Question for the long time Skinners

[Baumer]

As I've delved into making my first skin, I've learned quite a bit about colors and color standards. And I was wondering what systems or programs do most of the experienced skinners use to calibrate their monitors?

Has anyone from HTC posted how it's done at "corporate", or how the skinners should do it?

I did a couple of searches but didn't find anything definitive so I was just curious.

<S> Baumer

[Krusty]

Your average modern LCD requires no calibration.

Only older CRTs will really need this. I played around with it a lot. Especially as the grey start burning out and all shades show simply as black, you really have to tweak the heck out of it, but in the end a failing monitor just gets worse and worse until you replace it.

If you're on an LCD don't screw with it if everything else you do looks good (web images, digital pics you took of yourself and your family/pets, etc).

There are some that would disagree, but overall that is my rule of thumb. Moving to a CRT all those years back made a world of difference for me.

[Skuzzy]

There are only a couple of LCD monitors available, in the world, that can accurately produce color as well the top of the line professional CRT monitors can.  It is the nature of the beast.

99% of the LCD monitors availables cannot reproduce colors accurately.  They can get close, and that is about as good as it will get.  They all desparately need to be color calibrated though.  The defaults they all ship with are designed to make the image stand out on a store shelf in a brightly lit room.

Any CRT needs to be calibrated as well.  However, there were crappy CRT's that you could not calibrate to get any decent color reproduction out of.  There are also LCD panels in the same shape.  The whizbang LCD's panels we have here were horribly out of calibration, out of the box.

It is not a matter of disagreeing, it is a matter of facts.


Waffle and Superfly use Photoshop as the primary tool to create textures.

[Baumer]

Thanks for the feedback, I understand some of the issues with LCDs' that's what prompted my discussion. Also, my wife works in the ink manufacturing business and I've seen her color matching lab several times, so I know that there are many methods to calibrating monitors.

I was just wondering what I should use to calibrate my monitor so it's close to what everyone else has.  


[edit:] If it's not something to worry about, I'm fine with that. I just could not find anything one way or the other to be sure.

[Skuzzy]

It would be nice Baumer, but not a requirement.

LCD panels are pretty much what they are.  There is not much you can do to get them to produce accurate color.  It all starts with the monitor itself.  I doubt very few people would be willing to pay up for an LCD monitor that can get close to producing an accurate color spectrum.  They are pretty pricey and they readily motion blur.

With LCD, you get one or the other, but not both.  Accurate color ot less motion blur?  Take your pick.