dispcalGUI

Color mistakes are barely noticeable to the untrained eye, but advanced users, who work with professional photo or video editing software, need to have their displays calibrated with pin-point accuracy. The Argyll Color Management System is a flexible solution for color calibration, but it may prove difficult to use. Fortunately, dispcalGUI provides a comprehensive user interface for this system, which makes it much easier to calibrate a monitor. The software also allows you to create calibration profiles and apply them instantly.

dispcalGUI is a free and open source project. As previously suggested, the application is based on Argyll CMS, which you need to have on your computer. Downloading and installing dispcalGUI should not take more than a minute, even on older computers.

The main user interface presents a wide range of controls, for calibrating the screen's whitepoint, white and black levels, its tone curve and much more. You can set the values for these characteristics to "as measured" or set your own values. Settings profiles can be selected in a drop menu, on the same user interface. The software comes with a few predefined profiles, to help you get started. Each profile will change all settings instantly, to calibrate your displays for best performance on a laptop, for office and web processes or for video, photo or prepress editing. Of course, you can make any tweaks you want to individual profiles.

The application provides support for colorimeter corrections as well. It allows you to apply these corrections on wide-gamut screens, by using correction matrices or calibration spectral sample files. It is also possible to search for calorimeter corrections on the Internet, just by clicking a button, located on the main interface. Additionally, dispcalGUI allows you to edit and save your own test chart files. You can use your own values for white neutral and iterative patches, single and multidimensional channel patches and more.