One Bare Tree Gallery More Articles My Thoughts on Optimizing Your Monitor's Settings by Jackie van Oostrom Wallpapers can look very different depending upon the type of monitor you have & the monitor's settings. On one monitor a wallpaper image may look washed out & lacking colour while on another monitor the same wallpaper may look as though it has just the right amount of colour saturation. One monitor may display a wallpaper image as being too dark & another monitor may show the image as being of optimal brightness. As a result of this variation among monitors I thought I would include a section on this site explaining my thoughts on optimizing your monitor's settings. My wallpapers are created based on how I see them on my monitor & so my wallpapers are created based on my monitor's settings. My aim is for each of my wallpaper purchasers to have the best view possible of my wallpapers. Ideally, I want each of you to see the wallpapers on your monitor as I see them on mine. I have a 22 inch LCD monitor & I believe my monitor has the optimal monitor settings to display my wallpaper images. This is entirely subjective though, & based on my own perception. My monitor settings are, in my opinion, ideal but you should ultimately rely on your own judgment of how you want the wallpapers to look. Simply put, I like how my images look on my monitor. Screen Resolution The Free Gallery wallpaper images have a resolution of 1024 x 768 & so if you have a standard 17 inch monitor I would recommend that you set your desktop at a resolution of 1024 x 768 & centre the image. The wallpaper image will completely fill a monitor at these settings. If you have a 22 inch LCD monitor then I would recommend that you set your desktop at a resolution of 1280 x 800 & centre the image. You will have some empty space to the right & to the left of your image. I set the desktop colour to black so that it appears to recede into the background. But you could also choose to set the colour to something that tones in with the general colour tones of the image. I strongly recommend that you centre the wallpaper image on a 22 inch LCD monitor with a resolution of 1280 x 800. The wallpaper image will display with no distortion. If you choose to stretch the image to completely fill your monitor's display, you will distort the image so that it looks awful. Colour Quality Set your Colour Quality to Highest (32 bit). Gamma The gamma setting I have settled on for my monitor is 2.2. I really think that 2.2 on a Windows system is ideal for my 22 inch LCD monitor. The colours are vibrant but not over the top & the images are not too dark or too light. I have also tried a gamma setting of 2.0 and it was ok for displaying my wallpaper images. But I decided that 2.2 was the most ideal setting. If you have a Mac then you could try a gamma of 1.8. A free programme called QuickGamma is great for setting the gamma of your monitor. Performance & Quality Settings * Image Settings ~ Choose High Quality * Antialiasing Settings ~ Choose Application controlled * Anisotropic Filtering ~ Choose Application controlled Colour Correction On my NVIDIA GeForce 6200 TurboCache graphics card Control Panel I have 'Digital Vibrance' set to Off & 'Image Sharpening' set to its minimum setting. I have left the Brightness & Contrast settings set at their default levels which is 100% on my NVIDIA GeForce 6200 TurboCache graphics card Control Panel. My monitor setting for Contrast is 70% & my monitor setting for Brightness is 70%. Colour Adjust Set the Colour Adjust on your monitor to 6500K. My Opinion The above settings were all decided upon based on my opinion of how I like my wallpapers to look. People vary in how they like their monitor displays to look though & so if your preference is different to mine & you think that your settings are giving you a better result in viewing my wallpapers then go for it. If the monitor settings appear too bright for your eyes then please reduce the brightness settings accordingly. Thank you for reading this article. Please visit my Free Gallery & help yourself to some free wallpaper. Images in the gallery contain artistic nudity. More Articles ~        ~        ~        ~        ~        ~        ~ Site Map Store Free Gallery Sneak Peek Vault ~ Entry by paid subscription only Home ~        ~        ~        ~        ~        ~        ~ Copyright©2004-2008 Jackie van Oostrom, One Bare Tree Gallery