The Display Calibration Guide – Vol1 + Vol2
Display Calibration is a skill everyone who likes movies and TV shows should acquire!
This Display Calibration Guide is an easy to follow guide to help you do just that!
Get the clarity and colour accuracy as the film maker intended! Be amazed at how good your TV or projector can look.
What’s In the Book?
- I introduce you to display types for both flat panels and projectors
- We look at display characteristics such as brightness, contrast, dynamic light control and dynamic image processing technologies.
- We go through the SDR (Standard Dynamic Range) Display standards such as PAL, NTSC, REC709 and SDR BT.2020 as well as HDR Display Standards for HDR10, HLG and Dolby Vision.
- I walk you through profiling and calibration workflows step by step for greyscale, gamma (SDR) / EOTF (HDR) and CMS.
- The guide includes an Introduction to HCFR for beginners and explains all the relevant settings for you to get started.
- The guide includes 13 procedures for profiling and calibration in both tool-agnostic and HCFR-specific version.
- 300+ pages of dense but easy to understand material
- 40+ diagrams explaining the concepts in a visual manner
- Lots of easy to understand explanations to guide you through each step of the process.
Please note, the guide requires the use of a Colorimeter such as ColorChecker Display or Spyder X. If you have trouble deciding on one, we have an article to help you with selection. However, even if you don’t have a sensor, you can start learning display calibration straight away with HCFR’s sensor simulation mode!
The guide also requires a Windows installation on a PC or laptop (or in a virtual machine on other operating systems) that can be connected to the screen you are calibrating if using patterns from the HCFR, which is recommended. Alternatively, external patterns can be run on a disc or cast to a ChromeCast connected to the display.
Find more detail in this article.
Display Calibration Challenges
- Display Calibration is a skill every Home Cinema enthusiast should have! However, the guides out in the wild aren’t necessarily the easiest to get to grips with – or provide all the permutations of calibration options in one place.
- The Simple Home Cinema Display Calibration Guide – is here to fill that space for SDR (Standard Dynamic Range) Calibration while Volume 2 is to fill the space for HDR (High Dynamic Range) calibration.
The Display Calibration Guide Benefits
- Excellent picture quality on your flat panel TV or projector like you have not yet experienced!
- See the correct shade of colours in your favourite movies and TV shows as the director and colourist intended!
- Let your shows come alive with a beautiful contrasty image.
View Customer Reviews on Amazon
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I purchased both the Display Calibration Guide - Volume 1 & Display Calibration Guide - Volume 2 as a set.
In Volume 1 it first gives you some of the basic background stuff as well as information about SDR standard before getting into step by step guide on calibration including how to setup HCFR.
I have volumes 1 and 2 and Roland firstly explains the theory behind calibration and formats in an easy to understand manner.
He then guides you clearly step by step through the calibration process.
It is well written and clearly explained using free software with your calibration device.
I purchased both the Display Calibration Guide - Volume 1 & Display Calibration Guide - Volume 2 as a set.
In Volume 2 it first gives you some of the basics about HDR, DV, Tone Mapping and the HLG before getting into step by step guide on calibration including how to setup HCFR for a HDR calibration.
Highly recommend.
Same as the SDR guide, only more critical because HDR and tone mapping is so confusing. Especially getting the parameters set correctly for whatever your about to measure. You really need both guides as one builds on the other. However, the HDR guide was especially helpful, I thought
If you're into calibrating displays, this guide is invaluable. It not only shows you how to calibrate your display but also walks you through the theory behind each setting. A lot of this information would take you hours to find online, but it's all compiled here in one place.
I used this guide to calibrate an Epson 5050UB using an x-rite device (typically available for around $100) mounted on a tripod and free software. The guide is very good providing step-by-step guidance for turning theory into calibration procedures. The guide does not go into all the details of the theory of color -- but there are a few very good youtube videos that provide the backgorund of where color comes from, where the CIE chart comes from, how it is mathamatically derived, and exactly what the CIE chart represents. When you put that theory into practice using this guid, you will be blown away. This is very easy to do given the right instructions. And while you could screw arond, this guide is direct and to the point, especially incuding its specific gidance for the projector I was calibrating. The results are so good, that I opted out of using HDR.
I think is a great value for someone lookin to get into display calibration using the free software, HCFR. I've seen decent guides for other display calibration software but the other software options generally cost several hundred dollars (at a minimum). With this you can get going for much less than that. I have "Volume 1 - SDR" and "Volume 2 - HDR". You need to be able to do both because even if you have an HDR TV you probably watch a lot of SDR content. Looking forward to trying out some of the other home theater guides they offer.
In my home theater, I used "The Display Calibration Guide" to calibrate my Epson LS12000 and Silver Ticket Products STR-169128 screen. The guide gave me foolproof step-by-step instructions to achieve an amazing picture! It was very easy to follow the instructions and identify the settings I needed to use for my particular projector. Also, it really helped me understand how to use the calibration tool and software. I definitely recommend it if you want to get the most out of your displays!
I had been using the software he covers in this book for a while and sort of got it down. But I didn't really understand what all the terms were and how to set up preferences until I read both of these book. There's two. SDR and HDR and you need both
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Hello
Does the calibration guide have a french translation ?
Otherwise if it does not have a French translation Can WE well assimilate the calibration for a beginner tike me ?
A passionate about home cinéma and beautiful images.
Good For You.
Unfortunately, no French version. However, there’s a few overview articles on the website if you wanted to start there. The guide is around 300+ pages long so no easy way to provide a summary. Apologies!
This really is the missing guide. I’ve not seen anything else like it. Plenty of background information, as well as heaps of detail on the procedures to be followed. Well worth the small amount it costs in my opinion.
Thank you, Steve. Appreciate the feedback!
This guide really helped me calibrate my new Epson Ls12000 projector. I found it extremely useful for both both teaching how understand how use HFCR and the steps to calibrate my projector. I have used both Spyder and Xrite/Calibrite software to calibrate my computer displays but not to calibrate projectors or HDTVs especially how to calibrate for HDR. While software like Calman portrait cost around $150 for a particular brand of TV for calibration. the software needed for a projector is $2000 or more and Chromapure is $300 and up. I recommend you read this guide it has a lot of information on how to calibrate each step of calibration and how to setup you display for calibration. Roland was extremely helpful and patient answering the questions that I had and I can’t thank hi enough for his assistance. Some thing I should note is I would recommend those calibrating read owners forums about their display or projector to understand any limitations calibrating their display/projector it will help you stop your self from seeking perfection in areas of calibration that may be unattainable with your display and save you some frustration. You may have to accept some errors with in a certain rage based on the capability of your display. This does not mean you won’t be able to achieve a good overall calibration. Only two minor things I would add to the guide would be a reminder in the procure steps to change the pattern intensity when moving from Greyscale to CMS calibration and how the direction Hue and Saturation move on the CIE graph when you increase them. The diction Saturation moves along the X axis when you increase vs decrease it. The direction that Hue rotates around the Y axis when you increase vs decrease it. I was not a big issue as I was able to figure it out by increasing and decreasing one at a time by 10 and observe its change in position on the graph to determine how increasing and decreasing changed its direction.
Thank you so much, Michael. I’m really glad you found it useful. And thank you for the suggestions.
Just for others’ benefit so they can find it: the CMS directional movements are depicted on a diagram in the SDR volume (page 116). But I may add some of the diagrams and explanations back into the HDR volume. I think a lot of people seem to know SDR calibration to a point so maybe skip some of the chapters. 🙂
Thanks again. Glad it’s helped.
Hello! I am considering to calibrate my projector (5050ub). Your guide seems an excellent starting point for a newbie.
Is it recommended for this projector? My idea is to use natural for SDR and natural or dynamic for HDR. Will it work?
Anyway, what is the minimum setup to achieve satisfactory results?
My guess
1) Color checker display (not the pro one as it costs half of it). Is speed the only difference?
2) Hcfr software with a macbook computer
3) Anything else? Should we connect the computer to the projector via hdmi? Or do we need a different device?
Just to make sure that the display meter is the only thing that we have to buy.
Thanks!
Hi Amo, check out the article here on what you need: https://simplehomecinema.com/2022/07/06/what-you-need-to-calibrate-your-tv-or-projector/
Yes, you will be able to calibrate your UB5050. Natural for SDR and Dynamic for HDR will work fine. Color Checker Display will work, speed is not an issue unless you do this for a job.
You will need to put the effort in to learn of course. But people who have taken their time, managed to do so. It’s around 200 pages for SDR and 200 pages for HDR and you do need to go step by step. But there’s no other guide like this on the internet.
Fantastic! And I am sure that your guide is perfect for beginners like me.
Let me one more question regarding the sensor.
Which one would you chose, this color checker display or the spyder x?
I can buy them both from amazon.
Anyway, Would you buy them used? Do they lose precision after some years?
Many thanks!
Colour checker display is generally considered better. I wouldn’t buy used as you don’t know how the instrument has been handled.
Thanks for creating this guide! I am quickly reading through it as I am waiting for my Spyder X to arrive. While I dabbled a bit with HCFR and a Spyder 5 with an older projector, I realize I was missing quite a few essentials, so I am really grateful for your guide.
I am hitting one problem though:
I am going to calibrate a 1-chip DLP with a LED engine (The ViewSonic X1-4k).
According to the guide, I should use either 75% or 50% intensity patterns for CMS when calibrating for SDR content on 1-chip DLP. I planned on using external targets, but there is no option in HCFR to choose “HDTC – REC 709 (50%/50%)” as a standard. I suppose I could use the custom mode and enter the x/y targets myself, but I have no idea what the 50% targets would be.
For now I will just use the 75% intensity patterns, but I wondered what the correct procedure would be if I wanted to use 50% intensity instead.
Oh, and there is a slight mistake on page 35 of the SDR guide, the last sentence “We will however deal with” ends abruptly and is covered by the table at the end of the page.
Hi Alexander,
Thank you for your kind words. Glad you are learning from the guide.
Thank you for calling this out. I will need to clarify it better in the next version…
You can use either 100% or 75% saturation targets. However, it is the luminance that needs to change for DLP measurements which are in the pattern generator settings. DLP is able to target REC709 saturations cleanly up to a certain luminance after which white / colour boosting MAY be used and the gamut may shrink – they don’t do this in all cases of course. But it is best to still use a lower luminance if you can.
The reason the REC709 75%/75% is mentioned for the AVSHD disk is because that’s the only mode available for that disk when using external patterns. You could try this mode for your DLP projector and it should probably suffice. However, if you wanted to be 100% sure, then use the HCFR internal pattern generator, as it can generate 100% saturation with 50% luminance patterns. That is my preference generally with DLP projectors.
I hope that clarifies it.
Happy Calibration,
Roland
Thank you!
I think I confused saturation with luminance this whole time. I’ll go the internal generator route at 50% luminance to measure the 25%/50%/75%/100% saturation steps, that way I won’t get into trouble. As long as I measure white at that reduced luminance, the Y targets for the other colors should adjust accordingly, right?
I am still confused though as to how the AVSHD route with reduced luminance would go in theory.
Setting HCFR to “HDTC – REC 709 (75%/75%)” as recommended in “SDR-C-C-02 ID 4” shifts the x/y targets in the CIE diagram to the 75% saturation points of Rec 709. But if what we are after is to measure at reduced luminance but full saturation, would that not give incorrect results?
The disc seems to contain patterns for only two situations, patterns at 100% luminance and 0/25/75/100% saturation and then another section with RGBCMYW at 100% saturation and 75% luminance.
Wouldn’t the correct procedure for projector users with only access to the AVSHD disc be to keep HCFR at “HDTV – REC 709” for full saturation targets, but then only measure the primaries and secondaries at 75% luminance but full saturation with the patterns in the “75% color” section, and skip doing the 0%/25%/75% saturation measurements, as there are no patterns for those saturations at 75% luminance on the disc?
The short answer is no.
You have to be able to measure all saturation points to balance errors. This is why HCFR had to allow for this special case on the AVSHD disc. Both luminance and colour changes required for those patterns are encoded in the 75%/75% gamut without having to mess with other settings (which you can’t anyway when using external patterns).
In any case, luminance changes aren’t an issue for CMS measurements as all points, including white, would be encoded at the adjusted luminance, so no issue with the math.
But for auto-generated patterns, you do need to set the value.
My preference for external patterns would be 75% luminance with 100% colour, as you can still balance lower saturation points, which is what you should be doing anyway. But alas, no such patterns on that disc… again hence the custom gamut in HCFR.
I wouldn’t worry too much about it. It’s just how it was designed. It’s not wrong per se, but causes confusion for newcomers which is annoying.
Thank you for taking the time to reply!
I really want to thank you again for writing this guide! My projector is now quite well calibrated in SDR and I think I made a valiant effort in the HDR department as well. For the first time I felt like I knew what I was doing and why!
One quick question – no matter what I change, the target luminance curve in HDR seems to become extremely aggressive toward to top end inside HCFR, when using the settings recommended in the guide. I used 50 nits as my diffuse white and 130 nits as target MaxL, which causes the luminance target curve to hit 100% luminance at 70% white already. Wouldn’t that cause a lot of clipping at the high end? This projector seems to have a fixed tone map that tries to preserve detail at the high end, so my curve ended up being about 90% luminance at 70% white. I can push it higher by moving the greyscale controls up, but that appears to make everything else harder to calibrate, so I’d rather avoid doing that.
Speaking of – this projector is supposed to do 125% of Rec. 709, so it felt wrong to calibrate it to “UHDTV Rec2020/Rec709”. But when I use “Rec2020/P3”, I get unreachable targets instead, especially with green and cyan. My approach was to make the resulting triangle in the CIE diagram as large and uniform as possible, while hitting as many saturation and luminance targets as possible. The resulting CIE diagram looks like this, can I count that as a “best effort” result or should I rather aim for “Rec2020/Rec709” for better accuracy?
This is what I got in HDR and Rec2020/P3 as target:
https://imgur.com/QvYiaS7
For reference, this is what I managed to get in Rec709 in SDR mode:
https://imgur.com/a/o5Ce8GL
No worries, Alexander. My pleasure!
I would recommend a re-reading of EOTF for HDR sections. Over 70% is well into highlight territory starting from 1000nits /70% and most projectors start cutting aggressively at that point. It depends on the tone map. Ideally, you need to start tone-mapping below that as opposed to following the EOTF which I think is what you’re trying to do.
You’ll find the correct tick-box for HCFR to do a similar tone map if you review the HCFR settings for HDR. I think you may have fast-read that chapter.
But you need to work with the tone map in the projector ideally. Some projectors’ tone map can be aggressively amended (older JVCs) but that’s the exception. Most can be nudged in the right direction… but definitely don’t increase luminance and cut the tone map and cause clipping. Unless you want to emulate Sony’s Reference modes. 😉 Go through the HDR volume from the top again, you’ll learn more on second read!
Regarding the CMS in HDR, the correct setting is REC2020/P3. I would consider that a good first effort for HDR but you might be limited by a crappy CMS in the projector. I would try and get those green targets for 25% and 50% a bit more on target and let the 75% and 100% coordinates veer off into yellow as that is correct for a green deficient gamut. Otherwise excellent effort for REC709. Well done!
Just had a look. Review pages 19-22 and page 25 in the HDR volume. Pay close attention!
Thank you, I just did! My issue was that I had set the Master MaxL to 1000, which caused the luminance graph to clip much earlier – after fixing that I could adjust the slope much easier.
I didn’t do any re-measuring yet, but simply adjusting the tone curve in the HCFR project gave me this result:
https://imgur.com/a/RTxSDET
That caused the luminance in the saturation scales to go crazy off target, so I suppose my next task will be to first see if I can get the greyscale to match the luminance graph better and then adjust the CMS to get the color luminance in line, right? And fix that green problem, thanks for the tip of aiming for the 25% and 50% targets – if that is possible with this projector. But maybe I can bend the green curve enough to make it work.
Yes, good strategy!
That 70% is a bit too high still though!
I tried to get 25% and 50% green closer on target, best I could do was Delta E of 4.2/4.4/4.5/5.1 for the 25/50/75/100% targets. Trying to get as close as possible with 25% and 50% still kept the 100% marker straight up there though, it did not veer off into yellow despite me focusing merely on the lower end targets.
https://imgur.com/a/wVLc4qy
I managed to figure out the EOTF settings after re-reading that chapter, would this tone-mapped curve be counted “good enough” for most purposes, or is my curve too aggressive?
https://imgur.com/4kucqbx
Thanks again for taking your time to answer my questions!
So I think that you need to forget the 75% and 100% targets for green. They will do what they will do. (They are veering towards yellow btw from a colorimetric perspective).
Ok, so for green, you need to adjust the green tint to go towards Cyan to pull the points more in line. If the CMS is working, it will do its job. Then you need to adjust saturation and last correct luminance. But I think that green needs more work. But it is entirely possible the CMS won’t have the range to correct green. Depends! Can you provide a screenshot of the green values in the CMS?
The EOTF can be thought of as good enough for sure. You COULD pull down 70% a little more but that will sacrifice brightness. Otherwise, yes, as long as you checked it with content, and it looks good, that’s great. This tone curve prioritizes brightness as opposed to highlight detail and it’s just fine. 🙂
Alright, I’m super grateful for your guidance! I went ahead and worked a bit more with the EOTF, I took your advice to reduce 70%:
https://imgur.com/w5ZfHre
I had to go through the colors again after adjusting the EOTF and managed to get green to Delta E 3.0/3.4/3.8/5.5 for 25%/50%/75%/100%. Really had to push the CMS:
https://imgur.com/vuex3S8
This is how that looks like on the CIE:
https://imgur.com/kKyr5P8
I had to eyeball Cyan into there somehow – what is the better option there? I tried to avoid clipping and simply lined up the targets on “new” targets that had roughly the same distance from each other. I suppose another strategy could be to try to get the 50% target in line and live with the fact that the 75% and 100% measurements exist on the exact same spot – I haven’t tried that approach though. It could be that I can’t even do that as my Cyan saturation is already at max…
I have not had a chance to actually verify anything with actual content, so tonight I’ll try putting a regular SDR Blu-ray of Avatar into one player and then run the 4k/HDR version from Disney+ on another, so that I can flip between them and check if the HDR colors “feel” in the same ballpark as the SDR intent.
No worries. Thank you for putting this on the comments section as it might help other people as well. Much better than back and forth emails.
Ok, so the EOTF looks much better. Well done!
Reading green, it looks like it doesn’t want to budge. Mmm. Look, in such a case, I generally recommend that you watch some content and see. But since there’s so little improvement, it MIGHT be better to back off the CMS controls on green and just live with higher dEs, as such aggressive adjustments might result in issues elsewhere such as clipping or banding. But see how you go. Obviously, green is stubborn on this unit. It happens.
With Cyan, the best strategy is to try and get 25% and 50% on target as much as you can, then once that is done, back off saturation a bit so the 75% and 100% points are delineated just a bit and separate if possible, even if a little. So this might be a balancing game. However, if your saturation for cyan is maxed out already then not sure you can do much about it. That cyan is entirely driven by the green targets which don’t want to budge.
As a last resort, I would check the luminance of colours for green first and then cyan. It is entirely possible that once colour luminance is adjusted a bit (such as backed off), the targets line up a bit better. But zero guarantee. I think leave this for another calibration session and enjoy the improvement you made. Hopefully it looks great with content! Well done!
Just fore fun, I compared the SDR Blu-ray of Avatar with the 4k/HDR streaming version. It’s rather hard to take good pictures of this, but I used my phone’s “Pro” mode and used the exact same settings for white balance (6500), ISO and shutter speed, so the images should be comparable color-wise, unless the phone does some extra processing even in Pro mode:
Scene 1: https://imgsli.com/MjQ3MzEy/0/1
Scene 2: https://imgsli.com/MjQ3MzEy/2/3
Scene 3: https://imgsli.com/MjQ3MzEy/4/5
I am aware you can’t really share calibration results this way, but since I have used the exact same camera settings, it should be possible to compare the relative difference at least. To my eyes the SDR version looks warmer and more yellow, but I suppose the drawback of this test is that the HDR version might have been mastered with different color grading in the first place.
Anyway, I’m quite happy with the results! Compared to my old projector where I never understood how to properly calibrate HDR, this feels like an actually usable HDR mode now. Quite important, since almost all 4k content is offered in HDR after all, and most medium-range projectors like this one have horrible HDR colors out of the box.
For good measure I also bought your Audyssey guide – and while 90 pages was a bit much for a quick calibration, I did follow your “tight pattern” instead of my usual “measure the whole room” as the manual suggests. I am mostly watching alone anyway, so it felt useful to calibrate the area around my head instead of non-existing listening positions. Some of the high frequencies sound a lot shriller than usual, but I think I saw something about that in the guide. It is also entirely possible that my usual calibration simply clipped those frequencies, so that what I have now is actually more accurate.
Thanks again for providing these resources, well worth the money!
Well, I think that’s a job very well done!
Regarding Audyssey, I would recommend that people don’t just pick out the mic patterns and call it a day. There’s heaps of performance left on the table there.
But if you insist, then you need to read that chapter. I do say that the mic patterns are a balance between imaging and frequency response. It sounds like the mid or wide patterns are better suited to your room. They’ll still provide good imaging but the frequency response should be more balanced.
Anyway, probably off topic for this page though… we could continue on the Secrets of Audyssey page if you need further assistance.
In any case, glad you got the projector sorted. It makes me super happy when people have success with it after reading the guide. It took 6 months of work to write both volumes so makes having been it worth it! Cheers!
I meant green values in the CMS on the projector. So not a screenshot but a picture you take with your phone or something. 🙂
Hello! I’m a bit confused on the guide, as it states that I can use internal patterns in HCFR, but then for Black and White settings it states that I need to use External Patterns from a Disc. Is this accurate? Or can I do something for Black/White Settings through HCFR only? Thanks!
Hi Ricardo,
Yes, you can go into the menu under Advanced –> Targets/Images/Patterns –> Levels. There you’ll find the patterns for evaluating near black and near white. The first 4 patterns are likely the easiest to use. If you are using the Shadow and Highlight clipping patterns, then use the greyscale ramp from those, as opposed to the colour ramps. However, you can use the colour ramps once you’ve done the CMS to make sure you are not clipping near black or near white information for particular colours. I might cover this in more detail in a future update.
Cheers,
Roland
Love it, thank you! This will be the first time I attempt calibrating anything, but figured the LS12000 deserved a little bit of love. Hoping your guide gets me there, though there are a lot of new concepts for me but also looking forward to it. Thanks for writing the guide!
Did my first full SDR calibration for my LS12000. I had a few questions:
* When trying the Near-Black measurements, using the 0-255 range for HCFR, and limiting both the projector and Windows 10 on that extended display to 16-235, I was always getting NO difference between the 0:0:0 pattern and the next one. Is this expected? I switched HCFR to 16-235, and then I started seeing it more close to the expected curve.
Was I doing it wrong? Thanks!
Not necessarily, Ricardo. The main thing to check for is that black is displayed as black and that the levels are displayed correctly. However, please note that sometimes you can’t see a difference between the darkest shades because of black crush. This can either be due to too high gamma near black or a too low black level (brightness control) setting internally. Likely not an issue with the LS12000.
The most accurate way to set the chain up is using option 2 from the guide. Windows 0-255, HCFR and Display 16 – 235. See side note under table on the following page. It hasn’t yet been folded into the manual.
https://simplehomecinema.com/2023/03/13/should-you-use-internal-or-external-patterns-with-hcfr/
In any case, it does sound like everything worked out fine for the calibration. As long as there’s no black crush, or lifted blacks and the gamma looks correct, then you’re good.
Hi,
I got your Audyssey guide and really liked it. I would like to buy the HCFR guide but before that I would like to know if I can use DVDO AV Lab TPG with it. When I searched for it, I found that HCFR supports it but when I installed HCFR, I don’t see any mention of DVDO.
Thanks
Hey Vishwanatha,
I could be wrong but HCFR doesn’t seem to support it for automatic pattern generation, only as a manual pattern generation as if you were using a DVD or Blu Ray. At least that’s what the manual seems to suggest. There’s no evidence I can find it can actually control it. CalMan and Chromapure might be able to, but not HCFR.
So to use it, you’d need to put HCFR into manual pattern generation mode and then call up the required patterns as HCFR or the workflow in the guide is asking you for them.
I hope that makes sense.
and glad you’re enjoying the guides.
Thank you. That was what I thought but wanted to make sure I didn’t miss it somewhere.
Hi,
I purchased your guide and found it awesome. Thank you for such an amazing work!
Had an old meter that used to practice but have been researching to purchase a new one. I thought I would go for the Calibrite ColorChecker Display Plus as per your recommendation, but it has been replaced by a Calibrite ColorChecker Display Plus HL version which seems to have much less accuracy at low light readings. Which colormeter do you currently recommend?
Thank you
Nuno
Hi Nuno,
If you can find the older ColorChecker Display Plus model, that is still the recommended. This is because the new HL versions aren’t fully supported in all the software, plus they haven’t been fully battle-tested. I wouldn’t go with them.
… and thank you for your kind words. Really glad people are finding the guides useful. They do take a lot of work and people learning calibration successfully is amazing to hear and see. 🙂
Thanks,
Roland
Just a follow up on this: I currently have a JVC NX5 projector but am considering upgrading to a new NZ800 or NZ700 (when available). Being laser based projectors, will the Colorchecker display do a decent job at calibrating or would I need a better suited device (or profile the colorchecker) to accurately calibrate the new projectors?
Thanks
Nuno
Yes, the ColorChecker displays are configurable with CCSS / EDR files making them suitable for even triple-laser projector calibration. The profiles for NZ8 / NZ9 still work well for these new units and are accurate. So no issues!
Thanks!
Is there a reason why you don’t cover using madTPG for generating HDR patterns from within Windows 11? I understand that Windows interferes with HDR in ways I won’t pretend to fully understand, but madTPG seems to generate expected HDR patterns and I wonder if it is sufficient for simply calibrating a computer monitor’s EOTF for HDR gaming, for example.
Hi El,
Generating 3D LUTS is a different ball-game from learning manual calibration.
The current guide is about teaching the basics of manual calibration. 🙂
But we’ll consider covering 3D LUTs and with that MadTPG for a future version. Thank you for your suggestion.
Wonderful tutorial.
I’ve spent a long time getting stuck on some misleading resources online that focus solely on software calibration (such as ICC profiles, 3D LUTs… apologies if I got the term wrong), completely overlooking the importance of my display devices’ built-in color management features, and the results were not so good. This tutorial was a real lifesaver.
By the way, it might be helpful to include some new content (a short introduction is okay I think) on software calibration. Thanks again!
Thanks, Michael. Yes, that’s a great suggestion, thank you. 😊
Roland,
Hello, I am considering purchasing your guides for calibrating my TV’s SDR and HDR modes (HDR10+, Dolby Vision). I have an older colormunki design spectrometer and can use their software to have it calibrate the TV as a monitor, which creates an ICC profile that my laptop can use to map the colors correctly. What I want to calibrate are each input (which can be done per menu). One is for a firestick 4K hdmi and the other its internal google TV.
What other software/hardware do you recommend? SDR seems like I can use my PC or PGenerator, but I am lost for HDR content.
Thank you
Best Calibration tutorial ever!! It’s such an easy read and so simple to follow. No longer have do I have to read countless threads on forums. My only question… Would you make one for Colourspace Zro/Light Illusion? I feel like you would do a much better job..
Thank you, Rob. That’s very kind. Glad you’re finding it useful.
Not at this point I’m afraid. But the guide helps illuminate the basics hopefully so Colorspace makes a bit more sense…
I love HCFR.. and this guide is the best ever!! I have had for over 2 years and still review it to this day..
Thx, Jason. Glad it’s helpful!
Hello. Great guide. Super detailed and helpful. A godsend, really to those looking to calibrate their own monitors/TVs/projectors. Great stuff. Thank you.
One question. I am calibrating my TCL 75R617. I have nailed the greyscale and gamma. I am working on the CMS next. I am confused though by your explanation vs the adjustments available to me on the TV. The TV allows me to adjust the CMS six ways per the below, copied from the TCL manual.
“Custom color space adjustments
The RGB values for the red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, and yellow color spaces are adjustable from -50 to +50. A colorimeter is recommended when making custom color space adjustments.”
However, in your guide you talk about adjusting Hue/Saturation and Luminance for each of the primary and secondary colors. Is that the same thing as adjusting the RGB color space values from -50 to +50? Or do I have to drop back and use the Hue/Tint controls instead? Does that make sense?
Thanks for any input.
Jason
No worries, Jason… and fun times for you. I really hate RGB controls on CMS, but it’s really very simple:
Instead of 2 axis on the x/y plane (hue and saturation), you have 3: the red, green and blue max saturation “points” on the diagram that you’re pushing the targets towards.
The Z axis (luminance) is determined by the additive nature of the RGB values. So if you want to increase luminance, you have to increase all values by the same amount and vice versa.
It’s a more fiddly system that Samsung, and by the sound of IT, TCL likes to use. It makes sense and it gives you a bit more control but it’s more fiddly.
Hope that makes sense in any case.