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Step 8 - Response Measurement

The response measurement step gives you brief instructions how to perform a response measurement and allows you to begin the process.

When you are ready to begin, press the "Begin Measuring" button. If you have not completed the black level measurement in the previous step, the button will be dimmed until you do so.

The response measurement screen has two sliders in it - one vertical and one horizontal. The vertical slider controls the brightness of the solid calibration patch, while the horizontal slider determines which color values are used to produce the pattern calibration patch. The basic idea is to adjust the brightness of the solid patch, making it lighter or darker, until it matches the intensity of the patterned patch adjacent to it. You will need to blur your vision by squinting or by focusing in the distance in order to make the patterned patch appear to be a solid, uniform intensity. Once you get the hang of it, it's relatively easy to do.

Again, if you have an LCD, you should keep your head stationary throughout all of the measurements. Here's a tip. It helps to make a chin rest out of a stack of books.

Initially, only the halfway (50%) point can be measured because there are only two known color values to make a pattern from - full intensity and black. Move the vertical slider until the two patches appear to be the exact same intensity. A word of advice: This first calibration point is the most important because later measurement points will be dependent on this first point. If you don't get it quite right here, the errors will magnify as you go along and the accuracy of the final profile will be reduced.

After adjusting the brightness of this initial point, you must move the horizontal slider to “accept” the value and activate new calibration points. After doing this, you will get two new points. The measured point will change to a small lock icon and new calibration points will become available, illustrated by gray vertical lines.

Simply move the horizontal slider to the right to select the new point to the right. When you do this, the pattern will change in intensity because it will be using different intensities to make the test pattern. The "Next Color" button will also be activated, but don't touch it until you're finished with all the measurements for the current color. Again, move the vertical slider until the two patches appear to be the exact same intensity.

When the patches match, move the horizontal slider to accept the value and activate additional calibration points. Now to form good calibration habits, you should move to the point on the left that was available immediately after the first measurement before you attempt to measure any of the other available points. Again, move the vertical slider until the two patches appear to be the exact same intensity, then move the horizontal slider to accept the value and activate additional calibration points.

After you measure these three points, you will begin to have a large number of points available for measurement. Try to use the points that are spaced halfway between already measured points, or halfway between a measured point and black or full intensity, like we have done so far. You should not choose points that are immediately adjacent to already measured points until you are done with all your measurements and need to return to "tweak" a particular area of the curve. The goal is to measure points that will subdivide long sections of the curve before measuring points close to other points.

After you have measured these three points, you simply repeat the process of selecting new points and measuring them. However, you don't need to measure every available point. Rather, after you have measured a point, you should slide the horizontal slider left and right across the available points to see if the pattern produced at each one matches the solid color patch at each one. If they match, there is no need to measure that point. If it doesn't match, you should measure it.


On LCDs, you may find that you have to calibrate more points to the left of halfway, while you only need to calibrate one or two on the right, which is common. In addition, most displays can be measured very accurately with only 7 to 8 points.

When you find that the test patterns match at each of the available test points and you are finished measuring this color, press the "Next Color" button to go to the next color. If the "Next Color" button is not active, then you have not moved the horizontal slider after the last point was measured. Simply move the horizontal slider to accept the value at the last measurement point and activate the "Next Color" button.

When you have completed this response measurement step, the "Measure" button will be renamed "Re-Measure" to indicate that the measurement has been completed.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind: