A Guide to Wide-Gamut Displays (v1.2)

[Mickatroid]

LOL you are right, it does for me too and I masked my screen a bit just in case it was a relative thing. Perhaps it is what happens when you apply colour correction to a non icc tagged image? This is one thread that I think might be better if I butt out.

At very least I am going away to do some more reading I have a suspicion too that the spyder software is not playing the game quite in the same way that simply using the profile under windows does. That might require some experimentation.

Will get back to this eventually. Thanks for the links to test ideas on.

[Maldark]

Originally Posted by Glieb

Yes, I know, it displays the wrong colour. But as I explained above, it does change colour, as you can visually see it become a different colour when you change ICC profiles. So... what does it do?

The colour change when you apply your monitors profile in the Colour Management screen in Windows 7 is the result of the adjusted gamma curves and colour gradients. That is it applies corrections to ensure a smooth response over the range of colours. What it doesn't do is apply gamut correction which is required for wide-gamut monitors. So your colours are now "calibrated" but they are still oversaturated.

It's actually really easy to notice if you've got dual monitors like I do. My shiny Dell 2408WFP is wide-gamut and my Viewsonic VX2025 is a perfect sRGB monitor. When I apply my monitor profiles both screens change colour slightly, but the Dell is still clearly oversaturated.

[Glieb]

Aha, so it is just the gamma curves and colour gradients then. But wait, you mean that Windows 7 Colour Management cannot actually adapt the output colour gamut per screen element to the display at all? It's merely some overall tuning for the whole screen...? Then what's the point of this? If everything on the screen is changed according to the same colour scaler, then what colour are programs expected to deliver?

If that is the case – that Windows Colour Management is not sufficient for every program because it changes the overall colour gradient, i.e. also everything that should be sRGB – then it doesn’t make sense. If people put in their ICC profile in there and also in e.g. photoshop, then that program’s output is ‘calibrated’ twice. Doesn't that over compensate?

The only ‘benefit’ I see of using a ‘screen wide colour manager’ would be that theoretically you should be able to make everything on screen sRGB if not already and then use Windows Colour Management to de-intensify the colours to suite your wide gamut monitor. Only then you wouldn’t use the wide gamut capability of the monitor, you would just simulate sRGB like that option on the thing itself does.

BTW I don't own a wide gamut display, but it's just that I want to know these things because I want to buy one someday. I've been reading up on colour vision in general (about rods and cones, trichromatic theory and the CIE 1931 color space and how that all translates to the primary colours used in your monitor to give you the right colour perception provided you calibrate well) but now that I want to see it work in practice I come across these peculiarities.

Does anyone have a link for reading up on the practical (Windows) side of things (for me and Mickatroid ) These things are hard to grasp. I just don't want to blindly install ICC profiles everywhere and assume it's calibrated well. Colour is a very subjective thing. At least we should know what is happening behind the screen (pun intended) exactly.

[Maldark]

Originally Posted by Glieb

*SNIP*

I'll be the first to admit the entire colour management system needs to be rethought, it just doesn't help in a lot of situations. A lot of the problems comes from Windows not knowing what colour space any given program is running in (even though 99% will be using sRGB). Because of this it can't just blanketly apply gamut correction, it will however apply gamma correction producing a smooth colour response curve. When you load up your colour profiles in programs like photoshop, I believe (and please correct me if anyone knows better). That only the gamut information is extracted to correct for the oversized colour space on the wide-gamut monitors. The gamma corrections are not reapplied, so you do end up with the correct colour space and a smooth colour response.

[Mickatroid]

Originally Posted by Glieb

Does anyone have a link for reading up on the practical (Windows) side of things (for me and Mickatroid )

Yes please.

One thing I can say for sure Glieb is that having a Spyder 3 Express and a HP LP2475w monitor (factory refurbished through grays online) if everything is set up right it's obvious to the eye. Any lingering doubts can be dispelled by using paper profiles and a good printer (I have a Pixma 970 which is good enough).

For example, I updated by Canon DPP software the other day and it turned off the option to pick up the monitor profile in the process. Some time later I opened an image of our son and found, to my surprise, I had to reduce the saturation one step (Camera RAW) when setting up to print.

The print was washed out. The very next thing I did was check that the Spyder ICC profile was being used - it wasn't. Pretty amazing that I have gotten that used to simply getting the colours right on screen and then printing hey? Being able to do this confidently has made for consistently good prints.

I even hold picture frames and matts up to the monitor to see if the white balance needs a little bump to suit the frame.

Good to hear about your interest in the retina. I tutored perception for Psych students at Newcastle Uni for a while. It's interesting stuff. Also had a colleague who was into seasonal effective disorder (worth a look).

Finally, I don't know if you ever did much film photography but you were kinda stuck with the white balance you shot (lens filters were the only real option). After a while I could see colour casts wherever I was and to some extent still do. I love halogen lamps but am not so fond of downlights - I recently noticed that you can get energy saver bulbs that look like a normal globe but have a second glass halogen light inside. Cheery halogen wherever I need it!

PS: Am reading this http://www.artstorm.net/journal/2009...mut-dell-2408/

[JJJ211]

Anyone have the colour profiles for the dell 3007wfp-hc (a02) and the dell 3007wfp (a04) or can point me in a direction where i can download them??? from day one i haven't been able to properly calibrate these monitors... the colours, although looking great out of the box, seem 'off' and inaccurate when viewing movies and games for some reason and i know there's headroom for improvement... especially the 'HC' version!

[Mickatroid]

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/icc_profiles.htm

Go nuts

[Frontl1ne]

Do people still look at this thread

I have a Spyder2Express and have read that it may not provide accurate colour calibration for wide gamut monitors. I've noticed that the Spyder4Express supports wide gamut monitors.

Just wondering, is it worth it getting a calibrator that can do wide gamut? Or is the difference not very noticeable?

[Mickatroid]

Originally Posted by Frontl1ne

I have a Spyder2Express and have read that it may not provide accurate colour calibration for wide gamut monitors.

This is surprising, where did you read it? I think it is doing a first rate job of my wide gamut display (HP LP2475W)

[Frontl1ne]

Originally Posted by Mickatroid

This is surprising, where did you read it? I think it is doing a first rate job of my wide gamut display (HP LP2475W)

It's all over google, here's one example:

Here's a quote from NEC on the use of the Spyder 2 with their own wide-gamut monitors:

"The Datacolor Spyder2 color sensor has been tested with the the NEC LCD2690WUXi, LCD3090WQXi and LCD2180WG-LED displays and found to cause inaccurate measurements when measuring the color primaries. This is due to the wide color gamut aspect of these displays. This may result in an inaccurate calibration and ICC Profiles to be generated. Using this color sensor is not recommended with these displays. The Datacolor Spyder 3 has improved measurement performance for these displays. "

http://photo.net/digital-darkroom-forum/00RUHP

I think it does quite a good job on my U2711 as well, but then again I've never seen a well calibrated monitor in my life.