Sunday, July 5, 2009

TV color calibration

Recently, I had a TV I needed to calibrate the color on. I found a great guide, but it called for a Digital Video Essentials calibration DVD for just a few gray frames that were hidden--and some missing--on the DVD. If you have a DVD player or TV that can show jpegs from either flash or a CD/DVD, this might be easier than using a feature-laden DVD.

With the first image (PLUGE), the idea is to be able to see the lightest dark square (IRE 4), but not the darkest square.


The following set of images is used to measure red, green, and blue levels of grays and varrying intensities and to try to get them as close to the same as possible. You need some sort of color meter (the X-Rite Eye-One and Datacolor Spyder are covered in the guide) and software like ColorHCFR to measure the output. Again, see the guide for more details. I'm just providing IRE and PLUGE files hoping to save people time and money. Like the DVE DVD, the IRE corresponds to the k values (as in CMYK) of the color, not linear RGB values.