Gamma Testing

Background

Monitor died this morning. PPPPPhhhhzzzztt-ing and sputtering as some sort of electronic thing tried to fire electrons at the CRT tube. The poor old circa 1995 Digital (Inc) 14" beige-grey unit decided to pack it in.

So I went down to the Pawn shop and got a newish 17" job in BLACK... boy.

Setting it up, I looked at some of my photos from Benzacrossoz and tried a couple of them on for size as the background. It just didn't look right, either washed out, too blue, too yellow, too dark.

Decided to calibrate the monitor.

I've done a couple of tests.

Good one here, which is really basic and sets up the gamma just right.

I then fiddled with the brightness and contrast controls to get whites and blacks all OK. The colour seems fine.

I also tried this guy but it was too damn complicated although there is a good test photo on the page which gives an indication of how things should be.

Ended up setting my monitor gamma to 1.0 and adjusted the brightness and contrast.

The end result on this page shows that my gamma is actually 2.15....... go figure.

Now the above pic is my background and it looks as if I'm still near that paddock near Manildra, central New South Wales, just before a big rain. The above photo looks kind of dark on this page but if you click it for a higher res. shot, it seems to "jump out" a bit more. A strange photo, untouched with any photoshop wizardry.