calibration nightmares

So i am having issues with the calibration of my monitor. For starters I have a Gateway FPD2485W 24" LCD and I am using Colorvision Spyder suite to calibrate with.

The problem that I am having is both my black points and my reds.

WIth the black points, when the gradient of shades of black pops up for me to adjust accordingly, no matter what I do I cannot get the first three shades of black to disntiguish themselves.

In regards to the problem with my reds... they are super saturated. No matter how many times I calibrate, the reds always appear this way. I have gotten to the point of having to try and compensate in my photo for this - which is never a good bet.

I have calibrated my monitor in the dar, with lights on, and with ambient outside light - same problem.

any thoughts on the matter?

Jared

Jared,
Many LCD monitors come with the brightness too high in my opinion. For example, whites can be brighter than white paper in sunlight! I have some guidelines on screen brightness at:
http://www.clarkvision.com/photoinfo...an_LCD_monitor

See if that helps.

Roger

roger,
on the gray scale that is on your website, everything is fine. The reds are still super saturated but the grayscale is perfect. When I bring it up in the Spyder software, the first three are all jet black. I try and adjust the brightness with little to no improvement on the matter.

Jared

Jared,
It sounds like you might need to turn down the intensity of the red and lower contrast. Have you tried that?

Roger

Roger,
I turned it down and that makes a difference in the reds. However, when I run my Spyder software now it recalibrates the monitor to super saturated reds again. Whats the point of the software if all I am going to do is calibrate the monitor based upon my own judgement?

It seems to me your monitor is the culprit. I use Spyder and I have none of your problems. But, I am still using an old CRT monitor.

BTW, have you tried other monitors?

Did you try to reset the monitor manufacturer's default setting and let Color Vision to do all the adjustments without use of any controls on monitor during calibration? Like you don't have any controls on monitor. The only thing you have to choose is gamma and white point. That worked best for me.

Ill give that one a try. I have managed to get somewhat of a handle on the reds now but the black luminance is still an issue. Spyder help files even said that sometimes attempting to calibrate or adjust for it is useless and that it recomends to just stick with factory default even if its not perfect.

a bit frustrating to say the least. you drop $700 on a monitor and you expect it to be top notch.

Sorry to be late posting on this thread. My understanding is that you should first set your monitor to standard color settings, but turn the brightness down to about 20-25%. Then do your calibration. Unfortunately, many have had problems with the Spyder on LCD monitors. I traded mine on an Gretag/Macbeth Eye1 and have had no issues. I still must turn down the brightness a lot to get good results. Be sure you have disabled Adobe Gamma as it will compete with your monitor calibration.