We're diving into one of the more geeky areas of display tweaking, but it's worth mentioning. Gamma correction corrects for the fact that display output and our eyes are nonlinear decoders, while images themselves are often encoded linearly. What you'd like ideally in a PC display is a gamma correction of 2.2. Achieving this is more difficult than it sounds, since many lower cost displays don't allow you to tweak gamma.
Monitor Grayscale

Display control panels often have gamma settings, but in some arbitrary unit (like percentage). So the only thing you can really do short of using a calibration sensor is to tweak it with your eye to get something that looks correct. On top of this, the gamma for video cards really doesn't yield the desired gamma correction of 2.2 for PCs, so you still have to fool with it a bit.

Higher-end displays do allow you to set specific gamma corrections, but these aren't always accurate. Still, it's better than nothing.

Who is this Kelvin Guy?
Another thing to consider is gray scale temperature. Most sophisticated users reflexively set the color temperature (if the monitor has a specific setting) to 6500 degrees K, which is the NTSC standard, and roughly analogous to cloudy daylight. Bright daylight color temperatures are around 5500 degrees K, while incandescent light is about 2700 degrees K. Still, D6500 is a good setting, since it's well understood, and most video is shot with that in mind.

Alas, many LCD displays ship with the color temperatures cranked to ridiculous levels. We once got in a very high end, 30-inch display, which had an out-of-box color temperature setting of 9300 degrees K, which is a holdover from the era of bad CRT television.

Most displays that allow you to set the color temperature don't really let you set the actual number. Instead, you get euphemisms like "warm," "standard," and "theater mode." In those cases "movie" or "theater" mode should approximate D6500, but there are no guarantees.

Another nifty trick is to find a THX certified DVD, which comes with a pair of blue glasses. If you have DVD player software, pop the DVD in and walk through the calibration steps using the glasses. That will help you set the correct color temperature.

—next: Native Resolution and Monitor Orientation >