Okay Folks. Here's the deal. I'm really tired of seeing eight zillion different screen setups being used to post prints because when everyone has thier own wacky standard then *nobody* ends up producing art work the same way. So I'm taking the initiative and implementing a little standardization here.

Here's how my chart works: Simply use your monitor adjustments, wherever they are (on the monitor, from software within your computer for your video card, whatever) to change you CRT monitor (aka, NOT FLATSCREEN) so that the following things happen:

1. The middle bars, or Zone Steps, indicate the nine step transition from screen black (not TRUE BLACK) to pure white -1 (NOT SCREEN WHITE). The darkest bar or "I" should appear as black as your screen can go. The lightest bar, or "X" should appear SLIGHTLY LESS WHITE THAN THE SURROUNDING WHITE BACKGROUND. If the two appear completely the same, then there is a problem with your monitor calibation. I've included the means to fix it. Go to step two.

2. The lower left hand box is the black calibration box. You should adjust your monitor so that the gradient within it can be seen but only enough so that it appears to vanish into the surrounding blacks between 1/3 and 1/2 from the left to the middle of the box.

3. The lower right hand box is the white calibration box. You should adjust your monitor so that there is a difference between the two inner boxes and the outer one, but only enough so that they do not blend completely together. The middle box is SCREEN WHITE.

4. Make sure your monitor is set to millions/billions/trillions of colors or else every photo you look at will have a compressed colorspace. To check and see if yours is set to it's highest rez, look at the COLOR grad in the middle of the chart. If the upper one appears to have "banding" or doesn't look like a smooth transition from color to color (I provided an example of color stepping, which looks simiilar to banding), find your monitor's controls and change it to it's highest rez. If your monitor is old and crappy and can't display anything more than thousands of colors, buy a new one, they don't cost much, even a crappy millions+ monitor will be better than one that can't display a full RGB colorspace.

Once you've done this, go bounce around dA again and look at just how much freaking better (or worse) things look... it can be shocking. My goal is to keep people from MAKING poorly compressed work: under exposed or underprinted or flat work...

I'll do a whole explanation on this to anyone who wants to hear it.

(Technical Spec: bw grad at 11% intervals equiv. to 28.33/channel/step. Zone I @ 0 : 0 : 0 , Zone X @ 253 : 253 : 253. color grad at R : Y : G : C : B : M : R @ exactly (R : G : B) R= 255 : 0 : 0 , Y= 255 : 255 : 0 , G= 0 : 255 : 0 , C= 0 : 255 : 255 , B= 0 : 0 : 255 , M= 255 : 0 : 255 , R= 255 : 0 : 0 , ZoneI swatch @ L : a : b or H : S : B %'s 0 : 2 : 4 : 6 : 8 over 0, ZoneX+ swatch @ L : a : b or H : S : B %'s 95 : 97 : 100 with RGB center column grad equiv. to Zone X to Zone X+: 243/channel to 255/channel)

Thanks a bunch for looking and hopefully, using.