Good: Be able to clearly make out ALL of the individual moldings on the fireplace mantle.
Very Good: See a natural, smooth and rich facial flesh tone without ANY of the highlights appearing white washed, washed out, or over exposed.
Excellent: See the left edge of the fireplace mantle where it meets the light green wall.

DisplayMate Reference Photo 1
Click to see a larger 640 x 480 image
See below for other Resolutions.

Many computer monitors, projectors, and HDTVs won't pass this test. Properly adjusted or calibrated HDTVs and computer monitors (and almost any CRT) will do very well. Note that the Test Patterns in any DisplayMate Product will perform a much more accurate analysis than is possible with a Reference Photo. If the display has user controls, you can try adjusting them to improve the appearance of the Reference Photo.

LCD Optimized Photos
If the Reference Photo above appears washed out on your LCD monitor or projector, then compare its appearance with the photo below, which has been generically optimized to reduce the effects of gray scale compression that occurs to some degree on most LCDs. If this is not a problem on your display then the image below will look worse than the Reference Photo above.

Optimized Photo for a Generic LCD with gray scale compression
Click to see a larger 640 x 480 image

If this generic optimized photo looks somewhat better than the Reference Photo, then your display has some degree of gray scale compression. To obtain accurate results the optimization needs to be performed for your specific display or display model. The optimization works with any display technology, not just LCD.

DisplayMate Image Optimizer
The DisplayMate Image Optimizer can mathematically process all of your photos and images so that your monitor, projector or HDTV will produce the best and most accurate picture quality that it can deliver (with optimized gray scale and color). This will dramatically improve all of your personal and business presentations. For more information see the DisplayMate Image Optimizer.

Reference Photos
Click on the links below to view, or right click to download (by selecting Save As...)
All of the Reference Photos are identical, but have been scaled to the specified resolution.

Reference Photo 640 x 480: Click on this link to view or right click to download.
Reference Photo 800 x 600: Click on this link to view or right click to download.
Reference Photo 1024 x 768: Click on this link to view or right click to download.
Reference Photo 1280 x 1024: Click on this link to view or right click to download.
Reference Photo 1600 x 1200: Click on this link to view or right click to download.

HDTV Reference Photos
Use these photos to check an HDTV that is connected to a computer (and accepts the computer's full 0-255 gray scale).