How to calibrate your monitor?

[Cyangmou]

I am using 2 monitors (laptop disply + extern monitor). The thing is that the colors appear really different on each one and the brightness/contrast level seems to be different to.
Although I tried to calibrate the monitors right I am not sure if I did it right (calibrated both of them more than once). Because of that I wanted to know if somebody has a better method to calibrate the monitor than try&error.

How should the colors appear? (the black tones seem to be equal between 0-10 brightness level graphic program on a high contrast monitor) Is it better to divide between the dark tones while the brighter tones get very light and desaturated?
How do you usually calibrate your monitor?

[Facet]

Are you just trying to sync the two monitors? there's bound to be some differences (although hopefully minor) the best you can do is to try and get the best range out of both screens independently using some simple graphs like these maybe and note the idosyncrasies to keep in mind when you're working. You don't want to lose any range in either for the sake of consistancy. 

[blumunkee]

There is equipment for color/gamma syncing display, but such things cost hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars.

Unless your laptop and monitor are made by the same company, and the same manufacturer, and the same year, and the same display technology, there are going to be differences.

My suggestion is to be patient, and tweak while you are working. Over a span of a couple of weeks, I set my laptop and monitor as close as possible. Tweak it during the day, then at night-time tweak it some more. Eventually your need to tweak will stop, and you'll be good to go.

Also, having different looking displays can serve as a basic sanity check that your art will be readable on other people's displays.

[Ai]

To start by getting a coarse idea of the actual differences in monitor color performance, you could perform the calibrations from http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/ on them both, and compare the result.

Keep in mind that laptop screens are quite unreliable WRT color reproduction. You may find it's simply impossible to get a result comparable to your external monitor.

[Cyangmou]

I am not trying to sync the monitors (@ facet). I know the Laptop monitor is by far weaker than the extern monitor. As the moment it's nice to compare the impression (@blumunkee). The site you posted seems to be pretty nice and I definitely have to check it out (@ai)

The main problem I spotted so far is that I simple don't know what's right and what's wrong with the calibration. FOr example with the HSV color system it's at the moment hard for me to tell the difference between 0 (pure black) and 20 - they all seem to be pretty dark compared to light tones, and if there is a slight gradient between 5-10 it's hard to tell that here is a gradient. I tried different calibarations and all have their own advantages and disadvantages - the really bad thing is that it's also impossible to make sure that the colors of the images you are create are looking good on any monitor. I don't checked out the site and  maybe it'll help me, but the big question for me is if it's even worth to think about this (have oyou ever asked yourself similar questions?) or if I simple have to invest money in a new and professional extern monitor to make sure that my result will look good on other monitors too.

[Ai]

Having a pro monitor won't save you from having to think about calibration -- It just means the result after calibration will look better. My understanding of the problem is that it's all about what shades you can distinguish. If your monitor is well calibrated, you will be able to easily tell the difference between 0 and 20 Value, especially in a stepped gradient, and the contrast will be well balanced so you can discern details in every part.

That's the step of establishing a good baseline. Then you might want to get a colorimeter (eg a Spyder) and profile some 'typical' or 'low-end' displays (maybe you'd also want to profile a couple of phone displays, if some of your work targets phones). Using those profiles, you would be able to get a visual proof of how your images would look on those low-end displays.

It's fair enough to say that people fuck up their brightness/contrast settings all the time though. Unless you are making art for a game, in which you could make a simple calibration guide available to them, there's nothing that can be done about that by you.

[Cyangmou]

I took myself a hour to recalibrate both monitors with the site you linked Ai.
I found out that the Laptop monitor has general a better distinguishment of the black tones, but the colors are duller.
I also found out that the problem I have with the black tones is obviously caused by the gamma value. I adjustet my gamma so that it's near to the 2.2 value (most 2.1) but I made it a bit brighter. The good thing is now that I know that my extern monitor had to much contrast and was to dark (as I feared).
The black level test was quite exciting to. I improved my calibration a lot (from 13 down to 7 visible).

Thanks for that great link Ai