Calibration and Brightness

If your prints match what you see on screen then I'd leave it alone and not get hung up on the number.

FWIW I just bought the Spyder4 package a couple months ago and remember rather well the first calibration I did. The brightness was noticeably increased by this calibration program. Photos from Whitehouse and Bay Photo both came back with excellent results. A calibration system was one of my best investments.

YankeeMom wrote in post #16562440
Wow, that's so low. Glad for my histogram.

11% for a Dell is pretty normal for a Dell monitor when it's new. As it ages you need to creep it up a bit, maybe to 15-18% after a couple of years use.

Out of the box Dell's (actually, all monitors) have the brightness set way too high for photo editing. The better calibration devices/monitors lock out the button controls and let you calibrate to a luminance setting in cd/m^2. Depending on your room brightness it should be between 90-110 (some folks on POTN seem to even target 80-85, which is too low for my taste).

A target luminance of 100 on my NEC PA Series monitor closely matches a brightness setting of 15% on my Dell IPS monitor.

Thanks for all the great advice, everyone! I lowered mine a bit, but I generally get good results with prints, so I'm going to pay extra attention to that and see if improvement is necessary.

YankeeMom wrote in post #16562318
Well, it says 75 on the brightness level of my monitor (I have a Dell Ultra Sharp U2312HM.) I assume that meant %?

My practice is that with a new monitor I lower the brightness right off the bat.

And then the "acid test" is getting prints made from a reliable print provider.

That to me is the only way of ensuring that my images will have a decent "presentation" in whatever media!

I agree with Tony, except that my "acid test" is prints from my own home printer.

To rekindle this thread - I have a Dell ultrasharp U3014 monitor. I have calibrated using a colormunki photo: ambient lighting measured to be about 80 which required lowering the brightness to 12.

I'm experiencing problems with falloff and after doing some research I've read that these monitors only produce a constant (non falloff) brightness across the panel with brightness set to around 50.

Anyone have any experience with this?
My U3011 doesn't appear to have this problem.

Thanks