How
do I know my monitor is not lying? Calibrate a Monitor using the SMPTE Color
Bars
Calibrate a Monitor using the SMPTE Color Bars
On professional studio monitors: calibrating your NTSC monitor is done by activating blue channel only.
Some monitors use a grey scale which is what is pictured in this article.
To begin, send the SMPTE color bar pattern to a monitor.
The color bars may be generated in a signal generator or studio camera.
Some non-Linear Editors such as Apple's Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere contain bars and tone generators that can be placed on the timeline.
For best results, the monitor should be allowed to warm up before calibration and should not have too much direct light falling on to the screen.
If the monitor has a Degauss button, it should be used to reset the magnetic field on the monitor.
Then, the monitor is set to show only the blue channel of the picture, which on a professional monitor is done by selecting the Blue Only option.
On an older monitor without a Blue Only option, the red and green color channels can be turned off to achieve the same effect.
The resulting picture will appear in different shades of blue or gray.
The aim is to make the color and brightness of the alternating vertical bars match with the smaller rectangular bars underneath them.
The phase and chroma controls on the monitor are adjusted until as close a match as possible is obtained.
Once adjusted, the red and green bars are turned back on.
Brightness (or luminance) is adjusted by the "pluge" pattern of three small grayscale bars which is located beneath the main red bar.
The picture is too bright if all three bars can be distinguished, and too dark if none of the bars can be distinguished.
Ideally, the brightness should be set so that only the right-most bar is visible.
The contrast control should be adjusted so that the 100% white reference square in the lower left is bright enough to appear as white.
If the dark squares on either side appear to glow, the contrast is set too high.
