Originally Posted by
MonarchX 
Erm, your WB has to be off by a mind-boggling amount to reduce your contrast ratio by that much. My old SPVA came with horrible settings, about 20% more blue for every grayscale level than what 6500K needs. After calibration it lost about 500:1 CR. Most other sets lose anywhere between 200-800 CR, but when we're talking about 4000:1+ CR, 800:1 isn't THAT big of a loss. I've owned VG248QE and calibrated several TN panels. I think the worst case was a loss of 300:1 CR or something like that. I admit, when a TN panel comes with native 800:1 CR, a 300:1 loss can be considered rather big, but have you seen how many people complain about the image quality that they suddenly found acceptable AFTER calibration? At those pathetically low levels, CR is already so low that it no longer compensates for an accurate calibration, which can't really performed, considering that many TN panels have 64 grayscale levels that mimic 255 levels through dithering and all known TN gamma shift issues. A TN panel that comes with a native 800:1 CR that ends up having a 500:1 CR after calibration is considered to be a "500:1 CR TN Panel" if that the value at 6500K.
IPS monitors tend to be far better "factory-calibrated", but can still lose some CR, which, just like with TN panels, is very low. Not fully calibrating an IPS monitor defeats the very point of IPS technology that was designed with color accuracy in mind. Most IPS monitors today have very accurate colorspace (including 0-99% saturation sweeps), but they still need grayscale adjustments for WB and gamma that is another factor that defines how deep or flat the image is. High CR with overly low inaccurate gamma is almost as bad a low CR and accurate gamma when it comes to image depth.
ANY screen out there should have a contrast ratio of AT LEAST 4000:1 if not 5000:1 in my humble opinion. Even with 5000:1 CR, I still use bias lighting because with all the lights off, such a CR still produces rather light grays. Hell, my old folks have a 7500:1 CR Samsung F5350 plasma set that they can't watch without bias light after I showed them how important black levels are and how bias lighting affects our perception of them, even though that TV has a rather low/dim maximum white point (110cd/m^2 I think) that At such low luminance levels, out eyes are immensely sensitive and can tell the difference between 10000:1 and 15000:1 CR with all the lights off, which is why I still value older KURO plasma sets without the front glass cover.
Once and for all:
- Each display unit requires its own calibration. You cannot use an ICC profile someone made for their monitor on yours and expect it to be accurate. There is a 94% chance that someone else's calibration will actually worsen your display accuracy. Follow the next line and measure ICC profiles you obtained elsewhere, but your PC and for your exact panel unit.
- Buy or rent ColorMunki Display or i1Display Pro colorimeter. Spyder colorimeters, including Spyder4Elite, are very inaccurate, which defeats the very idea of calibration.
- Learn how to use
HCFR Calibration display accuracy measurement software (3.1.5.0 or later), and
DiscaplGUI easy interface software (2.0.0.0 or later) for
ArgyllCMS calibration software (x86 1.6.3 or later), all of which are free, work well and support each other. ArgyllCMS is rather new, more accurate than any known LUT / 3DLUT calibration software, but its slow (20-30 minutes for a simple LUT is needed) and it is DOS-command-based (LOL, right?), UNLESS you use it with DispcalGUI, a very good, easy-to-use, Windows-based UI. DispcalGUI is THE UI for ArgyllCMS. For software calibration to be as accurate as it can be, make sure that your 100th % grayscale level, or simply your brightest white point, is calibrated to D65 6500K as close as it possibly can be (up to 100% accuracy), using R, G, and B hardware controls in display's OSD adjustment settings.
- Use D65, 6500K, and BT.1886 Gamma/Tone Curve in your DispcalGUI/ArgyllCMS calibration. Power-law gamma (2.2) will either fully crush low CR TN black levels, or make them too hard to see on 1000:1 CR panels, but most importantly power-law gamma is plain WRONG from color science perspective. Film mastering that supposedly uses power-law 2.2 gamma uses super high-end reference displays with extremely low black levels, which most monitors and even TV's cannot produce, making BT.1886 the only real and acceptable gamma choice.
- Use bias lighting for all low CR displays (IPS, PLS, TN, AHVA, even some MVA) and even good CR displays to greatly improve the perception of black levels you panel produces. PM me for good bias lighting sources if you want.
- Learn how to use Borderless (FullScreen) Window mode in games and how to use "Windowed Borderless Gaming" program to accomplish that for games that do not have a built-in Borderless/Fullscreen Window mode. Borderless Window, Borderless FullScreen Window, FullScreen Window, Window(ed) FullScreen, and etc. are all the same, but different games call it differently. Its just a Window mode, that runs the game in a borlderless window, but uses your display's maximum resolution, looks 100% identical to normal FullScreen mode, and AFAIK (I could be wrong on this one) cannot be used with V-Sync, even if V-Sync box is checked or B-Sync is set to "Enabled", "On", etc.
- Don't use ICC/.ICM profiles because Windows Color Management system is AWFUL. It often switches profiles on its own for no good reason and it is the worst of ways to enforce your calibration profiles. Delete ALL ICC "Device" tab and "All Profiles" tab profiles that you can. ICC profiles contain more info than games can use and only the LUT portion of ICC profiles is usable by games that do not reset LUT's (through DirectX API, but I am not 100% sure), which is the case for all games that support Borderless FullScreen Window mode and even some that only support FullScreen mode. If, for whatever reason, you want to stick with ICC profiles, use DIspcalGUI management.
- Use LUT-forcing programs, like Monitor Calibration Wizard (MCW), my personal preference. On Windows 8/8.1, install MCW using "Run as Administrator" or else you might have profile issue of profiles being saved in a hard-to-find location instead of the installation folder. Launch MCW the same way, using "Run as Administrator". Do not try to capture & save more than 1 single LUT in MCW until you restart, so for each new LUT you want to capture and save, you need to restart first. It may seem like you don't, but trust me - you DO! MCW works only on one monitor at a time, which would be the default/main/0 or 1 monitor. To use it for multiple monitors, you have to set whichever monitor you want to apply LUT for to being the main/default/0 or 1 monitor. Its a hassle, but IMHO, its well worth it. DispcalGUI, which isn't as forceful as MCW, is another ICC management system and works with both - ICC profiles, LUT profiles, and it is also used as the best software UI for ArgyllCMS calibration software. If you do decide to use DispcalGUI and apply your calibration as an ICC profile, then make sure to delete all the ICC profiles in Windows Color Management system settings like I stated earlier BEFORE you start using DispcalGUI. CPKeeper is yet another program to manage ICC-only profiles and 2 monitors, but it is NOWHERE as good as MCW in terms of forcefulness, and nowhere as good and flexible as DispcalGUI. I would use CPKeeper as the last resort.
- At times it is hard to say if your LUT/calibration was applied to whichever game in / with regular FullScreen mode. To find out if your LUT works in whichever game, create a custom Monitor Calibration Wizard profile with an overly high or overly low gamma that makes the screen waaay too bright or waaay to dark. Apply that LUT to that game. If the game becomes waaay too dark or waaay too bright like your saved LUT, then you know for sure your real/other proper accurate calibration LUT you saved also works just fine in that game. This is another advantage of MCW as you can quickly create such a LUT without the need of figuring out what type of calibration you would need and performing it in DispcalGUI to achieve the waay too dark / too light image using gamma-only.
- Most of the time, switching between 60Hz and 120Hz modes, Normal and LightBoost/ULMB modes will require a separate calibration, which means it is often best to leave OSD/hardware display adjustments, like R, G, and B drives, gamma, brightness, contrast, black level, etc. at the exact value for ALL modes. Perform software-only calibration to obtain LUT's for each mode you plan on using, which will allow you to switch between each captured & saved LUT for each mode you need with a 2-3 mouse clicks. The same applies to LightBoost modes. Measure your calibration in different modes if you don't believe me.
- PM me for more advice or if you have questions/want a thorough guide, but don't do so
unless you are willing to spend money at least on ColorMunki Display or i1Display Pro colorimeter, to which I have no affiliations or connections of any type! Spyder4 doesn't count - its too inaccurate to be worth using for any display calibration. All the software you'll ever need is 100% $-free and catch-free, aside from requiring you to spend time learning how to use it.
Some may call the above worthless crap, BS, etc., and others will disagree. The truth is that the above took me many months to acquire from all sorts of articles, AVS Display Calibration forums, and a seriously huge number of calibrations on my HDTV and my monitors before I could say to myself "I know how to calibrate HDTV's and monitors". Some of it is preference, but the type of preference that would be preferred by those who are aware of all the facts, and some of it are simply facts that cannot be denied. I just know I would've prefer to spend $1500 on the information above than to foolishly spend it on CalMAN v5 Commercial package, which is what I did due to lack of information. Don't make my mistake - CalMAN software has the best graphics interface, but the interface itself is VERY slow and the program itself does not produce nearly as accurate display LUT / 3D LUT profiles as ArgyllCMS. Avoid, avoid, and guess what? AVOID, unless you are highly informed & experienced calibrator, or you are making money off your calibrations, but even then, you can get by with good and free HCFR, which used to be highly outdated, but recently had a 3rd party developer work on it, which made it very friendly with ArgyllCMS, made it support most mainstream colorimeters & spectrophotometers, removed ALL major function-related bugs (such as Black Level animated test not displaying the right grayscale levels), added good bit of needed features and functions (like ITU-R BT.1886 gamma support), and overall made it a tool that both newbies and professionals can depend on.
