Making pictures perfect

The Home software from display calibration specialist Calman is designed to let consumers pimp their TV's performance like a pro. Jon Thompson puts it to work with an LG OLED

- Jon Thompson

IF YOU'RE OBSESSED with picture perfection, and curious about learning the art of display calibration yourself, then it's worth knowing that - for roughly the cost of hiring a professional calibrator - Portrait Displays, the company behind the Calman calibration software, is offering you the chance to do it yourself.

In fact, you may have noticed the words 'Calman Ready' appearing on a TV's specification sheet. This means the display is ready to work with Calman's new Home software.

Of the Calman Ready models available at the time of writing from Samsung, Sony, Panasonic and LG, ones from the latter are the most interesting as they not only allow you to tune the greyscale, you can also implement a 3D Colour LUT.

Short for Look-Up Table, an LUT is a mathematical method of automatic correction; essentially, the LUT looks at the input signal and says 'this is red, so for this red to be displayed correctly I need to add this correction.' This is a process that's been used in the professional world for years, and LG is letting you do it too.

Cost-effective

Like most things in life, there are calibrators and then there are calibrators. Most of the Calman operations are automatic (AutoCal), so you just need to get to grips with the different stages of the software. The skill of a professional calibrator is knowing what to do by hand when the automatic process doesn't work. Still, the cost of performing your own Calman calibration is about the same as hiring a pro for a day, and if you're of a certain disposition you'll get a kick out of doing it yourself.