[TEC] CRT Calibration

[onelifecrisis]

I found this online and thought I'd share it for the benefit of anyone suffering from ICSSS (I Can't See Sh!t Syndrome).


Step 1: Set Room Lighting

Before doing anything else make sure the room lighting is the way you normally have it. Lights on/off? Curtains open/drawn? If you use your computer at different times of day and night then wait for the brightest conditions (i.e. the daytime) to do the calibration.


Step 2: Set Monitor Colour Temperature

Generally this should be set to 6500k, but if you never use your computer during daylight hours then you can set it to 9300k.


Step 3: Set Monitor Contrast to 100%

At this point I need to stress that - as suggested by the title of the thread - this is a calibration guide for CRT monitors! Setting the contrast to 100% on an LCD is not necessarily a good idea.


Step 4: Set Monitor Brightness



Set your brightness to zero, then increase it until you you can see 20 distinct boxes in the image above. Pay particular attention to the dark boxes: if the two boxes at the left of the image look the same then you need to keep increasing your brightness until you can clearly see a difference between them. You are looking for the lowest possible brightness setting that gives you a clear difference between all the boxes (not a difference you have to strain to see).


Step 5: Check Gamma



Again, if you're using an LCD screen then this probably won't work, but for CRT users...
Stand about 7 feet away from your screen and look at the image above. From this distance the bars on the left (labelled GAMMA) should look dark at the bottom and bright at the top, and should fade/merge into the background somewhere in the middle. The number corresponding to the point at which they fade is your monitor's current gamma setting (note that this will change if you change the monitor brightness). For Windows and PC Games the recommended setting is 2.2. If yours is at 2.2, or close to it, great - you're all set! If not, you may want to use your graphics card control panel to adjust the gamma in the drivers. Take note, however, that some games (not SH3, but some other games) may override the gamma settings in your graphics driver.

For those who are interested, the BLACK LEVEL bars labelled A and B are for checking your black level (uhuh) and what you should see is the one labelled A is close to black at 2.2 and fades completely at about 1.9, whereas the one labelled B should be clearly visible at 2.2.