New monitor really bright!

My new AOC 12757FH (IPS/LED) seems REALLY bright. I picked the sRGB color profile in the monitor OSD, which locks brightness at 90. If I manually change the brightness to 50, then it is easier on the eyes, but in terms of white point it seems too dim. Is this just normal with new IPS? I had an old LCD TN panel that was 5 years old that I had turned to 50% brightness so maybe my point of reference is off.

I think I have it calibrated OK with my Pantone huey, it just is hurting my eyes a little due to the brightness. My pictures look AMAZING, though, like metallic prints or something like that. Instant image quality boost for everything I have ever taken.

Just as a point of reference, does this look good in terms of color and exposure? It does to me.

Looks fine here. My IPS HP seemed very bright at first

Man, I can't get over how vibrant and deep the colors look on this monitor and there is just a certain crispness. I'm going through all my old photos just blown away at how good they look now. I feel like I was always looking at my pictures through a muddy window or something and now its clean!

Why didn't I do this before?

The picture looks fine to me. I recently got new monitors and they were SUPER bright out of the box. Mine are down around 35/100 on brightness. BTW, I don't think the Huey is designed for LED-lit monitors. I tried calibrating my new monitors with my Huey and it didn't do too well. I got a Syder4 and it calibrated them great as well as guiding me to set the proper brightness.

The Software that came with the huey wasn't cutting it and was giving me a horrid green cast. But dispcalgui (open source) worked pretty well. I initially didn't pay attention to the photo preset and it gave me 5000K calibration, so I was pretty heavy on the red side. But once I figured that out and reset my white point for 6500K and recalibrated I am looking pretty solid compared to some recent prints. I have full sRGB volume but it's not perfectly aligned (not uncommon or maybe it's huey measurement error)

Dispcalgui uses like 239 color swatches, verifies, and then runs through like 100 more. This compared to about 25 on the huey software and no white point tuning.

Also, FYI, in case anyone runs across this in the future, finding 6500k was a real bear. The sRGB preset was more like 6000K. And when you adjust with the RGB sliders in the monitor OSD, it always ends up 300K cooler the next time you turn the monitor on (Even if you just power off and right back on, so it's not warm up). no explanation for this, but it was maddening. This took like 90min of hair pulling to figure out that the correct settings for 6500K white point were: 47 Red, 43 Green, 51 Blue.

Also something to think of with a new monitor is a lot of them fade in brightness over time. A new monitor will often just look brighter as its a new monitor that hasn't lost its initial power.

Taylor,

You shot seems slightly flat (lacking a little contrast) to my eyes on my calibrated monitor, but otherwise fine.

My own monitor luminance is set to 80 cd/m2.

Lowner wrote in post #15622900
My own monitor luminance is set to 80 cd/m2.

Mine won't go that low! Default is 260. I can get it to the low 100s but that's it.

tkbslc wrote in post #15623777
Mine won't go that low! Default is 260!

Atre we both talking in cd/m2? If so thats a big problem you have.

Lowner wrote in post #15623781
Atre we both talking in cd/m2? If so thats a big problem you have.

Yes. same units. Lowest backlight setting is 120 cd/m2

Looking at color and contrast test charts, the intensity of the backlight doesn't alter the relationship between shades of white or black or alter the color response. The photos look the same in terms of exposure regardless of whether I set the backlight at 200 or 120. I'm leaving it somewhere around 160-180 which looks pretty good.

That seems awfully bright (unless your office is very well lit indeed).

I run my Eizo at 90 Cd/m^2…
120Cd/m^2 is usually considered a good starting point.

Watch out so your prints don't turn out dark. I run my calibrated HP LP3065 at the minimum setting most of the time which is around 110cd/m^2. Prints match perfectly at that setting.

My Asus graphics monitor is on it's minimum setting in the region of 90cd/m2.

Compare a good print to the image on the screen. Look at your print under bright light and compare this to what you see on the monitor. You want the monitor to be the same as the print so that you can adjust future images confident that when you print up you know what you are going to get back.

Best to get the print optically printed at a lab. Inkjet prints always come out a little too dark in the darker areas.