Going Digital wrote:
I see the need for it, but putting a white paper next the lighted screen, the paper looks gray.
Wait until day time when the light from the monitor is a little better balanced with the light reflected off the paper. A grey-appearing paper that you know to be white may not indicate anything more than there's too little ambient light getting to the paper to make an eyeball comaprison.
Also, if you can, enlarge the white box on your screen so that it dominates the frame and minimizes the distracting yellow UHH background here. (Ctrl-Mousewheel Forward)
Then step away from the monitor and stare at the bright white paper until it appears white again to your eyes. Now when you look back at the white box on screen, does it immediately appear white? or a slightly different hue?
Because our eyes are built to adapt, they quickly and automatically correct for incorrect colors, eg sunglasses. And so on our screens we see white where we believe it to be, eg a wedding dress, even though our monitor may actually carry a light yellow or blue to our eyes instead.
Trouble starts when we want to warm up (add yellow to) an image when, unbeknown to us, our white point is yellow and we show it to someone else whose monitor has also drifted a bit to yellow... yikes, that girl on the beach gets a George Hamilton tan! - but only on the second monitor. If a third party's monitor is too cool (blue) the bathing beauty now looks spectacular!
I present the idea of a white box and paper to help someone decide if they need to calibrate, not to do the calibration.
For calibration you need to use a commonly available tool like Spyder 3 or ColorEyes or EyeOne Display or others. They run from about $150 to $250. It's a software and gadget combination where you run the software and the gadget (a spectrometer) measures your monitor and the software then adjusts your screen's colors to standard. Remember, though, once done you still have to do it periodically (at least 1/month) as the colors will drift.
A bit pricey, perhaps. But maybe you can borrow one from a friend... or if you had trouble finding one I do have a backup Spyder 3 Pro in original box that I'd be willing to sell.