LCD monitors are in many ways superior to CRT monitors. However, there is one distinct trait in which LCDs perform significantly worse than CRT monitors: The clean reproduction of swift and fluent movements. This is due to no less two reasons:
1) The response time of the display elements of a LCD monitor are significantly slower than those of the phosphor layer of a common CRT monitor. So it takes the pixel a while to change its brightness from the old value to the new one.
2) The brightness of a pixel in an LCD monitor is sustained throughout the entire duration of a single frame, each pixel of a CRT monitor only flashes up very shortly per single frame.
On one hand, this is a huge advantage for LCDs: They do not flicker - no matter how low the vertical frequency is set. (The vertical frequency determines how many single frames are transferred from the graphics card to the monitor. For this reason, LCD monitors use a vertical frequency of 60 Hz most of the time; a value that would result in very noticeable flickering for CRT monitors.
On the other hand, this sustaining of brightness causes a blurring effect on rapid movements which, in any case, occurs independently from the response time.
Motion blur can make subtle details become indistinct to an unrecognizable extent. There often is a distinct trail noticeable behind quickly moving objects. These "streaks" (which is how this motion blurring is being called in our message board) are hard to judge from an objective point of view. Different observers perceive them by all means differently which is why observations of streaks can barely be communicated in a comprehensible way.
In order to establish a basis allowing response times of LCD monitors to be compared, various pieces of test software were developed. The utilized tests basically rely on the perception of the user however and, for this reason, have to be regarded as objective to a certain degree only. The test software PixPerAn that is shown here incorporates various different test methods in order to produce results that are as much meaningful as possible.
Download the program here and proceed as described in the manual. Use the values issued in the text file that was created by the program.
Eizo provides an excellent freeware test utility allowing to perfectly fine-tune one's LCD monitor.
The test includes the following options: test pattern, reproduction of the colors black, white, red, green and blue, moiré patterns, geometry, grey scales, grey gradient, contrast, convergence, responsiveness test, and many more.
Dead Pixels
Searching a display for dead pixels is best done by simply filling the screen with one uniform color. The Eizo Monitor Test offers the colors white, red, green and blue (test images 2 to 6). If you detect small dots in the screen area, you are dealing with dead pixels. Before carrying out this test, the entire screen should be cleaned so it has no dust particles on it. The reason being that dust particles can reflect light, making them appear as dead pixels.
Fix flickering using the Autoadjust button
If your monitor is connected to the graphics card using an analog link, you may want to properly adjust Clock and Phase. For this purpose, there is either a designated button or OSD menu option which can be found in all monitors.
To find the right setting, choose a moiré pattern (image 7 or 8) or an image with small font size (image 22 or 23).
Download
You can download the Eizo monitor test (Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/Vista) in EXE (1.002 KB) format or Zip (535 KB) from our website. It is a stand-alone application, so there is no need to install. Now the Eizo monitor test is also available for MacOSX.
The test utility is provided in cooperation with Avnet Technology Solutions GmbH.
LCD default color rendering can range from good (the best are factory pre-calibrated) to utterly awful. Color dominances are frequent and lately there has been the particular trend of more bluish colors except in white which has a reddish tinge.
Better color fidelity a few clicks away
Typically this type of screen is not manually adjustable because by reducing blue to balance out the image you actually add a red dominance in lighter shades.
Calibrating a screen is a two step operation of calibration (optimal adjustment of the peripheral) and the creation of the screen’s profile. The calibration process (we should get into profiling, but will keep things simple) allows attaining better color fidelity. The method is almost magic and in a few clicks the sensor automatically remedies your display. The inconvenience is that it is expensive and, for example, our calibration solution, the LaCie Blue Eye Pro, costs around 350 Euros.
Here we offer you a little taste of this tool’s capabilities and what a difference calibration can make. If you are into digital photography, in many cases these profiles can significantly improve your display. However, do not think you have hit the jackpot by just having saved 350 Euros. Ideally, a screen is calibrated every month, week or even some fanatics will say every day! The performance of the panel and other components changes with time while our profiles were carried out with mostly new computer hardware. This is to say that there is nothing like your own calibration with your own computer, screen and graphic card. Here we just give you a taste and in a number of cases the result is excellent.
Results: Before and after
Before calibration, we measure the average difference between the desired color and the one actually displayed by the screen. Results are given in terms of the average dE 94 determined from 18 colors.
average dE > 3: rendering isn’t perfect and is actually problematic above 5.
average dE < 3: color fidelity can be considered satisfactory.
average dE < 2: excellent and good for touching up photos.
average dE < 1: this is almost perfect and we can safely say that the human eye won’t detect the slight differences.
A standard screen has an average dE between 2 and 7. Two thirds of these are over 4.
After calibration, all screens are below 1 and all benefit from the new profile!
And it’s these profiles that we provide you with. In the below pages, we give you a first list of monitors and their associated profiles (Hopefully, yours will be there.) Download and install it on your computer and see if it’s better with than without. Finally, if you are so disposed, give us some feedback by email. Here are the manufacturers in alphabetical order and the profiles for some of their screens:
A to G : Acer, Apple, Asus, Dell...
H to N : HP, Hyundaï, Iiyama, Nec...
O to T : Philips, Samsung, Sensy...
U to Z : ViewSonic, Yusmart, Zalman...
We also tested their utility with various configurations and put these results in another article (Are our calibration profiles good for all computers?). We wanted to know if a profile created on a specific configuration (in this case Windows Vista + an NVIDIA card) was usable in other contexts : XP + ATI, Leopard + NVIDIA, etc. and this was indeed the case.
Note: the profile will only function on screens equipped with the same panels (as ours) and models with identical components. Unfortunately, sometimes manufacturers change panels without telling you. In this case the profile will not work and you will have to go back and return to default sRGB settings.
