Calibrating Monitor Question

[Rick Harris]

I have a Samsung LCD monitor that will allow me to adjust R-G-B, brightness and contrast. I'm using an X-Rite puck for calibration. My question is this - how do I set the brightness of the LCD? I understand the how to do the contrast, but after setting the brightness it seems way to bright. I've been told just reduce the brightness until it looks right, however, I would think that would effect the way the print is printed, right?

I'm fixing (southern term) to buy an Epson 3800 and just want to make sure that I'm going to be able to get good results so that I can sell prints to customers. My experience with printing to a 2200 Epson was not good at all.

Would appreciate an education on monitor calibration for printing.
Thanks for your help.
Rick

[AndrewRodney]

There's only one control on an CCFL LCD and that's the intensity of the backlit Fluorescent source. Some call it brightness, some contrast but the bottom line is, you're not affecting the RGB electronics like you could with a CRT, you're just altering a lookup table which should be avoided.

It sounds like you've found the control, despite its name to affect overall brightness. Use that based on the target calibration settings you ask for with the software (example, 120 cd/m2) and leave everything else alone. The luminance based on cd/m2 is set for ambient lighting around the display and how you'll view the prints. There's on correct answer although lower is often better than higher. How are you viewing the prints? Ideally this would be done in a good light booth where you can control the intensity of that light source to match the display (or vise versa).

[Morrie Farbman]

Andrew,
I have my NEC MultiSync LCD 2190UXI, calibrated via SpectraView II to 120 cd/m2 and still find it a slight bit too bright. Can you suggest how much to lower the luminance to darken it down. I tried 118 cd/m2 and I did not really see a difference.

[AndrewRodney]

By all means reduce the luminance. I doubt you'll see anything by going only 2 cd/m2. Try 5-10 units.

[Art Fotografic]

By dim lighting conditions I ever used around 90 -95 cd/m2, by higher values I never felt comfortable after a couple of hours.

[AndrewRodney]

90-95 cd/m2 is actually a good starting point for CRTs and would correlated to an ambient lighting around the display at a pretty dim 16-25 lux.

[NillToulme]

Morrie I work in a fairly dim room and originally set my 2090uxi to 100 cd/m², but have recently reduced it to 95 cd/m². That's working pretty well.

Nill
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www.toulme.net