Calman vs pacsDisplay
Calman
calman.compacsDisplay
pacsdisplay.orgSide by side
| Figure | Calman | pacsDisplay |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 2 | 1 |
| Spec score · Display Calibration Software | 7.9 (#6) | 7.5 (#14) |
| Purpose | Calman is color calibration software for improving display color accuracy across production, broadcast, and home viewing workflows. | pacsDisplay is an open-source project for generating and installing DICOM grayscale LUTs and performing quality control on DICOM-calibrated displays. |
Plans
Calman
- Calman Home Software Bundle$449, paid once
- Calman Professional Software Bundle$1,399, paid once
In their own words
Calman
Calman is paid color-calibration software for improving display accuracy in production, broadcast, and home-viewing workflows. Calman Professional targets film studios, broadcasters, post-production facilities, display manufacturers, and content creators. Studio provides automated SDR and HDR calibration, ICC profiling, 1D/3D-LUT creation, and display-validation wizards. Ultimate adds customizable workflows, advanced reporting, automated calibration, multi-display environments, and Design Mode. Calman Home is a simplified product for supported TVs, using a laptop, colorimeter, and reference video source. Hardware support includes displays, colorimeters, spectroradiometers, and video test-pattern generators from multiple manufacturers. Calman Ready support depends on the display manufacturer and may vary by model. Professional and Home downloads are for Windows, with requirements specifying Windows 7 or later; Patterns for Mac is also listed. The Home Software Bundle costs $449, paid once, and the Professional Software Bundle costs $1,399, paid once. Licenses include one year of updates and technical support.
pacsDisplay
pacsDisplay is an open-source project for calibrating DICOM grayscale displays and checking their image quality. Its calibration tools measure luminance response and create DICOM GSDF lookup tables. The iQC tool shows interactive quality-control patterns, including TG270-pQC, TG270-sQC, and TG270-ULN. For uniformity checks, uniLum collects luminance measurements and reports deviation from the median and mean luminance deviation. Other tools assess ambient lighting and measure luminance and illuminance. The listed compatible photometers include X-Rite i1Display Studio, Pro, and Plus; NEC SpectraSensor Pro; ColorMunki Display; Calibrite Display Pro and Plus HL; and rebranded meters. Version 6A supports external-display measurements in lumResponse and uniLum. The current release supports Windows 10 and 11. Its pdQC toolkit can be deployed from a USB drive or network without installation. The Windows installer places files in Program Files, the Public Users folder, and the Start Menu without modifying the registry or system services. Development began in 1999, and the project is distributed under the GNU General Public License v3.0.