Follow the SmallHD Calibration Wizard prompts to choose the desired color space and gamma. The wizard automatically enables a native/unity bypass mode for profiling. It also prompts you to measure the monitor's white and black points as needed. Finally, you install the new 3D LUT in a custom calibration "slot."
Calibration is complex and requires training in the Calman or ColourSpace workflow to understand the recommended suggestions fully.
Probes
We suggest following industry recommendations to calibrate with both a spectroradiometer and a colorimeter. For best results, a new meter profile should be created for each display. Using built-in meter profiles will have mixed results.
- Bad “Factory” default settings
- Poor Vendor matrix for a display type - ie - OLED vs LCD
- Better SmallHD provides a generic matrix for a display type
- Good Four-color matrix for each probe for each display type.
- Best Multi-point volumetric matching (ColourSpace specific)
For OLED calibrations, we recommend probes capable of reading low (near-zero) black levels. For all monitors, we recommend checking the probe’s maximum supported luminance against the monitor you are calibrating. A probe rated for 1,000 cd/m2 should not be used to calibrate a 3,000 cd/m2 monitor
Calman SmallHD Autocal
SmallHD recommends using version 5.15.7.2 or later for Calman Calibration and recommends using the integrated SmallHD AutoCal since using a generic “3D LUT” workflow may have mixed results.
LCD & FALD Displays
- Use the recommended 100% window size.
- Calman may oversaturate dark blue content. Use the “force legacy method” checkbox to avoid this problem:
OLED-22 and OLED-27 Displays
- Do NOT select the “force legacy method”
- Make sure to use the "Lightning LUT" method, as other options take longer and may cause issues with oversaturated dark colors.
- Use the recommended 10% window size.
Quantum 32 Display
We do not recommend using Calman at this time
ColourSpace
ColourSpace has no known issues with any version. The latest tested version was v1.0.0.1994. We recommend using at least four-color probe matching, with volumetric matching available for added accuracy, if needed.
For LUT export, we recommend using the BMD format:
- 4K Monitors, Ultra-7, and Ultra-10 should use BMD33 (33-point)
- Quantum-32 should use BMD65 (65-point)
- All Other monitors should use BMD17 (17-point)
DCI-P3 Calibrations
- SmallHD calibrates DCI-P3 to a 2.4 gamma, not the default 2.6 - create a custom DCI-P3 color space with a 2.4 gamma and use that instead of the default.
LCD & FALD Displays
- Because of the non-linear nature of LCDs, we recommend using a 10^3 cube profile. You can adjust this based on the time available and the level of accuracy needed.
- Use Peak Chroma for most displays, except for those with less than 100% gamut coverage (like the CINE-7), where Fit Space is recommended.
- We also recommend using a 100% window size with your pattern generator
OLED-22, OLED-27, and Quantum-32 Displays
- The Grey, Primary & Secondary, Ramp+ profile works well. The 21^3 profile also works but takes more time, while cube profiles smaller than 21^3 are ineffective.
- Peak Chroma is the optimal choice.
- For OLED-22 and OLED-27 displays, we recommend using an L32 patch size. For Quantum-32, a custom 3% patch is recommended.