using a color reference card and a photo camera to calibrate a monitor

[Edmund Humenberger <edmund humenberger onsitebroadcast at>]

I was fascinated by the complexity to get good colour out of computers.

At Cebit 1995 (the biggest computer fare in the world) I saw the result
of research to calibrate a printer.

They did essentially the following.

a) Scann the color-reference sheet.
b) print a color-patch sheet
c) scann the printed color-patch sheet

do the math and you get a color-profile for the scanner and the printer.


Then I was thinking if that would be possible for monitors?

And I found the following solution:

a) put a color-reference directly on top of the LCD pannel of the
monitor.
Each colorfield on the color reference does have a hole where the color
of the monitor can be seen. Let the software display the color of the
field.

b) make a picture of the monitor with the color reference and the color
displayed by the monitor in the holes with your ordinary digital camera.

Compare the color of the color-reference with the color displayed by the
monitor and do the math. You get a color profile of the monitor.

This should do away with the need of separate hardware. But for sure it
is not the most accurate method, but better than nothing.

just my 0.02 cents

All my thoughts might be wrong.

yours

Edmund