OT: Monitor brightness

Can some of you folks tell me what your brightness settings are on your calibrated LCD monitors? I have my brightness turned down quite low, like 15-25 but not sure if I need to be a little brighter. The prints seem to come out ok so maybe that's a good indicator?? I am calibrated with a Spyder 3 Pro.....can't afford the x-brite thing Nat talks about.

This brings up another question while I'm thinking about it. If I profile the monitor for photos and have the brightness down, can I turn the brightness up for other apps and then back down for photos without messing up the profile?

By the way, thanks Nat...I entered your drawing! Thanks for the opportunity.

Hi Jack,
If we're calibrating with an instrument, then we usually talk about brightness in terms of "candelas per meter squared" or cd/m2. Most people run between 80 - 120 cd/m2. It's probably not that helpful to compare the brightness gauge built into the monitor, because every monitor (especially LCD's) is different. One of my LCD's is at 10% and the other is at 40% and they both look about the same brightness - around 110 cd/m2.

I think your Spyder 3 Pro software does not offer you the ability to dial into a specific brightness (the Elite does). But you can certainly make brightness decisions by eye. Just be sure to profile after changing the brightness.

You should be safe changing the brightness as long as you always put the brightness level back to where you profiled it. There's an article from one of our newsletters about this whole subject of monitor brightness and how it relates to print matching:
http://www.colorwiki.com/wiki/My_Printer_Is_Too_Dark

Patrick Herold
Chromix Tech Support
www.chromix.com

Jack, I would not recommend changing your brightness when working on your prints. LCD monitors are way too bright by nature. If your prints are coming out accurate, count yourself lucky and don't mess with a thing. If you are finding it too dark for regular use, you can either change your brightness and bring it back when doing photo work, or some monitors have presets, so you might be on custom now and you have a "Movie" mode or something. You can switch to one of those and come back to "Custom" and it should be right back to where you left it.

Koveh, I don't change the brightness when working on prints...all that part works great! What I am referring too is that I use this monitor to watch TV sometimes so the brightness needs to come up. I want to increase the brightness while watching TV but bring it back down when working on prints...hopefully without changing the profile. It seems reasonable that I could do this but just wasn't totally sure if it would mess up the calibration.

I can't think of a reason why it would mess up your calibration. I have sat on the calibration screen and adjusted my brightness up X amount and back down X amount and be right back to perfect level, so I assume the same holds true anytime.

Thats what I was looking for Koveh....thanks!