JeffKohn said:
You may not ever get complete accuracy especially when viewing web images in IE, but that doesn't mean you can't improve things a whole lot compared to an uncalibrated display. The calibration tools adjust the gamma ramps in the video card to get things as close as possible before creating the ICC profile.
Agreed. You can do even better than that. If your monitor has individual controls for the 3 colors channels, you can calibrate it so that there is very little correction performed by profiling (by use of the video card LUT which uses 8 bit integers, which means round off errors. So you want to avoid these).
I do that with the spyder2. I even add a little twist: after running the (slow) calibration/profiling procedure, I check the image before/after profiling (meaning not using/using the LUT profiling). If it appears that the profiling adjust the image darker or lighter, I adjust "brightness" up or down depending on the difference and repeat the whole procedure. I can get the images after/before profiling identical, meaning all - or nearly all - color/brightness corrections is performed by the analogous adjustements from the monitor, avoiding banding from the 8-bit LUT.
There are several tests for monitor calibration, and my technique passes them all with high colors - so to speak. For instance in photoshop a black image covering the screen, the image area selected, the "marching ants" hidden, the levels dialog box hidden on the side with the proper entry pre-selected so that pressing the up arrow ups the value by one bit (the image goes from RGB=000 to 111, then 111 to 222 if I press the key twice, etc.), I can see the difference between RGB = 000 and RGB = 111. La creme de la creme

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This being said, I totally with Iliah (do I have a choice :wink: ). There is no predicting how the image will look on somebody's else monitor: most likely not calibrated, most likely set to a different temperature than mine (even if so slightly), etc. not to mention ambient light and ... for some ... these flashy colors that they use for background, window panes, ... :lol:
Thierry