If you use your monitor's default settings, there's no way to be sure it's displaying images accurately. Your photos may look great to you, but appear washed out or with poor colour balance to everyone else. The solution?
Calibrate your display. Use any software that came with your monitor first, otherwise launch the Windows Display Calibration Wizard, either from Control Panel or directly (it's dccw.exe).
Gamma:
The program is a straightforward wizard, albeit in the slightly odd Windows Vista/7 style (the 'Back' button is top-left on the screen, making it easy to miss). Read the instructions and keep clicking 'Next' until you reach an explanation of the first test: the gamma check.
You need to use the slider on the next page to minimise the visibility of the dots in the centre of each circle. Click 'Next' to give this a try.
Brightness:
The next test is for brightness. You'll need to access and tweak the brightness control on your monitor so that you can distinguish the man's black shirt from his black jacket, while keeping the 'X' in the background at a point where it's only just visible – it shouldn't stand out, as it does here in the right-hand 'too bright' picture. Click Next and adjust your brightness, clicking 'Back' to remind yourself of the sample images.
Compare and contrast:
Click 'Next' and you'll be presented with the contrast test. Turn your monitor's brightness setting up so that the two colours in the background are a bright white and deep black (neither should be tending towards grey). Go too far, however, and the creases in the man's shirt begin to disappear. You need to turn the contrast up as far as you can, but stop just before the point where you start to lose detail.
Colour balance:
The colour balance test follows. Click 'Next' after this explanatory screen and you'll see a range of grey bars – or at least that's the idea. If your colour balance is incorrect then you may see a slight colour tint to the greys, which will also influence colour images. Use your monitor's colour balance controls to correct this. Click 'Next', and if you're happy with what you've done, click 'Finish' to recalibrate your display.
Tune your text:
Windows 7 now displays the ClearType Text Tuner, which checks that your PC is displaying text as clearly as it can. A range of text samples is displayed and you need to click the ones that look best. Windows should now display images and text accurately and clearly. Bear in mind that this calibration is affected by variables such as room lighting, and you should calibrate the monitor again if there are any dramatic changes.
