Well I tried but I made it worse.
Are you sure? I ask because our minds tend to play tricks on us in this area. I note that typically, TV and monitors are set at the factory with "enhanced" contrast and brightness settings, for example, to make these monitors "appear" brighter and sharper - particularly on show room floors. And studies have shown when we humans attempt to calibrate using our eye, when we get it just where we like it, when the screen is properly tested and measured with a professional display calibration tool, the settings are found to be way off and totally inaccurate.
If you spend a lot of money on a quality big screen TV, or if you are a professional photographer and you need (1) your display to be accurate and (2) the image on you display to match the output of your professional printer, you will need your display professionally calibrated. That "service" can easily cost around $300, but may be well worth it. This may especially be true if you just spent several $1000 on a big screen TV before SuperBowl weekend.
If the need for a calibrated display is a frequent need, then buying your own display calibration tool like
this or
this may be the smarter move.
If you are attempting this just to get an image that appears natural to you, then typically best way for the layperson to calibrate for color accuracy is to display several high quality images of human faces. We humans (if we concentrate) are pretty good at adjusting the settings so those human faces appear "natural". That is, not too yellow, not too green, not too blue or not too red.
If we get human faces to look natural, then usually the sky, grass, buildings, etc. do too. That's not to say the colors are 100% accurate. But if the human in the photo is not standing next to your monitor, you can't tell.
