How to Test the Image Quality of a Monitor
LCD monitor test images

  



Welcome to the Lagom LCD monitor test pages. With the test images
on these pages, you can easily adjust the settings of your monitor to
get the best possible picture quality. Additionally, there are a
number of test images that can help you to judge the image quality of
a monitor. You can check the images on this webpage or put them on a
usb stick and try them in the computer store like I did when I created
these test patterns.  These test images are much more revealing
regarding monitor shortcomings than ordinary photographs.

I'm offering these pages for free. In return, I just ask you to
respect my copyright. Do not place these images on other websites or
web forums, and don't link directly to the images.

How to use these pages

Monitor calibration

With the first few test images, you can calibrate your monitor by adjusting
the brightness, contrast, clock/phase, sharpness, and gamma settings of the
monitor. I recommend to go through them in the order they are presented. If
you use this page in a shop, don't assume that the contrast and other
settings are at reasonable values before making a judgement. The images are
best viewed in a dim or dark environment and in full-screen mode. In most
browsers, F11 switches to full-screen mode. If switching off the lights is
not possible, try using a piece of cardboard to shield environmental light.

If you have any kind of color management system active in your operating 
system or video-card driver, then disable that first. First make adjustments
to the monitor settings to let it behave as close to the ideal as possible,
and only after that you can use the color management to compensate for any
small deviations that remain.

Actually, calibration is not really the correct term. Calibrating
a monitor would mean that you measure the response of the monitor and then
compensate for non-ideal behavior elsewhere, for example in the video-card
driver. Here, you are supposed to change the properties of the monitor
itself to let it approach the ideal better. But then, who cares whether you
call it monitor adjustment or monitor calibration...

Alternative views

  Single-page version
  If you already know how to use these images.
  Download
  For viewing the images off-line (120 kB ZIP).
  Without sRGB profiles
  All images, but with the color profiles stripped, in case you
  want to see the effect of your OS color management.
    

Assessing monitor quality

More towards the end of this page series are the inversion test,
the response-time test, and the various viewing-angle tests. These
tests can reveal monitor properties that cannot be changed.


   

© Copyright Han-Kwang Nienhuys, 2008. The text and accompanying images may not be redistributed. This includes placing the images on other websites, either as a copy or through hotlinking. Read more...
						       


  Last modified 18 May 2008	    


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