The HP 30w monitor color sucks!

[Marc Wielage]

To confirm if there is a color cast, you really don't need calibration software and a probe. One simply has to hold a piece of white paper next to the monitor when it is displaying something known to be white.

I believe the color temperature of the light source itself will affect your perception of white from the paper, as well as the overall color temperature. And if the monitor itself illuminates the paper, all bets are off.

I did throw up some calibration charts and color corrected the monitor into a better state. After this purchase i cant afford any probes, but I will try the icm files and see how they do. It nice to hear that my first impression can be modified into somethings that looks good for production use.

If you aren't actually calibrating the monitor with measurable devices and known signal sources, it's guesswork. That doesn't necessarily mean you can't get close, but it's never going to be 100% accurate this way.

[Tom Daigon]

I installed the .icm file for the monitor. It definitely improved the color balance. I then toggled the option to display my color corrected setting. They were pretty much identical looks. Its nice to have my color correction skills validated in the monitor setup process!