Colour Management became the buzz word at the turn of the century. Computer operating systems and hardware began to support the concept of profiling using ICC profiles and CMM (colour matching method) ICM (image colour matching) engine. A number companies such as Kodak, Colosync and Adobe who are members of the ICC profile consortium developed these engines. Initially they were used only in applications such as Photoshop. Apple and Microsoft then took these engines on board and used them within their operating system.
So if your still running Windows 95 or Ancient Hardware tough luck colour management not supported. I can't remember how much Windows 98 supported it. So you need Window 2K or XP onwards and If I recall correctly Mac OS 8 onwards. But beware I did suffer a Windows Service pack that disabled colour management in my graphic card driver. No rhyme or reason and plenty of people complaining about it, I had to get a different graphic card to solve the problem.
A lot of photographers are using Adobe Photoshop. When Version 5 and above is installed it installs the Adobe Gamma into the Windows Control Panel. This utility allows you to calibrate your monitor. The more you study this utility you soon realise how crude and clunky it is. But Hey it is better than nothing. Some Graphic cards provide their own adjustment utility but next to no help of how to correctly calibrate.
If you have bought a High end monitor you should have been supplied with ICC profiles for it or be able to download from the manufactures website. The profile should have some setting your are unlikely to know or have to resort to the product manual for.
Adobe have supplied some detailed instructions on how to use the Adobe Gamma utility.
http://www.adobe.com/education/pdf/c.../ps7_cib17.pdf
I don't want to go into such detail but just to summarise and highlight a few points
After opening the utility the first stage is to select a monitor ICC profile. If you were supplied with one for the monitor then use that one.
Otherwise the two most common profiles are sRGB IEC61966-2.1 and Adobe RGB1988
This link goes into the merits of each version
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tut...obeRGB1998.htm
Basically Adobe RGB has a wider colour range and is best suited where images are destined for a CMYK printing press.
The sRGB has a narrower range of colour and has become the de facto standard for web and photo lab work.
So if you are clueless pick the sRGB profile.
Next set the contrast control on the monitor to maximum. The contrast setting has little effect on the gamma adjustment.
The next step is to adjust the monitor Brightness (black level) control. The instructions on this are not very precise and crude.
The brightness setting has a much bigger interaction with the gamma adjustment than the contrast setting.
Basically the instruction is to make the square dark but not too dark !!! whatever that means.
What they are in fact doing is presenting you with a black square (0r,0g,0b) and a dark square (38r,38g,38b) and asking you to adjust the brightness to make sure that one is seen lighter than the other. Purely subjective as to how much brighter you make it.
If you have used a profile supplied with the monitor the phosphors used should be know within the profile. The monitor manual may contain the information. Otherwise select one of the two most common ones used are EBU/ITU and Trinitron as the average person will not have an instrument to measure the phosphor colours. An easy way to tell if a Trinitron CRT is used is to carefully look 25% down from the top of screen and 25% up from the bottom. You will see a very thin faint black line. This is a very thin wire that is used to support the shadow mask behind the glass. The first attachment illustrates the phosphor colour positions in the sRGB colour space within the ICC profile.
The next step is too select the desired Gamma value. Normally 2.20.
What happens here is that the mid grey center square is encoded with a Gamma value. A mid grey (128r,128g,128b) becomes (186r,186,g,186b). The outer square is made up of lines which are black and white. The average of which will be mid grey (128r,128g,128b). These lines are not affected by the adjustment when you adjust the slider to match the center square to outer box.
Again this adjustment is crude and subjective, only the one point (50%) on the curve is matched. Adjusting individual colour gamma by eye could be problematic and lead to colour shifting through the brightness range.
Lastly the white point adjustment is somewhat subjective and again you are unlikely to have an instrument to measure it. The last attachment illustrates the white point in the sRGB colour space within the ICC profile.