What's gamma?

Cathode ray tubes (like the one in your monitor, unless you've got a portable or an liquid crystal display(LCD)) have a light output that's not linear with the input current, but rather proportional to that current to a power, which is called gamma. (If the previous sentence is Greek to you, don't worry, you don't have to understand it.)

Pictures will look right if they're reproduced on a monitor with the same gamma as the one on which they were created. All the pictures here were created on a monitor that has been calibrated to a gamma of 1.8, which is a standard in the Mac world and somewhat of a standard throughout the personal computer domain. Look at the image below. If your monitor is calibrated to a gamma of 1.8, the solid gray center of the right-hand bar will be about the same shade as the one-by-three checkerboard that surrounds it -- back way up from your monitor or squint so the checkerboard all runs together and doesn't confuse you.

The red, blue, and green checkerboards should also blend in with the solid centers. If they don't, go to the control panel for your display adapter (Forgot how? Click here.) and see if you see a slider labeled gamma. If you do, twiddle with it until the colors all blend together. If you can't find any such slider, mess with the brightness and contrast controls to get the colors to blend. Then click here to go look at the pictures.