Color perception is a relative and subjective thing, if you use a computer in a room where the walls are painted in a redish tone and have your monitor matematically accurately calibrated using a monitor-emitted-light-measuring-device then the matematically defined grays on your monitor will not look gray to you, would this be a good thing? Then you would choose a different "color temperature" to suite your "mood" but what is the accuracy of that? There may be one absolute gray and absolute black and absolute white but they change a lot with the environment and the age of your eyes.
Getting the absolute white white is the only thing where a hardware calibrator can do a more matematically accurate calibration than a software one but even for that I prefer to visually set the neutral gray levels so that I see them as grey and this depends on the environment. The reason hardware color monitors are not perfect is the same reason why your camera's automatic white balance is not perfect either. For a better white balance on your camera you pick up a piece of paper and tell the camera "this is white". For a better white balance on your monitor you pick up a piece of what for you is gray and tell the calibration software "this is gray" - doing it this when you see a picture with some gray on your monitor it will look gray to you. http://www.bergdesign.com/supercal/ Rather than discussing it, have a go and post your comments. (I just saw this is Mac only but there are PC alternatives) On Fri, 2005-06-17 at 15:52, Rob Studdert wrote: > On 17 Jun 2005 at 10:01, Joaquim Carvalho wrote: > > > SuperCal and it is free. > > Software calibrators are as good as or better than any calibration tool, > > the problem is not everybody can use them, you have to understand how > > they work: > > > > Software calibrators use you as the light sensor, you have to adjust the > > brightness of several color areas to match the brightness of another > > area that has some pixels ON and some other OFF, you must put your eyes > > out of focus so the light/darkness from adjacent pixels blends, > > concentrate and do it acuratelly and for several times with the three > > RGB colors at several brightness levels. This way the software gets to > > know the precise brightness curve for each light component, as seen by > > you, and generates a perfect color profile. > > WOW, the money I could have saved. > > I suggest that you do just a tiny bit of research before you go misleading > the > good folks here. Visual calibration is useful to a point i.e. gamma > adjustment > but it cannot be used to set colour temperature or absolute black and white > levels to pre-set standards. > > > Rob Studdert > HURSTVILLE AUSTRALIA > Tel +61-2-9554-4110 > UTC(GMT) +10 Hours > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://members.ozemail.com.au/~distudio/publications/ > Pentax user since 1986, PDMLer since 1998 > >
