Any hidden dangers when using a calibration device on IPS monitor?

[jwbryson1]

I've been reading the threads on calibrating my new Dell Ultrasharp U2412M IPS monitor and the suggestions on which calibration device to buy. I'm sufficiently confused at this point.

As I was reading the threads, it struck me that I know nothing about this type of stuff. Is calibrating a monitor similar to adjusting the registry in a computer in the sense that if you screw it up you can damage the system?

Should I be afraid or concerned about calibrating my brand new monitor? Can you "reverse" the calibration if something goes awry?

I throw myself on your knowledge.....:hail:

 

[cgipson1]

all the calibration does is create a settings profile for your display... and applies it. Easily undone, by deleting the profile if needed. But it wont be!

 

[KmH]

Monitor Calibration for Photography

Tutorials on Color Management & Printing

 

[jwbryson1]

Thanks.

 

[Garbz]

Calibration does two things, firstly it creates a profile of what your display is capable of showing i.e. how red is that red, and it applies that profile in the windows colour settings. Those are there for programs to read and for the majority of windows applications this will have no effect. It's also easily undone, just delete the colour profile for the monitor under Control Panel -> Colour Settings.

The second thing it does is correct for any deviations in colour balance and tone across different brightness levels. This setting is applied as a colour correction curve to the video card (or if you have an expensive monitor it uploads the correction curve to the monitor's lookup-table. In the video card case the correction is only memory resident. It disappears after each reboot and relies on software when windows starts to reload the curve. So again if you really somehow manage to balls something up you could just boot into safemode and stop the program from running at startup.

Now that said it's practically impossible to really foul something up.