head-scratchier.
After about 3 days of approaching the adjustments from several directions I
finally settled on some that I can happily live with. By keeping a nice 2.20
gamma test graphic open while making the adjustments.
http://www.aim-dtp.net/aim/download/..._gamma/220.png (type in the gamma of
your choice, "xxx.png", from 100 to 300 in increments of 10)
Finding the proper settings ended up being a combination of installing a custom
profile that I found somewhere on Acer's site, nVidia's own desktop controls,
having to tweak nVidia's blue contrast and gamma separately, along with some
minor custom white-balance settings on the monitor itself. It wasn't easy but it
was doable. None of this complex combo of tweaks being contained in any one User
Manual. Quite frankly, for the low cost ($175) and my time spent I'm getting a
nicer display on this bargain-level LCD than I have on most CRTs that I've used.
Some of the purest grays I've ever seen and a nice even ramp from pure black to
white. Quite impressive. I won't think twice about using this for photo editing
needs. I think what I found most amazing is that when using some advanced
monitor testing software I didn't find even one hot, warm, or dead R, G, or B
pixel across the whole LCD display. How do dey do dat? Applause to their LCD
component mfg. QC team.
It's a shame that the makers of these devices don't make things easier for the
end user. They'd be able to sell so much more of them if everyone could get top
performance from them right out of the box. Out of the box on its default
settings this monitor was a disaster. The colors so over-saturated and off, so
bright and high contrast, that I thought I was having some kind of flashback.
Most of that due to nVidia's fault.