How many of you use calibration software or hardware?

[Stevacus]

Going around the Internet and seeing screenshots or photos games on display, I can tell by the over colorization that people do not have calibrated displays, so here's a heads up even though pvms and bvms are nice which they are and they are pretty on point, they are not perfect. I found a really great piece of software called atrise lutcurve years back which let's you even up or lower the black and white levels, fine tune color points, and gamma, hence the name LutCurve. I hear color Munkies are nice also but I never used one. Let's put it this way a buddy of mine who is a digital artist saw what I was doing so we experimented, we'll his photos were not printing like on screen, so I calibrated his laptop and than all came out looking like on screen. So for me calibration is the only option.

Screenshot from uncalibrated galaxy note 5 capture, you can see its way to colorful and saturated like someone threw up orange on it.



Calibrated display, it's not hard to realize this is the real deal as all the colors are separated properly and yellow is yellow not orange, even though taking photo adds a blue hue

[nissling]

I'm using CalMAN RGB and Colorchecker along with a Spectracal C3 for calibration of LCDs and plasmas. Have never done a pure calibration of a CRT because I don't have the right equipment at the moment.

[Stevacus]

I'm using CalMAN RGB and Colorchecker along with a Spectracal C3 for calibration of LCDs and plasmas. Have never done a pure calibration of a CRT because I don't have the right equipment at the moment.

Sick someone else that figured it out. That is some dope hardware, I heard atrise is for in the cervix type calibration and trust me each go on a display is 8 hours, but a Lil ease of use wouldn't be so bad and your equipment is actually in my price range. Want to do some comparison screen shots? Lcd vs HD crt?

[nissling]

Can get you some LCD vs HD CRT shots but beware, the only HD CRT I've got is the Sony HDM-3830 and it's as far away from a consumer product as it gets.

I'm actually using a 1080p 32" LCD TV by Philips for my computer and even though it's a dinosaur it looks great if you run it in PC mode and with help of CalMAN there's nothing to complain about. Plus I got it for free.

[Stevacus]

Dope I have a Toshiba widescreen with hdmi input which can do at least 448 height, more progressive than 720, and interlace at 1080p. I found a good trick is to not use 4:3 resolutions but 16:9 which is one third more of 4:3 so say your playing genesis use 320 width plus one third which is 106.7 round it to 107 (always use the higher number even if it was 106.1) so 320 plus 107 is 427 so I'll use 854x448 looks so much better.emulators squash the pixels if you dont.

Just use lcd pics though I'd like to see how you crt looks

Here's adventures of batman robin genesis

[nissling]

I did calibrate a Samsung LE52B755 yesterday. My parents bought it back in 2009 and they've used it plenty, yet white balance has never been touched. With the help of CalMAN and my C3 I managed to get rid of the extremely red highlights that made skin tones look completely pale all the time. Interestingly this is when using Warm 2, and there's a Warm 3 as well. At circa 10IRE the gamma goes down due to the fact that it's a VA panel. Results however are clearly superior to initial settings. The gray scale is completely natural and gamma is certainly more stable. A very tolerable display imo.

[Einzelherz]

Get all of those reference points off of that CIE diagram, I can't read your greyscales

I have recently calibrated several of my screens as well. My plasma was interesting. It's the only one of the group that actually sees non-games. After doing a 0-100 IRE scale properly, TV and movie scenes looked too bright. I think this has something to do with 7.5 being black in NTSC, but I'm not positive. I used my set's "black extension" setting to tweak the black levels and it's pretty good now.



The RGB curve looked better than this before the black extension, but I don't mind it getting a little bumpier as a tradeoff. And in the CIE, I couldn't get the green to come in any more so I'll live with a slightly expanded palette.

[tacoguy64]

I used calibration for my Sony FW900 using both hardware and software and the thing looks fantastic. I want to calibrate all the other monitors I have but the thing is I haven't been able to find anything on how to calibrate them.

[Ikaruga11]

I used calibration for my Sony FW900 using both hardware and software and the thing looks fantastic. I want to calibrate all the other monitors I have but the thing is I haven't been able to find anything on how to calibrate them.

You should show some game pics of your FW900.

[tacoguy64]

I posted some a while back. I think it's buried somewhere in the Fudoh Ode to Crt thread.

But I want to pair the monitor with the OSSC to see how that would look. Probably really nice since that monitor has brilliant contrast.

Found it!

http://imgur.com/a/ao6wi

[Brad251]

I use the i1Display Pro and the ColorHCFR software when calibrating a display for non-PC sources. When I connect my PC to my LCD I use my i1Display Pro and DisplayCAL. ColorHCFR and DisplayCAL are free software. I calibrated my Sony FV310 CRT with my i1Display Pro and ColorHCFR. I didn't make any physical adjustments to the TV, I just calibrated the grayscale and I used Artemio's 240p suite on the Wii to calibrate contrast, brightness, color and sharpness. You can actually select the type of display you are calibrating in ColorHCFR and you can choose "CRT". I don't think the actual option is called "CRT". It might be "refresh display" or something like that but this allows you to correctly use your colorimeter with a CRT. Using my i1Display Pro and ColorHCFR worked great for calibrating my grayscale and I immediately noticed that the colors looked more balanced after calibration. There is a little bit of a learning curve to ColorHCFR but it really isn't that hard to use if you take the time to learn it. There are some great tutorials on the web.

I use DisplayCAL instead of ColorHCFR to calibrate my LCD when connecting my PC to it because DisplayCAL does everything automatically and it supports 3DLUT calibration which does a much better job of calibrating a display vs creating an ICC profile. The calibration settings are stored in a 3DLUT file which you can load with DisplayCAL or if you just want to calibrate for movie watching then you can open the 3DLUT file with a media player that supports it like MadVR. The calibrations have always turned out very well and this allows you to select different calibration files for different environments (i.e. day/night, etc.).

I want to note that the color temperature 6500K is used to calibrate your display for video and this is not a good color temp for video games. It will make them look to orange/yellow. To calibrate for video games, you will want to use a cooler color temperature such as 9300K. I used this color temp when calibrating my FV310 and it worked great. Video games are not like movies in that they don't use a standard color temperature.

[Brad251]

I'm using CalMAN RGB and Colorchecker along with a Spectracal C3 for calibration of LCDs and plasmas. Have never done a pure calibration of a CRT because I don't have the right equipment at the moment.

You could try using your Spectracal C3 with the ColorHCFR calibration software and see if that works to calibrate your CRT. I'm not sure if ColorHCFR support the Spectracal C3 but you could try it out.

[Einzelherz]

I will disagree on 6500k not being the right color for video games using the argument I hate so much - developer intent.

These games *were* designed to run on standard tv sets (among other displays) and those sets were built attempting to meet 6500k.

[22point8]

I use HCFR and i1 display 3 profiled to i1 pro spectrophotometer.
On my plasma (F4900) I have the white balance at every 1% interval avg 0.49 dE200 max 1.15 dE2000 and 500 random colour points under 2.5 dE2000.

https://1drv.ms/b/s!ArJdQhcOk1dnqGmcivT3Whp2-7va link to report

Sony KDL-32EX403

https://1drv.ms/b/s!ArJdQhcOk1dnqGqgDQmDnBQGzM1C

[Ikaruga11]

I want to note that the color temperature 6500K is used to calibrate your display for video and this is not a good color temp for video games. It will make them look to orange/yellow. To calibrate for video games, you will want to use a cooler color temperature such as 9300K. I used this color temp when calibrating my FV310 and it worked great. Video games are not like movies in that they don't use a standard color temperature.

Do you think maybe this is why your FV310 had issues with reds? You were using 9300K instead of 6500K?

[Brad251]

I want to note that the color temperature 6500K is used to calibrate your display for video and this is not a good color temp for video games. It will make them look to orange/yellow. To calibrate for video games, you will want to use a cooler color temperature such as 9300K. I used this color temp when calibrating my FV310 and it worked great. Video games are not like movies in that they don't use a standard color temperature.

Do you think maybe this is why your FV310 had issues with reds? You were using 9300K instead of 6500K?

No. I did several different calibrations, experimenting with 6500K, 7300K, 8500K and 9300K and neither color temperature affected reds that much. Reds looked a little better with 6500K but it wasn't dramatic and the overall picture using 6500K looked to yellow/orange. I found 9300K to be what I am used to retro games looking like. PC monitors are typically set to 9300K.

[Brad251]

I will disagree on 6500k not being the right color for video games using the argument I hate so much - developer intent.

These games *were* designed to run on standard tv sets (among other displays) and those sets were built attempting to meet 6500k.

I'm not sure about this. You might be correct. When developers were working on retro games, they would have been using PC monitors. Typically, PC monitors are set to a color temp of around 9300K and even then, there would have been slight variations in color temps between monitors and I don't think it is likely that developers back then had their monitors calibrated to a specific color temp. Generally, today, game developers do not make their games based on a specific color temp and it probably was the same way back then. The aspects of retro games that were designed for CRT TVs were things like dithering and I would imagine they took into account how scanlines affected the graphics. However, I'm skeptical that they were aiming for a specific color temperature.

I actually measured the grayscale of my FV310 before calibration using the standard color temperature setting and it was about 10,500K.

[nissling]

You could try using your Spectracal C3 with the ColorHCFR calibration software and see if that works to calibrate your CRT. I'm not sure if ColorHCFR support the Spectracal C3 but you could try it out.

I never use my CRTs anymore, only OLED and LCD for me. Plus the C3 doesn't support CRTs and I'm only using CalMAN for calibration.

D65 is the way to go. I cannot stand D93.

After doing a 0-100 IRE scale properly, TV and movie scenes looked too bright. I think this has something to do with 7.5 being black in NTSC, but I'm not positive. I used my set's "black extension" setting to tweak the black levels and it's pretty good now.

You're supposed to set the black levels, contrast and backlight before playing around with the white balance. If you calibrate towards PC levels (0...255) you will get too high black levels when a video source (16...235) is used.

Your grayscale looks to be completely off at 10IRE and 20IRE, giving you some very yellowish or reddish shadow details. I can also see quite some issues in terms of your gamma curve which should be corrected.

I actually measured the grayscale of my FV310 before calibration using the standard color temperature setting and it was about 10,500K.

That's because D65 is usually referred to as "Warm" or "Warm2". Standard is much cooler.

[Einzelherz]

You're supposed to set the black levels, contrast and backlight before playing around with the white balance. If you calibrate towards PC levels (0...255) you will get too high black levels when a video source (16...235) is used.

Your grayscale looks to be completely off at 10IRE and 20IRE, giving you some very yellowish or reddish shadow details. I can also see quite some issues in terms of your gamma curve which should be corrected.

I did set the contrast and brightness first. And my plasma doesn't seem to like 10 or 20 no matter what - the blue is always too low there. I did not go back and touch up the grey evenness after inducing the black extension, as I previously mentioned. The DE (I think that's the % off perfect) for 10 and 20 were still below 2.5.

I'd love to correct my gamma curve, but that's the best I managed to get after hours of work. If I have time later I'll post my graphs for full RGB.

[vol.2]

I will disagree on 6500k not being the right color for video games using the argument I hate so much - developer intent.

These games *were* designed to run on standard tv sets (among other displays) and those sets were built attempting to meet 6500k.

I'm not sure about this. You might be correct. When developers were working on retro games, they would have been using PC monitors. Typically, PC monitors are set to a color temp of around 9300K and even then, there would have been slight variations in color temps between monitors and I don't think it is likely that developers back then had their monitors calibrated to a specific color temp. Generally, today, game developers do not make their games based on a specific color temp and it probably was the same way back then. The aspects of retro games that were designed for CRT TVs were things like dithering and I would imagine they took into account how scanlines affected the graphics. However, I'm skeptical that they were aiming for a specific color temperature.

I actually measured the grayscale of my FV310 before calibration using the standard color temperature setting and it was about 10,500K.

I was also curious about this point, so I asked somebody here.
One of my coworkers (here with me in the office today) is a developer who has been active since the 80's. He has worked on many different dev platforms including playstation, genesis, game gear and gameboy. What he tells me is that all of the systems were PC monitors that they used to develop. However, they always had a commercial CRT next to the system with a playstation or a genesis hooked up to it. They would burn copies of the game on CDs using the dev machines, and they would do all their play-testing on the consumer CRT. They had a nice Sony, but not a broadcast monitor. Admittedly, this is just a sample of one guy, and the four or five places he worked throughout that time, but I think it's relevant.

[andykara2003]

I'd really like to find a definitive answer on this as well. I watched a documentary on the making of Shenmue and they had the same setup: a small consumer CRT next to their monitor. Even then, it's hard to say whether they were adjusting for fine colour differences on the TV or not. Maybe we'll never know.

Brad251's observation that 9300K is better than 6500K for games is interesting and could be crucial - but I wonder if there are others out there that can confirm this from actual experience? That's quite a big difference in colour temperature.



EDIT: After doing some pouring over threads I'm seeing a couple of comments that corroborate Brad251's view, like this one:

"Warm actually does look right when I watch TV and movies, but it's definitely unnaturally orange for my games."

"Warm" here is in reference to the fact that apparently calibrators say the usual warm setting is closest to 6500K.



EDIT 2: And another comment (on the AVS forum):

"Every TV calibration "authority" seems to say the same thing: "warm/warm 2 is the best option".

But it seems like this was with movies in mind, because they all talk about the movie standard for color and how warm mode is closest to it.

On my Xbox 360 and Xbox One, warm color temp makes it look way, way too orange. It's very noticeably orange. And this isn't because "oh your eyes just aren't used to it yet!", it's unnaturally orange."

[vol.2]

I'd really like to find a definitive answer on this as well. I watched a documentary on the making of Shenmue and they had the same setup: a small consumer CRT next to their monitor. Even then, it's hard to say whether they were adjusting for fine colour differences on the TV or not. Maybe we'll never know.

Brad251's observation that 9300K is better than 6500K for games is interesting and could be crucial - but I wonder if there are others out there that can confirm this from actual experience? That's quite a big difference in colour temperature.



EDIT: After doing some pouring over threads I'm seeing a couple of comments that corroborate Brad251's view, like this one:

"Warm actually does look right when I watch TV and movies, but it's definitely unnaturally orange for my games."

"Warm" here is in reference to the fact that apparently calibrators say the usual warm setting is closest to 6500K.



EDIT 2: And another comment (on the AVS forum):

"Every TV calibration "authority" seems to say the same thing: "warm/warm 2 is the best option".

But it seems like this was with movies in mind, because they all talk about the movie standard for color and how warm mode is closest to it.

On my Xbox 360 and Xbox One, warm color temp makes it look way, way too orange. It's very noticeably orange. And this isn't because "oh your eyes just aren't used to it yet!", it's unnaturally orange."

Well, I can tell you that my coworker says here that they did. I don't believe that the TV they were using was professionally calibrated itself, but they were going back and forth between the computer and the TV.
Especially in the early days, the monitor would have been smaller than a consumer TV, and it would be hard to get a good feeling for the game without a TV. Also, they had to know what the actual gamers were going to see and finally, they had to do the testing on the production hardware because they had to know it would run correctly. There could be differences between the dev console and the actual PlayStation.

[andykara2003]

Well, I can tell you that my coworker says here that they did. I don't believe that the TV they were using was professionally calibrated itself, but they were going back and forth between the computer and the TV.
Especially in the early days, the monitor would have been smaller than a consumer TV, and it would be hard to get a good feeling for the game without a TV. Also, they had to know what the actual gamers were going to see and finally, they had to do the testing on the production hardware because they had to know it would run correctly. There could be differences between the dev console and the actual PlayStation.

Cool. So what does that tell us? I would say that it would suggest that we calibrate our CRTs to the same colour temperature of those CRTs that the developers were using to test their games. I would say that there's a fair chance that those TVs weren't professionally calibrated - so we still can't be sure.

Various people seem to be of the opinion that 6500K is too warm to match their early memories of these games - which might suggest that originally many of these consumer CRTs tended to come out of the factory with a cool bias when set to the 'normal' colour setting. I've seen someone comment that the companies did this as it made the TVs look more impressive in the show room but that's just anecdotal. I have a Loewe e3001 chassis with a warmer bias than my Sony and I much prefer the colours so personally I might be swayed in that direction.

Of course, another possibility is that people who are seeing too much orange when they calibrate to 6500K just aren't doing their calibration correctly. I guess an answer is to calibrate to 6500K and if you don't like it, recalibrate to 9300K to see if that improves things.

EDIT: I just had a message back from a professional calibrator. His view: "The video standard, all over the world, has always been 6500k".

[austin532]

Maybe the games were designed on 65k monitors, tested on non calibrated tv's, and then made the adjustments accordingly? I also agree that games look best at 90k.

I'm more curious as to how they had the systems connected to the tv's? Most likely composite which means yes games were "designed" with RGB but were meant to be "played" using composite.

[Brad251]

I understand what vol.2 is saying about his co-worker mentioning that developers of retro games had a CRT TV next to their PC monitor and they viewed the game on both but unless someone can provide some concrete evidence that retro game developers used a standard color temperature when working on their games and that CRT TV manufacturers had all their sets calibrated to 6500K, I just don't buy it. I would actually bet money that they didn't use a standard color temp. Most game developers today don't even do this so it seems unlikely that retro game developers would have been doing this. I can believe that they would have designed the color palette of the games they were using based on the CRT TV they were using but I think it would have just been for that particular model CRT TV; I doubt developers were all using the same CRT TV to test their games on. In this case it would have been more about consistency between the PC monitor and the CRT TV and not about a standard color temp across the board for all developers.

6500K or D65 is the standard color temperature for TV shows and movies but it is not the standard color temperature for video games. 6500K was chosen as the standard color temp for TV and movies because it is the color temp at which white is neutral. It is also the same color temp as daylight at noon in North America. It makes sense to have chosen 6500K as the standard for TV and movies because the industry would want the picture of TV and movies to look as realistic as possible. However, there is no standard color temperature for video games. Each developer today works more from a position of games looking consistent on all of their monitors but this doesn't mean that they are aiming for a specific color temperature. For example, the developer might look at a monitor of one of their graphics artists and have all of their other monitors match the look of that monitor. I actually read a recent interview with a game developer where they said this is what they did at their studio. I'm not sure what their process was for doing this. It could have involved making sure the color temperatures of all the monitors was the same but that color temperature would have still only been used in that studio for that game and would not have been a standard for all game developers.

9300K is the standard color temp for PC monitors and is what I prefer but this was not necessarily the exact color temp used for CRT TVs in the 80s and 90s. I do believe that CRT TVs during this time period did have a trend toward cooler color temperatures and I played on a lot of them being in my 30s. If I was to guess a range, it may have been anywhere between 7500K and 9300K. I would bet there was a range in color temps among CRT TVs during this period. Some CRT TVs could have been set to 6500K but I don't believe it was a standard. When I play retro games today, they look like I remember them looking when I select a cooler color temp and they don't look at all like I remember them looking when I select 6500K as my temp. It is very likely that TV manufacturers favored cooler color temperatures because the more bluish hue in the image would have more easily caught the eye of the consumer and made colors pop more. The reason 6500K looks more yellowish or orange is because we are all used to cooler color temps.

Ultimately, I would say, just select whatever color temperature looks most appealing to you for the games you play.

[vol.2]

I understand what vol.2 is saying about his co-worker mentioning that developers of retro games had a CRT TV next to their PC monitor and they viewed the game on both but unless someone can provide some concrete evidence that retro game developers used a standard color temperature when working on their games and that CRT TV manufacturers had all their sets calibrated to 6500K, I just don't buy it. I would actually bet money that they didn't use a standard color temp. Most game developers today don't even do this so it seems unlikely that retro game developers would have been doing this. I can believe that they would have designed the color palette of the games they were using based on the CRT TV they were using but I think it would have just been for that particular model CRT TV; I doubt developers were all using the same CRT TV to test their games on. In this case it would have been more about consistency between the PC monitor and the CRT TV and not about a standard color temp across the board for all developers.

6500K or D65 is the standard color temperature for TV shows and movies but it is not the standard color temperature for video games. 6500K was chosen as the standard color temp for TV and movies because it is the color temp at which white is neutral. It is also the same color temp as daylight at noon in North America. It makes sense to have chosen 6500K as the standard for TV and movies because the industry would want the picture of TV and movies to look as realistic as possible. However, there is no standard color temperature for video games. Each developer today works more from a position of games looking consistent on all of their monitors but this doesn't mean that they are aiming for a specific color temperature. For example, the developer might look at a monitor of one of their graphics artists and have all of their other monitors match the look of that monitor. I actually read a recent interview with a game developer where they said this is what they did at their studio. I'm not sure what their process was for doing this. It could have involved making sure the color temperatures of all the monitors was the same but that color temperature would have still only been used in that studio for that game and would not have been a standard for all game developers.

9300K is the standard color temp for PC monitors and is what I prefer but this was not necessarily the exact color temp used for CRT TVs in the 80s and 90s. I do believe that CRT TVs during this time period did have a trend toward cooler color temperatures and I played on a lot of them being in my 30s. If I was to guess a range, it may have been anywhere between 7500K and 9300K. I would bet there was a range in color temps among CRT TVs during this period. Some CRT TVs could have been set to 6500K but I don't believe it was a standard. When I play retro games today, they look like I remember them looking when I select a cooler color temp and they don't look at all like I remember them looking when I select 6500K as my temp. It is very likely that TV manufacturers favored cooler color temperatures because the more bluish hue in the image would have more easily caught the eye of the consumer and made colors pop more. The reason 6500K looks more yellowish or orange is because we are all used to cooler color temps.

Ultimately, I would say, just select whatever color temperature looks most appealing to you for the games you play.

Subjectively, I can say that I remember games looking "cooler." My conjecture would be that the TVs were cooler out of the factory.
However, it seems most logical is that each development team would have done things there own way. Perhaps some of the teams actually used broadcast monitors and did professional calibration. Some did absolutely no calibration. It seems far too much of a jump to assume that development teams were coordinating color temperature across companies and continents.
Also, gamers did not leave their tv colors at factory. Especially into the 90's, we were presented with settings to adjust the picture, and people (especially gamers) took advantage of those settings.

As per your last point, of course we should all make things look they way we like it.
Remember that the quest for truth is philosophy, not science.

[andykara2003]

This has been a great discussion - my Sony has a cool bias and I was going to calibrate it but I don't think I'll bother now. I much prefer it to the 'warm' setting on the TV, which is supposed to be closer to 6500K.

Just out of interest, this link has some before and after shots of a pro calibration of a Loewe Aconda:

http://www.bordersdown.net/threads/1160 ... w%21/page2


Actually looking at them now - the after shots do look improved. You can see that the blue 'mask' has been lifted and the colours are more vivid in the 'after' shot of the second pair of images..

[Guspaz]

My calibration (beyond geometry) was quite simple. I used SMPTE colour bars. I let the PVM auto-calibrate against them for composite (if it didn't have auto-calibration, you can use the blue-only button and follow that approach), and took RGB as-is, adjusted the brightness until only the 11.5 black was visible in the three blacks, and then adjusted the contrast as high as it would go without blooming.

My colours may not be calibrated beyond making sure composite matches RGB, but at least the contrast/brightness is.

[Ikaruga11]

How difficult is it to calibrate a CRT? I've never calibrated anything outside of the user menu. How hard is it to calibrate geometry, convergence, color, focus, etc?

Are BVMs and PVMs easier to calibrate than consumer TVs and monitors?

[bonzo.bits]

I use the i1Display Pro and the ColorHCFR software when calibrating a display for non-PC sources.

I used the same combo to calibrate my plasma last year. Pretty happy with the results for viewing films and gaming. Wasn't aware of the colour temp difference, probs time to re-calibrate to compensate for any colour shift in the display and might see about this 9300k business while I'm at it.