# Standard monitor brightness and saturation?



## Sebaz (Sep 30, 2012)

I was wondering if there's an industry standard for calibrating the monitor before starting to develop so whatever adjustments you make, especially exposure, will be seen as good as possible in most people's monitors. I have a rather cheap Samsung 24" monitor which looks quite good, but the brightness depends a lot on the content. If I set it to 100%, which is the factory default, Lightroom 4 is easy to work with, and photos look great, thanks to Lightroom's dark interface. However, if I open the browser or any folder in windows explorer it kills my eyes. If I set it to 50%, it is more tolerable but still hurtful, and normally I set it to 30% or so for working outside of Adobe's programs. But obviously if I upload photos to Facebook that I developed with the monitor at 100%, they will look really dark at 30%. Then I have a different problem with saturation, which is what I see in the camera's monitor (Canon 60D) is noticeably more saturated than when I see the same photo on the Samsung monitor.

So I would like to know what's the brightness amount I should set my monitor to before developing, and if there's a proper procedure for this, without buying an external calibrating device. 

Thanks,

Sebastian


----------



## Brad Snyder (Sep 30, 2012)

Generally, it is recommended that monitor brightness be set to approximately 80-120 cd/m^2 (nits) in the typical photo editing station area lighting. Of course, as you speculated, you need a hardware gadget to measure that. (That's the proper way to go.)

Our friend and forum guru RikkFlohr, has a home-made suggestion, in this thread. http://www.lightroomqueen.com/commu...ofiled-image-to-a-monitor&p=119474#post119474. See if that may help you.


----------



## Sebaz (Sep 30, 2012)

Excellent, thanks!


----------

