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LCD Color Corrector?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the hue-calibration dept.

colorContrast asks: " I've currently got a Viewsonic VG700b, and as of recent, it has been giving me some trouble. Instead of showing real black, i'm now getting a red hue for black, and the pixels on the screen have become more pronounced than they used to be. The odd thing is that when I brought my monitor home over vacation, the problem was fixed for a short while, but now it appears to be broken again. Does anyone have any suggestions on if its time to get a new LCD, or if they know of a fix for this problem? (I have attempted to manually correct it by changing the colors but that did little.)"

9 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. Don't bother. by Pig+Hogger · · Score: 3, Insightful
    LCDs are notoriously poor colour renderers, compared to CRTs.

    It is nearly impossible to have uniform backlight illumination, so you will always have colour variation problem. And the pixel intensity response is not gammaifiable like CRTs, and is bound to vary along the screen.

    If you expect your LCD to do photo-edition, you're SOL.

    1. Re:Don't bother. by spectre_240sx · · Score: 3, Informative

      A hardware calibration device, along with decent software, will make your life much easier. One thing to remember is that you'll have trouble replicating the output of any active display on print. It doesn't matter whether it's CRT or LCD. You have to match the display to the gamut of the printer in order to have a seemless workflow.

  2. bad cable? by dnamaners · · Score: 5, Informative

    Sounds like the exact problem had with an old CTR, it when all green. In the end it turned out to be a shorted cable, if you bent it one way it would go normal again. A new cable fixed that. I bet your A.) are using a 25 pin sub-D cable and B.) its cable (or its plug) has gone bad. The fact that it "got better" for some time may indicate this. Check it out.

    1. Re:bad cable? by Bistronaut · · Score: 3, Informative

      I've had problems with even "good" (though poorly shielded) cables just being near power cables or other sources of electromagnetic noise. If DVI is possible with your monitor/video card, try that.

  3. Well, have you tried... by awing0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It could also be your VGA card. I have seen VGA boards go bad in such manners that the make darkened streaks across the screen, off color to complete wrong or missing colors and artifacting/flickering picture. Monitors sometimes go bad in the exact same way! I've been fooled into thinking a display was bad before.

    Also, this is a very slight possibility, but your VGA cable might be bad. If the cable is crimpled or damaged, there may be cross talk among the signal wires. This usually leads to a ghosted image, but may cause color problems.

    So, I'd check your display out on a different PC, with a new cable just to rule out those issues before buying a costly replacement. The case is probably going to be that your display is just bad. Viewsonic isn't a great name in monitors, but then again no one makes a good display anymore.

    As a long shot, but Windows and Mac OS X support color profiles. You might be able to compensate with software depending on your video card. I'm pretty sure X.org has some sort of color profile support, though I may be wrong on that point.

    --
    Cthulhu Saves.
  4. Many options by dr00g911 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Sounds to me like how my screen looks when the VGA cable gets knocked a little out of whack with the video card. It might be a short in the monitor cable as well.

    Don't think I've ever seen an LCD panel drift in color unless it was a cabling issue. CRTs, on the other hand, generally either drift to red or green as they die in my experience.

    There's lots of software-based gamma/color correction fixes that you can apply to the monitor depending on your OS. The 'advanced' display driver panel should have some color/gamma adjustments if you've got an nVidia or ATI card under Win, and there's a big ass "calibrate" button on your display preference pane on the Mac that'll let you get stuff back in whack.

    If you're running any Adobe apps under Win or Mac OS 9, there's the Adobe Gamma control panel -- which I personally used when I had an old CRT that decided to go pink and dark on me.

    When you start talking calibration hardware, on the other hand, you're starting to talk about stuff like the Gretag-Macbeth EyeOne series or a Spider, which are probably more pricey than the new LCD you've got your eye on.

  5. 2nding the Cable theory by RingDev · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm going to go with the Cable issue theory. I have seen similar issues come from a crimped cable and they're not that expensive to replace. And on that note, mark up on cables is freaking insane. I put in a few years of retail sales (CompUSA) and I assure you, cost on that $60 belkin cable is under $15. Do yourself a favor and buy a cheap-o cable or a rebranded store version.

    -Rick

    --
    "Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
  6. Calibrate your monitors!!! by Lord+Satri · · Score: 4, Informative

    Any computer user would be **surprised** the difference is makes to calibrate your monitors (thus creating an ICC profile). It allows you to synchronize your monitors, scanners, printers, etc. It works better with macs, but also works with windows (I'm in the process of making it work with Debian).

    Read more here:
    http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/monitor_calibra tion_tools.htm
    http://www.chromix.com/ColorGear/Shop/productdetai l.cxsa?toolid=1086&num=37&fnd=nfound&refcode=cmmea sure&PID=11713

    and of course:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile

    --
    Animoog.org
  7. don't photo-edit with a CRT either by r00t · · Score: 3, Informative
    Try your CRT on a monitor test and see how bad it really is.

    Eeeeew. You want to edit photos with that ???