Flat Panel Face-Off

Calibration for Color Perfection

At their default settings, the LCDs in this review generally produce fine color for basic tasks. But if you need the most accurate color--say for fixing up digital photos--you should calibrate.

Calibration was once a chore requiring expensive equipment that had been designed for CRTs. But in the past year, companies have introduced simple, affordable kits that ably handle both CRTs and LCDs. We tried four of them: GretagMacbeth's $249 Eye-One Display, Integrated Color Solutions' $199 BasICColor Display 2.5 With Instrument, Pantone Colorvision's $229 SpyderPro, and X-Rite's $299 MonacoOptix XR.

Each kit comes with a USB-connected sensor called a colorimeter and software that displays a series of color screens. The colorimeter reads the color values generated by the monitor, and the software compares the readings to the actual colors it instructed the graphics card and monitor to display. The inevitable discrepancies are recorded in an ICC or ICM profile that the video card uses to adjust its output and display more-accurate color on the screen. (Some monitor makers provide generic profiles that may improve color, but not as well as a profile tailored to your specific PC and monitor.)

Handsome Purchase

All four kits greatly improved the color accuracy on our test LCDs and CRTs, but we noted some differences (see "Flat vs. Fat" for details). Integrated Color Solutions' kit was slow, and it had a confusing interface. The Pantone was good at tuning in saturated blues, but its red-yellow range was slightly limited. Both the GretagMacbeth and X-Rite products brought out a fuller color range and more detail in shadows than the other two kits. But X-Rite's exceptional performance earns it our Best Buy nod. It achieved the deepest shades of blue and the finest gray-scale transitions--allowing our LCD to match the subtleties that previously only high-end CRTs could achieve. The GretagMacbeth has the slickest and most intuitive interface of all the kits, but the X-Rite is fairly easy to navigate; and it has more-advanced functions, such as the ability to calibrate for a custom color temperature or according to ambient light conditions.

Though these kits are expensive, they will save you time and money spent on redoing print jobs that don't come out as you expected. The next logical step is to calibrate your printer. Most sensors that measure print samples remain very expensive, although less-costly models are starting to appear. Alternatively, you can improve prints by using the generic color profiles that many printer vendors provide.

Mark Rutherford

Richard Jantz is a regular contributor to PC World. Mark Rutherford is a professional photographer.