Monitor Calibration?

Question

Can an LCD computer monitor be calibrated? I had a Spyder Pro2 and went through the whole process three times. Each time, everything turned a not so lovely shade of blue. I gave up and sold the Spyder on eBay. I have since read that you can't really calibrate an LCD monitor.

What's your experience with this?

Thanks.

Thanks, David. I have adopted a standard procedure to adjust things before I print. After I get the image the way I want it on my monitor, I save and then I reduce the red midtone levels to 0.7 and bump up the brightness "a bit" to a point that my eyes recognize. This makes the print come out pretty close to what I see on my monitor. If I LIKE that, I save it as a print version. I suppose another route would be to calibrate my printer output to match the monitor, but that would not do me any good when I use Mpix, etc.

Yeah, my dream setup would include a second CRT monitor for photo work, but I think that would be a hard sell to my wife, if you know what I mean. I keep reminding myself that this is NOT how I make my living! ;-)

Answer 1

You can calibrate a LCD monitor, but most aren't worth the time or effort which is why I still use a Sony CRT monitor to do all my color corrections. Just consider Lacie who have for years produced exceptional monitors for graphics/photography work. By what standard do they judge their new LCD monitors? Here is an excerpt from their own website "A perfect match for graphics professionals, this 20” monitor is equipped with a uniformity-enhanced A-TW-IPS LCD panel, which delivers a CRT-grade 72% NTSC gamut, high brightness, and a strong contrast ratio of 700:1. "
If you have the space, and if your back isn't so bad that you can't lift 50 pounds or more, then I would suggest a good old Lacie CRT monitor. Like my view camera, a CRT monitor is bulky and ugly but it will get the job done better than any modern sleeker solution and for half the price(sometimes more). By the way I should mention that Lacie LCD monitors do in fact come with their own color management software.