Ensuring that your monitor is properly calibrated is crucial to achieving digital and printed photos that are true to the original image in terms of colour and other attributes. If you’d like a more detailed explanation, I suggest you read my article for a better understanding of why monitor calibration and profiling are so important.
Recently BenQ upgraded their calibration software, and the new Palette Master Ultimate, is not only user-friendly and fast and I find it practical to use the manufacturer’s software to calibrate and profile my monitor.
Hardware calibration offers a distinct advantage over software calibration in that the correction curves generated by the calibration software are applied directly to the monitor’s Look Up Table (LUT). In contrast, software calibration applies these correction curves to the graphics card. The main advantage of applying the correction curves to the LUT is that the LUT typically offers a greater number of colour levels than the video card.
Calibration and profiling
To perform hardware calibration, it’s important to connect the monitor to your computer with the USB cable connected to one of the monitor’s side ports.
Download the Palette Master Ultimate software and install it on your computer. Connect your colorimeter sensor to your computer and start the Palette Master Ultimate software.
In the interface of Palette Master Ultimate select the Model Name of your monitor and the calibrator you are using and then click on start.
Display settings
Under Target Name you can for example use the date of when you are performing the calibration.
Luminance: 120 cd/m2, if we have selected D65 as White Point. In case of profiling for printing, this value would be too high and better to select something between 60 cd/m2 and 80 cd/m2
White Point: D65 (6500K), perfect especially for images that will be published online
Gamut: Native
Gamma: 2.2
Monitor settings
Once the calibration settings are set it is time to proceed with the profiling/measurement process!
Profiling
Mount the colorimeter on the slightly tilted monitor and follow the instructions on the screen. Once the measurement process starts it will take around 5 minutes before the basic results will appear on the screen.
Ready to begin with the calibration, click on START
Conclusions
I find the Palette Master Ultimate software to be extremely user-friendly and straightforward when it comes to calibrating and profiling the monitor. If you own a BenQ SW Series monitor, there’s no reason not to make the most of this software, especially as it’s the only option that allows you to save your calibration directly to the monitor’s LUT.
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