A reminder to those who calibrate & profile their monitors...
recalibrate on a regular basis :)
I'd been a bit lazy and had left it a year since I last adjusted
mine. Yesterday I decided it was time to recalibrate, and I found
that I couldn't set the black point of my primary screen to the
recommended level (0.30 cd/m^2). In fact, it could only barely get
the black above zero.
In the end, the resulting profile caused the display to have quite a
strong magenta cast in the shadows, enough to make any kind of
Photoshop work totally impossible. Because the monitor settings had
been adjusted, the old profiles were invalid so I wasn't in a
particularly good mood.
My second monitor seemed to be profiling much better so in the end I
swapped the two around on my desk. 19" CRTs aren't light and my back
has only just recovered from mowing the lawn last weekend (we have a
proper non-motorised mower that actually gives you exercise).
Because I was so used to the screen which had drifted out of
calibration, this one looks a little washed-out now. But Photoshop
is very happy. It can now differentiate shadow and highlight tones
incredibly well, according to a test file I just created.
The two screens are near-identical models, but the "good" one is a
couple of years older. I suspect it'd be an easy job to have the
"bad" one adjusted either internally or via a secret service menu,
but I'll put that off for now.
Cheers,
- Dave
- Monitor calibration David Mann
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