A method of correcting optical characteristics of a back light unit (BLU) for a three-dimensional (3D) display apparatus includes: obtaining first optical characteristics of a reference image; obtaining a corrected image by applying an initial correction value, which is determined based on the first optical characteristics, to the reference image; obtaining second optical characteristics of the corrected image; determining whether the second optical characteristics match reference optical characteristics; outputting the corrected image based on determining that the second optical characteristics match the reference optical characteristics, and obtaining a new corrected image and repeating, for the new corrected image, the obtaining the second optical characteristics and the determining whether the second optical characteristics match the reference optical characteristics, based on determining that the second optical characteristics of the corrected image do not match the reference optical characteristics.