Screen Calibration – Where’s my contrast?

If you’ve used Pantone’s huey for screen calibration, then you need to know about the hueyPRO. Additionally, if you think something’s up with your monitor because you can’t manually set the contrast, you want to read this. I bumped into this with a Dell 2001FP.

As someone who does a lot of photography, and I mean a lot of photography, I decided to invest in something that would do color calibration on my monitor.

A while back I purchased Pantone’s Huey and wrote a review saying just how much I loved it. [Pantone Software Update Page]

Since that review, Pantone has only made things better. My primary wish for dual monitor support has been granted in the form of the Pantone hueyPRO.

Once again, a fine quality product at an affordable price to end consumers rolls out the doors of Pantone. Not only do you get the device, a KlearScreen Starter Kit (with a polishing cloth), but you also get a Pantone Book of swatches of 100 Top Colors.

By simply dragging the application to the corresponding monitor, it’s possible to independently calibrate a monitor. That’s just plain cool, much better than drop down boxes and such.

This is where a new mystery appeared. As I was exploring how to manually calibrate a monitor, by setting the Brightness / Contrast by hand, I was startled to discover that my Dell 2001FP monitor wouldn’t allow me to adjust the contrast. It was like the firmware knew about it, but things were disabled.

Then I found this tidbit in the Brightness/Contrast section of the Dell 2001FP Documentation:

“Note: When using ‘2: DVI-D Input’, the contrast adjustment is not available.”

Makes sense. When a DVI connection is used, as I had done, the contrast control is no longer needed. My monitor doesn’t have a problem, all is well with the world.

REVIEW: Walt gives the Pantone hueyPRO a big thumbs up!!!

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