Calibrate And Profile Your Monitor - Adobe 22002420 - Acrobat Standard - PC User Manual

"Obtaining custom profiles for desktop printers" on page 315
"About color working spaces" on page 320
About monitor calibration and characterization
Profiling software can both calibrate and characterize your monitor. Calibrating your monitor brings it into
compliance with a predefined standard—for example, adjusting your monitor so that it displays color using the
graphics arts standard white point color temperature of 5000˚ K (Kelvin). Characterizing your monitor simply
creates a profile that describes how the monitor is currently reproducing color.
Monitor calibration involves adjusting the following video settings:
The overall level and range, respectively, of display intensity. These parameters work just as
Brightness and contrast
they do on a television. A monitor calibration utility helps you set an optimum brightness and contrast range for
calibration.
The brightness of the midtone values. The values produced by a monitor from black to white are
Gamma
nonlinear—if you graph the values, they form a curve, not a straight line. Gamma defines the value of that curve
halfway between black and white.
The substances that CRT monitors use to emit light. Different phosphors have different color character­
Phosphors
istics.
The color and intensity of the brightest white the monitor can reproduce.
White point

Calibrate and profile your monitor

When you calibrate your monitor, you are adjusting it so it conforms to a known specification. Once your monitor
is calibrated, the profiling utility lets you save a color profile. The profile describes the color behavior of the
monitor—what colors can or cannot be displayed on the monitor and how the numeric color values in an image must
be converted so that colors are displayed accurately.
Make sure your monitor has been turned on for at least a half hour. This gives it sufficient time to warm up and
1
produce more consistent output.
2 Make sure your monitor is displaying thousands of colors or more. Ideally, make sure it is displaying millions of
colors or 24-bit or higher.
Remove colorful background patterns on your monitor desktop and set your desktop to display neutral grays.
3
Busy patterns or bright colors surrounding a document interfere with accurate color perception.
4 Do one of the following to calibrate and profile your monitor:
• In Windows, install and use a monitor calibration utility.
• In Mac OS, use the Calibrate utility, located on the System Preferences/Displays/Color tab.
• For the best results, use third-party software and measuring devices. In general, using a measuring device such as
a colorimeter along with software can create more accurate profiles because an instrument can measure the colors
displayed on a monitor far more accurately than the human eye.
Note: Monitor performance changes and declines over time; recalibrate and profile your monitor every month or so. If
you find it difficult or impossible to calibrate your monitor to a standard, it may be too old and faded.
Most profiling software automatically assigns the new profile as the default monitor profile. For instructions on how
to manually assign the monitor profile, refer to the Help system for your operating system.
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