Profiling software can both calibrate and characterize your monitor. Calibrating your monitor brings it into compliance with a predefined standard—for example, adjusting your monitor so that it displays color using the graphics arts standard white point color temperature of 5000 K (Kelvin). Characterizing your monitor simply creates a profile that describes how the monitor is currently reproducing color.

Monitor calibration involves adjusting the following video settings:

Brightness and contrast

The overall level and range, respectively, of display intensity. These parameters work just as they do on a television. A monitor calibration utility helps you set an optimum brightness and contrast range for calibration.

Gamma

The brightness of the midtone values. The values produced by a monitor from black to white are nonlinear—if you graph the values, they form a curve, not a straight line. Gamma defines the value of that curve halfway between black and white.

Phosphors

The substances that CRT monitors use to emit light. Different phosphors have different color characteristics.

White point

The color and intensity of the brightest white the monitor can reproduce.