HDTV / Monitor Test Patterns

Introduction

Philosophy of Pattern Design

analog TV

Viewing Resolution

Pattern resolution is intended to match native resolution of the display. At any other resolutions where the pattern size is scaled to the display size scaling artifacts will render many patterns useless. If your viewing program supports a scaling factor of 1:1, that is, one pixel in the image maps to one pixel in the display, then patterns not matching the display resolution will show without artifacts but intent of some of the patterns will not be attained.

8K Resolution Omitted Patterns

Pattern Files

Here are links to zip files containing test patterns for HDTV and common monitor resolutions. Each zip file contains 206 unique patterns arranged in groups by file name. These files are named with the actual resolution and a descriptive resolution identifier taken from a Wikipedia article.

* Caution - Huge file: 257,371,010 bytes.

Pattern Groups

The tables below describe the groups that make up the files in the above zip files. The images are examples of typically a subset of the contents of a group. They are not links to the full size images, which are only available in the zip files. This is because of the amount of room the uncompressed files in all the resolutions would consume.

The thumbnails (160x100) in the examples show artifacts arising from the small size. These do not appear in the full-size images.

Quick Check Patterns

These patterns are intended for a quick, overall assessment or check of a display. The use of the term checkers is unrelated to the term check. Checkers refers to an alternating black/white pattern similar to a checkers board and is frequently used with gamma patterns. Check refers to assessment or evaluation.

Group Name	Description	Examples
Check Clipping	Target Limited - Use these to set white and black level (contrast and brightness) on the display. NOTE: these should be used for video signals that have a limited range of 16 - 235. The black circle contains 3 circles. The outer circle is digital video level 16, the second circle is digital video level 28, and the inner circle is digital video level 51. There should be a distinct difference between al three circles with no hint of color. The white circle contains 3 circles. The outer circle is digital video level 235, the second circle is digital video level 222, and the inner circle is digital video level 209. There should be a distinct difference between al three circles with no hint of color.
Check Color Wipe	Description
Check Composite	Description
Check Contrast	Description
Check Convergence	Description
Check Gamma	Description
Check Length	Description
Check Overscan	Description
Check Patterns	Description
Check Resolution	Description

Comprehensive Patterns

The images in this group cover a broad range of patterns.

Group Name	Description	Examples
Clipping	Description
Color Bars	Description
Color Composite Step Wipe	Description
Color One	Description
Color Patch	Description
Color Random	Description
Color Random Gray	Description
Color Step Lin / Log	Description
Color Triangle	Description
Color Wipe Full / Half	Description
Gamma Checker / Lines	Description
Geometry Bars	Description
Geometry Checkers	Description
Geometry Checkers Log	Description
Geometry Distortion	Description
Geometry Grid	Description
Geometry Lines Hori	Description
Geometry Lines Vert	Description
Geometry Points	Description
Geometry Squares	Description
Color Swatch Hsl	Description
Color Swatch Hsv	Description
Color Swatch Rgb	Description
Color Wipe Hsl	Description
Color Wipe Hsv	Description
Color Wipe Rgb	Description

History

Many years ago I posted some HDTV test patterns to Flickr. They were quite popular, received quite a few hits, and were probably linked from another site but I never found where.

In December, 2013, I wrote a new generating program in Python, included several composite images, many geometric and color images and used descriptive file names. These were, and continue to be, some of my most popular images on Flickr but at Flickr they were only in a resolution of 1920x1080.

In March, 2023, I converted the generating program from Python2 to Python3 correct a bug causing vertical lines in one of the color images, changed the name of the image files, updated the resolutions, and added many new patterns including the inverse of several.