Samsung 710T Color Adjustment

[pcfountain]

I just bought a Samsung 710T after extensive research, this is my first LCD monitor. I have it hooked up to my Geforce TI4600 with the DVI cable. After spending several hours adjusting, tweaking, running the calibration software that came with the monitor, I have to say I'm very disappointed in the color reproduction vs. my CRT monitors. (I had a NEC Accusync 19" which died recently, it was my favorite, and a Viewsonic 19" which is good, not great.)

I find that the biggest problem is with very light shades of color. As a web designer I use a lot of light blues, beiges, and grays. The blues look green, the beige looks white, and the grays look bluish-white. If I adjust the color settings to where the light colors start to look better, all other colors are too dark/saturated. Is this just what LCD monitors are like or am I doing something wrong? I have run the MagicTune calibration and messed around with various settings in the Natural Color software, but I can't seem to get a good balance between vivid darker colors and good light tones.

Help me out here super LCD gurus...

 

[BillR]

Yup, it’s a little different with an LCD. Using DVI some of your control is limited but you still have a lot more then you think,

Bring up a good gray scale pattern and make sure all the blocks are distinct from black to pure white. If you see the tint there go into your monitor manual adjustments to where you can control your individual colors. If you are tinted toward the red scale then back down the red driver, same with green or blue.

Once you get that take a good look at your gray scale again. Double-check your black levels. If what you see at the black end isn’t real black go back to those same controls and back each one down a notch, one notch at a time until you get true black.

That should get you pretty deep in the ballpark. From there use your natural color software to fine tune with the grid patterns for all three colors. Reboot and let natural color reload and check your results. Adjust as needed.

Hope that helps

Luck

 

[pcfountain]

Bring up a good gray scale pattern and make sure all the blocks are distinct from black to pure white. If you see the tint there go into your monitor manual adjustments to where you can control your individual colors. If you are tinted toward the red scale then back down the red driver, same with green or blue.

GREAT!! suggestions here. I backed my blue down a little bit and the difference is very noticeable. I am now seeing a more even color distribution across the board. It's not perfect, but much better and I feel like I can design on this monitor now without fooling my eyes into seeing the wrong colors. Maybe a little more tweaking will get it where I want it.

BillR, you should write a guide on how to do this.

 

[BillR]

GREAT!! suggestions here. I backed my blue down a little bit and the difference is very noticeable. I am now seeing a more even color distribution across the board. It's not perfect, but much better and I feel like I can design on this monitor now without fooling my eyes into seeing the wrong colors. Maybe a little more tweaking will get it where I want it.

BillR, you should write a guide on how to do this.

Thanks, I appreciate the thought.

Actually this is one topic that should become a sticky. There is a method to calibration and you don’t always need electronics to do it. I really think a lot of LCD problems we read about here as well as CRT problems could be solved with a bit of calibration.

As a rule once I do an initial calibration I wait a day or so and go back and touch it up. As you noticed it’s sometimes pretty easy to fool your eyes.

Luck