Monitor calibration question

[Dave239]

Let me preface this by saying I'm not a Photoshop 'user' in the strict sense of the word. :confused:
I work in IT support at a small community college and we recently installed Photoshop Elements 7 in one of our labs to be used for a course that's being taught there.
This lab is equipped with Dell Optiplex GX-620 PCs with Dell 19" LCD monitors.

We received the following question regarding the behavior of the PCs with PSE7 installed:
"All of the students using Photoshop on the computers in Computer Lab #1 are receiving a message "monitors need to be color calibrated". They have the option to "cancel" or "use anyway". When they select "use anyway", the colors are off, almost a sepia. Can these monitors please be color calibrated?"

My question is what's the procedure for calibrating the monitor so that I can make this issue go away?

Thanks in advance for any guidance.

[BigHildy53]

While I don't recall comming across this exact message. The only way I know to callibrate a monitor is with a hardware device such as Spyder3Pro or similar.

[Hatteras Jack]

In my control panel there is an icon called Adobe Gamma, it's for calibrating my monitor. I've calibrated so long ago that I don't remember how I got, I know I didn't buy it. It either came with CS2 or as a free download.

[genevh]

Your best option is using a colorimeter which measures the actual colors being output by the monitors and making adjustments from those measurements. Adobe no longer supplies Adobe Gamma, which was never all that good anyway because it depended on your being able to "eyeball" the colors, which is totally dependent on how the individual doing the calibrating perceives colors. Huey, Gretag-McBeth, and Spyder (in no particular order) are good colorimeters used by several on this forum.