Monitor calibration

Calibrating a monitor is an essential need for a digital photographer. Not only we can post process our works exactly as they should be, - a badly calibrated monitor can result in bad prints ( shadows and highlight details,blacks, greys, whytes and the RGB channels, not being trustworthy for what we imagined was right for us, as if we were taken by mistake when postprocessing, the image is only correct in our badly calibrated monitor and anywhere else is wrong - specially when printing ( I am not considering here the printer calibration, which usually is an automated task performed by the printer itself.). Gamma correction on a monitor is also important but generally, a value of 2.2 is the standard for standard RGB monitors on a PC and 1.8 for Mac's. ( although actually a 2.2 value is mostly used on both systems).For a start, visit this page http://www.photofriday.com/calibrate.php and calibrate your monitor as advised. Then you can visit this one http://www.tsi.enst.fr/~brettel/TESTS/Gamma/Gamma.html to test the gamma estimation of your system.Then this one http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/monitor_calibration.htm to be more knowledgeable on the subject, then this one http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/colorcalibration/a/cal_monitor.htm for more info, then this one http://www.epaperpress.com/monitorcal/index.html( BTW this is the place I've got my plugin for lens distortions ) and finally this one http://www.entechtaiwan.com/util/ps.shtm, where you can get Powerstrip, a great little application with which you can managed all the techs related with your monitor and card and assign different profiles and change them on the fly as per your needs. Because ate the end, to have a badly calibrated monitor is the same as to have a baddly calibrated speedometre on your vehicule.And I have discovered one week ago that my monitor was not calibrated as it should, as per lightness and contrast was lighter than it should be,which made some prints turn out darker than they should. Over and out.