Monitor window brightness

[Ken Jarstad]

Many folks, including myself, have complained about the Monitor window brightness while editing video. I have found a solution that seems to work for me. After playing around with several utilities that allow adjustment of the video monitor gamma I settled upon using one named 'Gamma Panel'.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/Gamma_Panel_d2796.html

I have a hot key sequence set to adjust my monitor display gamma to 1.5 and another one set to restore the default. I set my PrEl v2 'User Interface Brightness' in Preferences all the way left to Darker. I also de-selected 'Use Windows Background Color' since this arrangement seems to give the best contrast to all the elements.

I don't normally like to run any application with such a dark appearing interface but this does make the Monitor window display look good to me. It also makes viewing videos in VirtualDub watchable for the first time.

[Chuck Engels]

Nice find Ken, and Majorgeeks.com is a cool place too!

[Bobby]

If you want to be serious about printing stills, you should really invest in a hardware screen profiler (monitor calibrator), such as the Colorvision Spyder series, among a number of others. They are not cheap, but worth the money if you are serious.

How this relates to video is a bit less obvious. I think at some point in time, people will get serious about make sure that what they see on the screen matches what they view on the TV, but our end of the hobby just isn't that intense yet.

Nevertheless, I have one and use it regularly (as monitors, especially LCD monitors) do vary over time.

[Gerry]

If you want to be serious about printing stills, you should really invest in a hardware screen profiler (monitor calibrator), such as the Colorvision Spyder series, among a number of others. They are not cheap, but worth the money if you are serious.

Thanks for this tip, Bob. I just ordered one this morning. I write and photograph a lot of magazine articles and the color of the shots on my LCD monitor always looks off to me. Then after I adjust it in Photoshop, the printing in the magazine looks off. I realize I can't affect the latter, but knowing that the former is adjusted correctly will be a big help.