So you can see your test shoot photographs correctly follow these simple steps…

Your monitor should be set to a MINIMUM of 16 bit colour - (Windows) - Thousands of colour’s - (Macintosh). and a resolution of 1024 x 768.

Monitor Adjustment. It is important to have your monitor adjusted properly in order to correctly view our images on this site. This means setting your monitor, either with its built-in on-screen controls or through software, so that the greys are rendered without any colour cast and so that you can discern detail in shadows (at the darkest parts of the charts below) and in highlights (at the brightest parts of the charts below).

Brightness and contrast (tone)

The greyscale chart above shows gradations of neutral gray from pure black to pure white. You should be able to discern differences in each gradation of gray, with the possible exception of the two or three darkest levels. There should be no colour cast to any of the levels. Adjust the brightness and contrast of your monitor so that you can see each step from pure black to pure white with breaks. There are 33 steps in this greyscale chart. Pay more attention to the black steps. The darkest step should be as dark as you can make it while still being able to distinguish it from the next lighter step.

The greyscale chart above shows all 256 levels of neutral gray in a horizontal sweep. Each gradation is a single pixel wide.

The above colour charts are similar to the greyscale chart at the top, which showed even gradations of neutral gray from darkest (black) to lightest. These show even gradations of pure red, green and blue. You should be able to discern each gradation at the bright end. Ideally, you should also discern each at the dark end, but the darkest several levels of any one colour may blend together.

Colour depth (bit depth)

You should see smooth RGB spectrums without any extreme breaks or banding.
If you see any breaks or banding, you are not viewing with the maximum colour available.

If you have enough video memory, set your screen’s colour palette to 24 bit colour (Windows) - Millions of colour’s (Macintosh).

The background of this particular screen you are looking at is set to gray, if you see any strong colour tint to it, try adjusting your monitor’s colour balance.