or buy a screen calibrator, such as EyeOne
 

You can also buy a gadget to calibrate levels and colors on your computer screens. I bought a Pantone/Gretag Eye-One Display 2 to calibrate my dual LCD screens...and my laptop...so they all look alike, and with standard brightness, color temperature and color rendition (as good as the LCDs can do). See review at Northlight Images. It works great. It's not the same as having a professional calibrated broadcast monitor, but that's a whole different price range. (note, it won't do TVs, just PC displays).

In AE?
 

(Noob question) Is there an easy way to do this in AE as well?

Thanks.

AE would seem like over kill. Simply create a static file in Photoshop and then apply pan/crop motion to bring the file in & out of frame. But AE would be better for creating a motion lower third that would look a bit higher end.

VAAST has or had some lower 1/3rds called GrafPak that works but for the majority of stuff I either do it in Photoshop (if I want a static background) OR I use something called Texture Loopsthat I've had for years and simply resize/reposition them in Vegas for thirds that have movement.

I've created lower thirds in Photoshop or Gimp and saved as a PNG keeping the transparency. take them in as a layer and even though I have the positioned about right on the screen, I have used Pan and Crop to tweak the positioning a bit. I usually do the text within Vegas.

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Enjoy :-)