ICC Profiles and Monitor Calibration Settings Database
Introduction
This ICC profiles and monitor calibration settings database is provided to help you get the most out of your monitor and includes recommended settings for the monitor itself, along with calibrated ICC profiles. You can access this database in 3 simple steps:
[Step 1] – Search our database to see if we have your screen
Please take note of our guidance and caveats below as well. If your model is missing, you can report it here
[Step 2] – Join our Patreon from as low as $1 to help support the site and the running of this database
We invest a lot of time, effort and money in to running TFTCentral and maintaining this extensive ICC profiles and monitor calibration settings database. This database is a perk available to our Patreon supporters. You can access it today for as little as $1 USD (or equivalent regional pricing) by joining our Patreon supporters. While you’re there, we’d love you to consider joining one of the higher tiers where you can get access to other benefits including early access to reviews, articles and other content. This database is time-consuming to keep it up to date, and ultimately a small contribution to the site is hopefully a reasonable request.
[Step 3] – Access the settings and ICC profiles
Once you’ve joined our Patreon, you should be able to log in and access the full database here.
Calibrating Your Screen – What to Know
There are two steps to these forms of calibration:
- Obtaining the optimum starting point at a monitor hardware level – this involves setting the OSD settings to the recommended levels for brightness, contrast, RGB, gamma, colour temperature etc. If you have a calibration tool, during a calibration process the device and software will often guide you to reaching this optimum starting point before more finite corrections are made through the creation of the profile and activation at the graphics card level. Getting to the best hardware setting first can help ensure the profiling needs to do “less work” to correct your settings, and ensure tonal values are preserved. The less “work” the profile needs to do, the better. Use the recommended OSD settings as a starting point which will be a good start.
- Profiling the screen at a graphics card level and creation of the ICC profile – after the optimum hardware starting point has been achieved, the rest of the process is usually automated, while the calibration device makes more accurate corrections to improve the gamma, white point and colour accuracy of the screen. These corrections are made through the creation of the ICC profile which is then activated at a graphics card level. Once finished, the profile combined with the OSD settings in step 1 should give you a good set-up. You can use the ICC profiles available to offer that extra level of correction and they can be easily activated, or removed if you do not see benefit or they do not work on your screen.
Expectations
Ideally when you activate a profile there shouldn’t be any major visual changes to the image. If there are, it’s a sign the profile is having to carry out a lot of corrections and changes, and that it was not possible to reach a decent starting point from the hardware (i.e. the monitor adjustments). The less changes the profile needs to make, the better really. Rest assured the profile will be carrying out corrections to the gamma curve especially, and some more finite improvements to the colour temp and colour accuracy where needed.
One of the other changes the profile will make (at least the profiles from our reviews) is that on a wide gamut screen, it will map the colour space back to the sRGB reference within colour aware applications. If you have a wide gamut monitor, one easy place to see this in action is by viewing a simple RGB test pattern in Windows photo viewer (you can create a simple one in paint if needed). If you enable and disable the profile you should see changes to the saturation and vividness of the colours, often in reds especially. This is the profile carrying out the colour space emulation from the native wide gamut of the screen (ICC profile disabled), to sRGB emulation (ICC profile enabled).
Settings and Profiles Caveats
This section contains information and profiles to help calibrate your monitor and hopefully get things looking better. In the table above you will find some recommended OSD settings for various models, along with an ICC profile which has been produced, and saved, using a hardware calibration device. These have been collated from our various reviews, as well as any which have been gathered from various sources and those sent to us by readers.
There are some very important things to consider however, so please take the following as some caveats:
- OSD settings are recommended and related to the calibration process which produces the ICC profile. You may or may not find them useful on their own. Combining them with the attached ICC profile is recommended
- ICC profiles are created using various colorimeter devices, and so quality and accuracy will vary. The device and software used is listed where possible
- You need to have the same version screen as the one which generated the profile. Manufacturers sometimes switch the panels in their screens, so bear this in mind. Revisions of the screen may also cause differences
- Bear in mind all these settings are related to the individual’s screen, software, operating system and PC hardware. Their relevance and effectiveness on your system may vary
- These are only designed to hopefully help you get your screen looking and feeling better. They may or may not improve actual colour rendering ability in real terms, this will vary depending on setup and reasons listed above
- Colour accuracy, gamma, luminance and colour temperature may be improved when using these settings and/or ICC profiles. Do not be alarmed if they do not work on your screen and system. If they do not work, just remove the ICC profile and restore your settings. It is totally reversible!
- To achieve truly accurate results, you would need to use a calibration device on your own screen and system and profile the screen with it yourself.
Basically, don’t rely on these settings and profiles working magic on your screen! They should hopefully help improve things for many users, but performance will vary as explained above.
Send Us Your Settings and Profiles!
Please contact us to share your ICC profiles and OSD settings and we will add them to the database! Please include the settings you’ve used on the monitor as well as the calibration device/software used to create the profile.
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