# Monitor calibration issues!...



## kitsunekoneko (Oct 4, 2013)

Hello all, some of you may remember me from a post I made in June while I was looking for a laptop for college. Well, I've got it now, (and it's fantastic!! Thanks for helping me choose!) and one of the suggestions I received was to get a second monitor to work on artsy stuff, which I have. I ended up getting an ASUS VS228H-P for $119; I should've gotten an IPS monitor but seeing as I don't have any real income besides commissions (and my parents, who I sure as hell don't want to bother for this) I decided to settle for a bit less. The monitor is great though, it can run full HD with an HDMI and the resolution is 1920x1080! Way bigger than my laptop's res. So I'm pretty excited, I open this thing up, plug it in, it's good to go. The first thing I notice though, is this nasty yellow tint. It's a new monitor, so of course it needs some adjusting.
After some time I managed to get the yellow tint out, and I hopped over to lagom.nl to adjust some more.
But even after adjusting there, I still have a few issues. I tried to work around with the color gamma on my Intel display panel, but it didn't work out without adding more icky tints to my screen.

So now, I have these two problems:

there's too much yellow? as in, grayscales keep appearing yellow.
blues are paler than they should be? or have more red in them than they should - google links look like i've clicked on them (although I'm running chrome as incognito and links should never appear as 'clicked')

As you can probably already tell I'm quite the beginner when it comes to calibration, I've actually asked for help in these forums before, a long while ago. But I'd like to learn so I can do this every few weeks and keep my monitor displaying accurately, without coming here crying for help.
My monitor has fancy schmancy options that aren't too helpful either (Scenery Mode.. smart view.... all these look terrible!)

Any help is appreciated. If it helps, my GPU is Intel HD Graphics 4000.

*small note*: I'm leaving my dorm for the weekend and I won't be taking the monitor with me, so i wont be able to carry out any suggestions until sunday afternoon.


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## Runefox (Oct 4, 2013)

The first goal of calibrating a monitor is to hit a white point of 6500K. Usually this appears "warm", but it's actually the most accurate mode for colours. If you're finding that the screen is too yellow, you could try lowering the green until it appears more natural. Without a colorimeter or another screen to visually reference from in a pinch, it's difficult to say for sure how to proceed, since you'll mostly be "blind" and have to rely on your intuition, which if you're coming off a lower end monitor will be skewed towards it.

Anyway, some general tips: Generally speaking, don't primarily use the software for colour controls; Use the monitor's on-screen display. I'd save your modifications to a profile to keep them as a backup and then reset it. The monitor's controls aren't as fine, but getting them to a good baseline means you get better control via software. First order of business is to set the monitor to standard mode under Splendid. While sRGB may be closer to where you need to be, you cannot adjust color temperature, brightness, etc while using that mode. Second, under Color, set the brightness to around 20-30%. It should be bright enough that you can see detail in dark areas but dark enough that things aren't overbright. Contrast should be neutral (50, or whatever the midpoint is). Turn off any special modes the monitor may have enabled, such as ASUS' Smart View and ASCR. From there, set the Color Temp to User Mode and adjust the colour sliders to taste.


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## Arshes Nei (Oct 4, 2013)

I might be able to give you calibration for that if I can get your monitor profile. I use a Spyder to calibrate my monitors.


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## Runefox (Oct 4, 2013)

Arshes Nei said:


> I might be able to give you calibration for that if I can get your monitor profile. I use a Spyder to calibrate my monitors.


Panels vary between production runs is the only hang-up there; It might be similar enough or it might be quite different. In addition, ASUS doesn't appear to ship an ICM profile in any of their software packages for the monitor. The monitor still needs to be set up neutrally for a colour profile to be effective.


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## kitsunekoneko (Oct 4, 2013)

Runefox said:


> The first goal of calibrating a monitor is to hit a white point of 6500K. Usually this appears "warm", but it's actually the most accurate mode for colours. If you're finding that the screen is too yellow, you could try lowering the green until it appears more natural. Without a colorimeter or another screen to visually reference from in a pinch, it's difficult to say for sure how to proceed, since you'll mostly be "blind" and have to rely on your intuition, which if you're coming off a lower end monitor will be skewed towards it.
> 
> Anyway, some general tips: Generally speaking, don't primarily use the software for colour controls; Use the monitor's on-screen display. I'd save your modifications to a profile to keep them as a backup and then reset it. The monitor's controls aren't as fine, but getting them to a good baseline means you get better control via software. First order of business is to set the monitor to standard mode under Splendid. While sRGB may be closer to where you need to be, you cannot adjust color temperature, brightness, etc while using that mode. Second, under Color, set the brightness to around 20-30%. It should be bright enough that you can see detail in dark areas but dark enough that things aren't overbright. Contrast should be neutral (50, or whatever the midpoint is). Turn off any special modes the monitor may have enabled, such as ASUS' Smart View and ASCR. From there, set the Color Temp to User Mode and adjust the colour sliders to taste.



Sounds helpful... I wish I posted here earlier so I could try this out, but I'll have to wait til i move back in on sunday.
I'm also glad that you seem to be very familiar with the adjustment interface! I'll make sure to try this out and tell you how things turned out.


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## Arshes Nei (Oct 4, 2013)

Runefox said:


> Panels vary between production runs is the only hang-up there; It might be similar enough or it might be quite different. In addition, ASUS doesn't appear to ship an ICM profile in any of their software packages for the monitor. The monitor still needs to be set up neutrally for a colour profile to be effective.



Yup I know that. Which is why you also check the spectrum of what it's displaying. That's why it helps to have the icc comparison.


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## Runefox (Oct 4, 2013)

Arshes Nei said:


> Yup I know that. Which is why you also check the spectrum of what it's displaying. That's why it helps to have the icc comparison.


The only problem is, if there's no colour management profile provided by ASUS, there's no known baseline to work from. Only data you can get is from a colorimeter at this point unless you can find some successful calibration numbers. I haven't been able to find any.


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## Arshes Nei (Oct 5, 2013)

You save the state it is in now.


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## Runefox (Oct 5, 2013)

Arshes Nei said:


> You save the state it is in now.


I'm not sure what you mean - You mean the adjustments kitsunekoneko already made? With no information about what the monitor is actually displaying via a colorimeter or at least a factory colour profile, there's little you can do to calibrate it sight unseen. With just the adjustments, it's going to look very different to you.

It's possible that the VH222T calibration profile listed here is similar enough to the VS228H-P to get acceptable results from. It's possible the VH222T uses the same panel exactly, though I can't verify that; They have exactly the same specs, with the VS228H-P merely having more sophisticated processing and LED backlight (slightly dimmer). All of the settings they used are listed in the table, along with the link to the colour profile for Windows. Might be worth a shot.


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## kitsunekoneko (Oct 6, 2013)

*@Runefox*: Alright, I'm back in my dorm with the monitor and I tried your basic steps. However I think the brightness and contrast and gamma seemed to be all correct before. Or at least, they were as close as they could get. What was worrying me was the color gamma - blue was the only one I could never seem get right. Very strange seeing as the yellowish grayscales were still present.
I have my laptop monitor to work off on, it seems to be well calibrated (according to lagom.nl) after I've worked with it some.

I wish I could afford calibration software/hardware, but that will take some extra saving up. Til then I'm going to look to lagom.

*@Arshes Nei*: I wouldn't mind sending you the profile my monitor is using atm. Silly me though, I went around and made changes without saving the last profile. But I think I know how to get it back to how it was before I left for the weekend.

Thanks for the help guys, apologies for being so slow.


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