Calibrating screens for continuous colour displays

This paper focuses on two issues that are important to those who use colour monitors for research in vision. One is concerned with the measurement and calibration of colour screens. To this end the luminance and chromaticity readings of a tri-filter colorimeter and a spectroradiometer are compared (both commonly used to calibrate screens). The second is concerned with screen interactions, whereby colours can be distorted from their expected or calculated values by the colours displayed in neighbouring areas. This issue is crucial for those who use measurements of the light emitted from the red, green and blue phosphors of a monitor in isolation to specify other colours on screen, particularly in the research areas of colour contrast and colour constancy, since the specified colours may not actually be displayed. Finally, an alternative calibration method is described that uses an iterative measurement procedure to obtain screen specifications that are accurate regardless of the display complexity, so that researchers can be confident that the required colours are actually displayed on the screen.