Idiots guide to setting monitor gamma in Monitor Center?

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The Monitor Center control panel allows the gamma to be set, and this page provides a bit of background
Gamma correcting a monitor — PsychoPy v2020.2
but I need an idiots guide!
Under Windows the standard monitor gamma is 2.2. So with only that information (no light meter to hand) what do I do? Just put 2.2 into the box Gamma/lum and leave all the other boxes unchanged? (and if I was stupid enough to try to enter a number elsewhere, how do I get back to nan…?)

If I can get hold of a simple calibration device to measure luminance (a cheap Spyder and find a program that will spit out luminance readings), I’ll come back and ask how to use the (semi-automatic) gamma calibration…

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I wrote such a guide in my PhD but this was years ago! Somethings might look different but the principles are the same Monitor calibration: The (very!) basics | Psych_Skills

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Thanks @Becca I just took a look at your guide. Very helpful.

In your guide you use a PR655 spectrascan that is directly supported by Psychopy for automatic calibration. If I use a device that is not supported (somehow manage to get a Spyder or similar give me luminance data), can I feed that in that data and have monitor center work with it instead?

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And the question I asked initially, if we assume that the monitor has a gamma of 2.2 (or if I can calibrate it with DisplayCal or similar to have a gamma of 2.2), do I just enter 2.2 in Gamma/lum, Gamma/R, Gamma/G and Gamma/B?

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Hi There,

Yes you should be able to! as long as you can derive your required gamma (or gamma per color gun) you can feed that manually into monitor centre. Or you can use setGamma psychopy.monitors.calibTools — PsychoPy v2020.2 or setGammaGrid if you have the gamma per gun psychopy.monitors.calibTools — PsychoPy v2020.2

Hopefully this helps!
Becca