Technology Lighthouse

LCD Monitor Calibration

Towards the end of last year I finally made the switch from a good quality CRT monitor to a widescreen LCD, in this case HP’s w2207. When I got the monitor, I loved it’s crisp text and glossy look, but its color calibration was way off and it bugged me no end. I used the software provided by HP - “MyDisplay” - to recalibrate it and get grays that actually looked gray.

Recently however HP MyDisplay became unusable on my Vista partition - it kept locking me out of the calibration controls. I wasted hours trying to get it working again: uninstall/reinstall latest version, clean registry and data files etc etc. Nothing did the trick, so I was forced to look for another calibration utility.

I found various hardware solutions, but they’re total overkill for me. I’m not a graphic designer, I just want colors to “look right” on my monitor. Finally I came across a wonderful little freeware utility called Calibrize. It’s really easy to use, and I got results that I was happy with on my third attempt. I just wish I’d taken the advice of countless other HP monitor uses and given MyDisplay a wide berth right from the start!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 10:35 am and is filed under Geeks Corner. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.