Adjust the brightness and contrast of your monitor
so that you can see each step separately.
Pay more attention to the black steps here. The darkest step should be as
dark as you can make it while
still being able to distinguish it from the next lighter step. You should
be able to see a
difference between 1 and 2 as well as 13 and 14.
The color temperature of your monitor should be
such that you do not detect any color in the
shades of gray. Typically this will be set to 9300K. If you can't set the
color temperature then adjust the
color sliders on your screen so that the shades of gray are neutral. If you
can do this under daylight
conditions you will get a more accurate adjustment. Daylight is about 6500K
so your monitor next to an
incandescent light bulb will make you think you have bug
lights in your house ;-)
Your display adapter should be set at 24-bit color
depth, also called millions of colors, 16777216 colors or True Color.
Anything less will result in visible artifacts in continuous-tone areas of
images.