So, how should you set your gamma? It depends on what you are doing, your environment, and if your monitor has an internal LUT (like a high end NEC or Eizo). even our non-linearity is non-linear!) and depends on total brightness.įor sRGB per the IEC standard, 80 cd/m 2(includes veiling glare), gamma approx ~2.2, with an ambient of 64 lux (encode) or 200 lux (typical).įor sRGB per the SMPTE standard, 120 cd/m 2.įor Rec709's BT1886 (monitor) and BT.2035 (viewing environment) the monitor gamma is 2.4, the whitepoint luminance is 100 cd/m 2 and the ambient is 10 LUX (dark!) Related: The eye's response to light is also non-linear - and that non-linearity is not the same throughout the visual range (i.e. If you increase the monitor's peak white level (say to 200cd/m 2), you'll also want the gamma higher like 2.4 which will darken the midrange and increase contrast, which is needed due to the higher ambient lighting 'washing out' the blacks. 2.2) as that will brighten the image to compensate for the ambient, but unfortunately also reduce contrast. If you are in a bright environment with a dark monitor (peak white at 80 cd/m 2 or lower), then you'll want your display gamma lower (i.e. Part of the issue is that ambient lighting has a very substantial effect on the perception of the colors and lightness of your monitor. The transfer curve of the sRGB signal is 'close to' a 2.2 gamma, but it is actually a piecewise curve, that is actually a higher gamma at the top end of the video range and a lower gamma at the bottom of the video range. Studies have shown that typical users have their monitors set over 160 cd/m 2, and gamma much higher than 2.2 to 2.4 - one survey found that over 50% of users had the gamma at 2.5 and HIGHER! If you set your monitor brighter you are almost certainly going to set the monitor's gamma higher as well.

Today LCD monitors can easily be set to 200 cd/m 2 or more, and phones are available as high as 1200 d/m 2 ! That was way back when, when CRT monitors had a hard time displaying brighter. Why is this often the case? For sRGB per the IEC standard, the monitor's luminance is speced at 80 cd/m 2. If this is fed into a monitor with a gamma of 2.4, for a total system gamma gain of 1.1. the stored image gamma) of ~1/2.2, though it is more precisely set as: The sRGB spec may indicate ~2.2, but there's more to the story. Note that this is different than the reciprocal gamma that the signal is encoded with. Physical DISPLAYS for Rec709 are defined as a gamma of 2.4.

Lux rgb vs standard