The purpose of the AIM site is to provide help in setting up an accurate desktop image manipulation system for digital photographic images. AIM contains currently (about) 212 pages and is 100MB in file-size.
Please do not adjust your calibration nor decide you calibration tactics based on the introductory illustrations on this page. This page is just an introduction and the proper calibration tactic depends on if the system is ICC color-managed or not.
The below filmstrip is not pure black, there is a colorful welcome message on it.
The message utilizes that portion of the intensity range that is sometimes called as the "gamma benefit", "better range", "better shading of shadows", or "the best bits". You can not see the welcome text with a native PC system (that is not gamma calibrated) because this "better range" is deep down in the scotopic level (night adapted vision) of the eye.
Illustration, not for calibration purposes.
If you do see the text on the filmstrip using an uncalibrated PC then the Brightness control of your monitor is at way too high setting, here you can easily set the brightness and contrast of the monitor accurately this method gives very accurate black-point for both calibrated and uncalibrated systems.
If you use Photoshop or any other image editing software that allows to edit images in a gamma space do take a look at the Perceptually Uniform Coding -page you can accurately evaluate the so called perceptually uniform gamma space easily using the AdobeGamma or some other utility that can adjust the viewing gamma of the system. The Perceptually uniform gamma space is not the "Windows default" nor the "Mac default", that are the two default choices the AdobeGamma gives you.
