How do I fine-tune colour temperature on my monitors?

5

Problem: I bought the same monitor twice, one used, the other refurbished. Both are still fairly new and in very good condition. The colour temperature of one tinges slightly but noticeably more into the red. I want to adjust it to fit the other, more natural-looking one.

I tried to do so with the menus of the monitors, but the colour temperature setting make far too large jumps. I really only need to go a few Kelvin up or down.

I've googled it to exhaustion, but I can't seem to find a fitting answer. My two monitors are Dell UltraSharp U2412M, they have LED background lighting and e-IPS.

Most of that should be unimportant to most of you, but what might be important is that LEDs mean a fairly stable colour temperature. Just to be sure, I've let them warm up for an hour, but it really doesn't make much of a difference.

My graphics card is the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560, I run both monitors with it and they both use DVI-D. The NVIDIA drivers don't seem to have according options.

PaterFrog

Posted 2013-12-13T18:34:05.433

Reputation: 53

Answers

3

I run two U2713H, which is I believe the same base monitor, just a few inches larger--so this should work for you too.

I use a free program called f.lux to fine-tune the kelvin. It is really designed to protect against eye strain of the extremely bright settings that most monitors come with out-of-the-box (and uninformed users tend to stick with). So by default the program finds your location and sets the color temperature to rise and fall as the sun does in your region. But yu can manipulate it however you want by selecting the color temperature for it to stay at permanently. I do something in-between. I have it set permanently to what I find comfortable during the day to avoid eye strain, and then have an adjustment for evenings that is not too far off. If I am doing color sensitive design, it has a function to turn off for an hour without having to close the program down.

I also use a Datacolor Spyder 4 Pro to maintain the same color calibration. It's worth the money if you're doing color sensitive work professionally.

Paul

Posted 2013-12-13T18:34:05.433

Reputation: 4 434

1Hey, thanks for your answer. I'm gonna check into that f.lux to see if it is what I want (from what you said, it seems to be). I find it strange that google didn't direct me to it, instead I got all kinds of gamma, contrast, phase and clocking guides to calibrate my monitors (already done all that...). – PaterFrog – 2013-12-13T19:07:51.923

1Wow. Perfect answer. f.lux actually fixed the entire problem all by itself. I didn't have to do more than install it, click the Extended Color Range thing in one of it's (few) menus, which prompted me to restart my computer, voila, issue resolved. Dunno why or how, but I'm happy with it. XD Both monitors seem to have extactly the same coloring and temperature now. – PaterFrog – 2013-12-13T19:23:33.237

Glad it worked! It is purposely somewhat of a simplistic tool as it is not meant for what we are using it for. It does not allow increments of less than 100, for example. But it does everything out-of-the-box and works for me (and evidently you too). So I'm glad! – Paul – 2013-12-13T20:46:54.880

Asked: 2013-12-13T18:34:05.433

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Active: 2016-04-05T13:35:57.560