Step 7

Choosing the "White Point" for your monitor is pretty much a formality these days. Even the die-hards are in agreement that 6500^oK is probably the best option on most systems.

You should have already set the Hardware white point via the dials/buttons on the monitor. Most monitors have a native white of 9300^oK, so do make sure and check what it has been set to.

Choosing 6500^oK provides the cleanest and brightest white point and closely matches daylight. If you feel really confident you could select the "Measure" option, but be prepared for a struggle. You can choose 5000^oK, but this usually produces a slightly dimmer and more yellow white point.

 

 

Step 8

Generally speaking, it's better to leave the Adjusted White Point setting at "Same as Hardware". 

Nevertheless, this option, when available, is used to choose a working white point for monitor display if that differs from the hardware white point set in the last step. For example, if your hardware white point is 6500^oK, but you want to edit an image at 5000^oK  because that most closely represents the environment in which it will normally be viewed, you can set your Adjusted White Point to 5000^o K, and Adobe Gamma will change the monitor display accordingly: However, choosing this approach will all cause the graphics card colour LUT to be adjusted quite severely, and depending upon the graphics card the screen can look quite ugly on some systems. As indicated above I recommend that you choose "Same as Hardware" and thus avoid this problem.

 

 

Step 9

That's it, if all has gone well you will have adjusted the brightness, contrast and colour settings of your monitor to the optimum values.

Make a quick check using the "Before" and "After" radio button. If you're happy that the screen display now looks more neutral than before press the "Finish" button and "Save" the profile. Once saved the profile will be available for use by the OS and Photoshop.

 

 

The advantage of Adobe Gamma is that it's free, whereas the third party products can cost nearly as much as Photoshop. However, since they use "hardware" and not the "eyeball" for the measurements we are assured of much more accurate calibration.

There are a number of third party alternatives to Adobe Gamma, which can be purchased from companies such as Color Vision, Monaco Systems or Praxisoft.

The above companies can be contacted by following the URL's listed below: -

Color Vision - http://www.colorvision.com/

Monaco Systems - http://www.monacosys.com

Praxisoft - http://www.praxisoft.com

 

Useful Information on location of  ICC/ColorSync Profiles

Profile locations:- 

Windows 98 and 98 Second Edition - folder named windows/system/color 

Windows 2000 and Me - sub-folder named system32/spool/drivers/color 

Mac - ColorSync profiles are located in the System Folder/ColorSync Profiles folder