Dell monitor and calibration

[wd88]

Hi everyone.

This is what I am using at the moment.
A canon 5d mkII with a 24-105 f4 lens. ( 5 years old?)
A 2012 mac mini connected to a dell 3007 wfp via dual link dvi ( circa 2007? non wide gamut version).
A recently purchased canon pro 100 and a recently purchased colormunki photo.

My question is, how do I get the images on my screen and prints to match as closely as possible.

This will be quite a long post so I'll try to break it up to make it more manageable and easier to understand.
My screen is at least 8, possibly 9 years old, so I am assuming it is the weak link in the chain.

I am a painter and use photos as reference material. I am not so much bothered about colour accuracy (by that I mean the images looking like what was photographed) but what is important is the consistency of the colour from my screen to the printed image. I do some post processing in canon's dpp (ver 3.14.47) but it is usually quite minimal just some contrast, brightness and sharpening. I don't use any other software.
I print using the printer pro plugin from dpp.

Prior to buying my colormunki I tried printing from dpp using my pro 100 and using pro glossy II paper on my uncalibrated screen. I had some profiles from ages ago when I had a spyder2 and some other apple profiles.
The results were ok and I tried to get closer by using the pro plugin's tile printing service which allows slight adjustments to be made to the colour levels or contrast. It got closer but I realised that it was still too difficult a task to handle without a calibrator.

I bought a colormunki yesterday and have calibrated my screen twice. Once with the recommended d65 setting from the colormunki and once with the d50 setting as recommended from canon's website.

http://www.canon.co.uk/printers/inkj...nt_studio_pro/

I have also created an icc profile for my paper by scanning some swatches using the colormunki.
The photo is of a caucasian person against a grey (neutral to my eyes) painted wall.

The results were as follows.
The photos were viewed under a daylight lamp in a dark room and the monitor in the same dark room.
First of all, all prints are now only slightly off but enough for me to notice. I'd say 5%.
The first print was with the screen set to the d65 setting and the printed images were using canon's own paper profiles. The images are very close but the printed image is lighter in tone and very very slightly less saturated. I had to boost brightness from .17 to .67-.83 to get a tonal likeness on screen but then detail is lost . The colour family of the skin ( sorry painter's term) look almost identical.

Next I printed the same image twice using the new icc profile for the paper created by colormunki. Once using relative colormetric and once using perceptual.
The resulting prints were both darker in tone than the first print and closer to the screen's image though still ever so slightly less saturated. The closer of the two was the perceptual print. It was still slightly lighter though.
So to my eyes the closest match was the d50 screen calibration with the colormunki's paper profile.
The d50 is much warmer but is what canon recommends, though strangely it matches colormunki's paper profile more than canon's own paper profile.

I am in the process of either getting a new screen or going through another pack of photo paper and ink. Is this difference due my screen not being good enough or simply the difference one has to expect from prosumer level kit. My screen has a 72% ntsc gamut and I am thinking of getting a dell 2414h or a 2413 screen as a replacement.
The former has the same gamut and the latter full srgb and 99% argb.

I am assuming that either screen would be better than what I have now due to age. What I am wondering is the discrepancy due to some flaw in my workflow or my screen's limitation.

If anyone has any direct experience of this sort of problem, or the limitations of using the exact same kit I have I'd appreciate any feedback.
Ps. I am working in argb colour space on dpp , though I work and print from raw so I assume that makes no difference?
I am by no means an expert with colour space and gamuts having only read online about them in the last 2 days so any help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance and I hope I have given all the information required.

Wd

Ps I have read other posts on this forum about the compatibility issues with the dp and hdmi interfaces of macs not using the full color gamut to the new dell screens but it seems that enough people use them successfully so I am not too worried about that.
PPs Despite all of this I am quite impressed by what I am able to produce with reasonably priced equipment and not too much ability, I just want to make sure I am making the most of what I can or already do have.

[Manfred M]

Welcome to CiC. If you wouldn't mind clicking the "My Profile" and adding at least your first name and where you are from to your profile, that would be appreciated. We're a fairly informal group here and go about on a first name basis.

Questions like yours is something that we see a lot of.

I expect that you are running into two or three different issues here.

1. Your screen is an additive colour, transmitted light RGB device that uses the large AdobeRGB colour space. A print from your 8-colour photo printer is an extended CMYK, reflected light, subtractive colour product. The CMYK colour space is quite small. The two outputs can never look exactly the same.

2. The colourimeter you are using will ensure consistent colours from camera to screen and finally to print; but that's all. Print density versus screen brightness are something that have to be manually adjusted. Screens tend to be quite bright, and I can't get my Dell 2711 wide gamut turned down low enough. I don't know what software you are using to print your images, but I find I have to up the brightness of my images a bit to have them come out looking right. I print from Photoshop CC 2014, so I add a print adjustment layer that adds just enough brightness to the print; and so long as I do not adjust my computer screen settings and have the same level of ambient light in the room where I am working, all I have to do is apply this amount of adjustment to every print and I get good, consistent output. The only way to determine how much manual tweaking is required is to do test prints until you get what you like.

Another issue with printers is that you need to reset your black point and white point to ensure that your printer does not blow out highlights or loses shadow detail. Your exposure settings on your screen will go from 0 = pure black to 255 = pure white. Any black value below around 15 will result in loss of shadow detail and any white value about 240 will mean no ink is deposited on the image; set your black and white points accordingly for only the print version.

Your printer drivers assume RGB input, so do NOT convert to CMYK for printing.

3. Paper selection - your paper selection is going to affect the final output. There is no white ink in your printer, so the whiteness of the paper is what determines the white values in the output. Paper finish also has an impact on your colour density; matte papers scatter more light than glossy ones; so blacks will look blacker on glossy paper.

I also assume that you are buying quality paper that has printer profiles; the paper profile needs to be loaded on your computer printing software and selected for the print you are making. Again, I don't know what software you are using to print with, but the software should be used to control the printer output.

4. The underlying assumption is that the standard light you will be examining your prints under is 5500K daylight. I suspect so long as the same light that you are painting with is also the light hitting the image, you should be okay.


I hope this makes sense and helps fix your problems.

[wd88]

Thanks for the help.
I use canon's dpp program for processing and printing. I am also using canon pro glossy photo paper. The software has the paper profile loaded into it so that should not be a problem.
I understand everything you mentioned apart from the black and white point.
How do you adjust your printer's black and white points? I presume the blackest black on the screen is too black for the ink and the the whitest white is too white for the paper?
Finally, would getting a new monitor help? Considering my monitor is as old as it is, it seems pretty good but monitors are so much cheaper and better spec'ed now I am wondering whether buying either of the aforementioned will solve my problem for me.

[Manfred M]

I understand everything you mentioned apart from the black and white point.
How do you adjust your printer's black and white points? I presume the blackest black on the screen is too black for the ink and the the whitest white is too white for the paper?

Unfortunately, I'm not a Canon shooter, so have no idea about DPP, but you definitely understood the point I was making. Hopefully someone with DPP experience can step up and help.

As for a new screen, yours (like mine) is getting a bit long in the tooth and the technology has certainly improved in the interim. I'm not sure how much spending this much money is going to improve my work, so I'm not buying a new screen just yet.

[wd88]

As for a new screen, yours (like mine) is getting a bit long in the tooth and the technology has certainly improved in the interim. I'm not sure how much spending this much money is going to improve my work, so I'm not buying a new screen just yet.

This is somewhat how I feel, after calibration My screen and photos are very similar and I am assuming that the gamut differential is due to the printers being smaller than the screens, so I am not confident having a wider gamut screen would solve the problem.
Hopefully someone who has recently bought a new dell screen to replace a similarly old screen can let me know.
I did some reading about black and white points using a histogram so will try it, I suppose in the end the last 5-10% of this work flowfine tuning and profiling just has to be done by printing and tweaking until u get it right.

[Richard Lundberg]

1. Your screen is an additive colour, transmitted light RGB device that uses the large AdobeRGB colour space. A print from your 8-colour photo printer is an extended CMYK, reflected light, subtractive colour product. The CMYK colour space is quite small. The two outputs can never look exactly the same.

No, he said he is using a Dell 3007 non wide gamut.

You can't use HDMI output to calibrate, it does not have full dynamic range.

Dell wide gamuts can be found fairly cheap, you should upgrade. But they are locked in to i1Display Pro for LUT(internal monitor) cal.

[wd88]

Dell wide gamuts can be found fairly cheap, you should upgrade. But they are locked in to i1Display Pro for LUT(internal monitor) cal.

What monitor would you suggest? Is using a display port interface ok for getting full gamut? Also as I mentioned I have a Colormunki so can use that to calibrate. Would a 2414 h monitor be sufficient? They seem very popular with photographers. My monitor is so old I can't find the argb or srgb specs just that it is 72% NTSC gamut I presume that even the 2414h would be an upgrade even though the gamut is the same.

[Manfred M]

You can't use HDMI output to calibrate, it does not have full dynamic range.

Sure you can; at HDMI is 10-bits per channel (which is incidentally the best that my screen can produce) . It just means that you don't the full dynamic range the screen is capable of displaying (again, I've calibrated with plain old VGA (analogue), DVI (24-bit) and HDMI (30-bit). They all give slightly different results; but when profiled they give you the most accurate colour that you can get using the connection in question.

Display Port connections can handle 12-bit and 16-bits per channel; but video cards and screens don't handle those bit rates. Even the top of the line nVidia Quadro M6000 workstation video card is 10-bits / channel output (30-bit). List price on these is around $1600 US.

http://images.nvidia.com/content/pdf..._US_FNL_HR.pdf

But they are locked in to i1Display Pro for LUT(internal monitor) cal.

Not correct. The calibration is controlled by an icc profile file on the computer which compensates for incorrect screen / graphics card colours and does not affect the screen directly. This file is loaded at startup. Hint - I have a Dell and I have profiled it (with an x-Rite i1); there is definitely a difference between the icc colour profile that shipped with the screen and the output I get after loading the icc file output by the profiling software.

[Richard Lundberg]

No, I am correct. You can only use the i1 Display Pro for doing the Dell UltraSharp Color Calibration Software to calibrate the monitor's LUT. And how can you possibly do a screen cal if you don't have the top and bottom of the dynamic range? HDMI is 16-235 of 0-255.
For the Mac please follow X-Rite's instructions below, and do not attempt unless you are running OS 10.8 or later:


Here's the current link information we have for Dell's UltraSharp software.

The link will take you to the Drivers and Downloads page for the Dell 2413 monitor, and then you will need to select the Mac OS option, and then select “Drivers for OS Deployment”. That obscure choice will reveal the Dell Ultrasharp software build from April 24, 2014.

http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/...p2414q/drivers

[Manfred M]

No, I am correct.

Please provide some proof here as I believe you are providing incorrect advice that runs counter to my own experience.

Yes, I understand that you want to use the internal Dell LUT rather than the using the more traditional approach of loading an icc profile at startup. I can understand why Dell would do this; after all they are trying to ship a computer screen that has decent colour and do not have access to the computer it will be used on. This does not mean that this is the only way of achieving the final result.

On the other hand, the traditional way to do the colour correction is via an icc profile on the computer. This instructs the graphics card to change the output to the screen. This is the way that the various X-rite and Datacolor devices handle this operation. In this method, the calibration software has access to both the computer graphics card and the computer display.

I also do not understand why you are suggesting that you cannot calibrate a computer screen using VGA, HDMI, DisplayPort, etc. You will get as good a colour correction as each of those interconnection cables / technologies can deliver. Does it mean these are the optimums the system is capable of; likely not. Any system is only as good as its weakest link; and in the case of the graphics systems; 10-bits seems to be the maximum that a top end graphics card can put out. It also seems to be the display limit of the top end computer screens ) are still at around 99% AdobeRGB colour space capable.

[wd88]

I have spent most of the day tweaking the printing settings and screen calibrations.
It has been quite interesting and the differences are still quite small still but definitely in the following direction.
The screen's image is more purple/magenta and not as bright as the print. The screen looks like the white balance is off and the printed image looks slightly overexposed.
Tweaking the printed image by lowering brightness and increasing red levels gets me very close to my screen image but it seems like I am trying to correct my screen's inadequacies rather than doing good post processing?

Can anyone tell me whether getting a better monitor will solve this? That's all I really need to know.

My monitor has been calibrated by a colormunki and is much better than before but the printed images coming out of the printer seem more natural and accurate than the screen's image when I just print straight from raw without any processing.
Also as my monitor is about 8-9 years old, would a new screen with the same normal gamut still be better as the panel is new?
I don't know how much panels deteriorate with age in terms of color accuracy, as this is the only monitor I have.

Thanks again.

[Manfred M]

When I bought my first flat screen screen for my computer, I read that the lifespan of these devices would be around 7 years; about 2 years longer than the old picture tube CRT models. Technology has been updated and I see no additional data as to how long newer screens might last. I do re-profile my main screen once or twice a year and compare it to the previous profile. So far I have not noticed any significant noticeable colour shifts between two profiles, so suspect that no significant screen deterioration has taken place.

The screen I am typing on and the secondary screen I use for parking menus onmy photo editing computer both show a blue colour cast even after profiling, so those screens cannot be corrected enough to bring them to where they should be. One of them is a lower end Dell that is in the same price range you are looking at the other is a laptop screen. Fortunately, my main work screen one profiles quite nicely; except for the previously noted minimum brightness setting which can't be turned down low enough. So the only thing I have to compensate for this as part of my print workflow is a brightness adjustment.

I haven't tested and profiled every computer screen out there, so can't know for sure but suspect that the lower end ones are engineered to a price point, rather than for accurate colour reproduction. I wouldn't want to guess as to even hazard a guess as to how well the screen you are considering will perform for you. I can only assume that screens that are reasonably compliant with the AdobeRGB colour space are more likely to be designed for good colour accuracy. There are no guarantees here, as Eizo; a high end screen maker that makes screens for photographic work, turns out some models that are sRGB only. Their pro models are 99% AdobeRGB compliant.

All I can suggest is that unless you find someone who has the appropriate level of experience with the model you are looking at, you are on your own. The general consensus on this site base on what what I've seen from other site members suggests that Dell screens using IPS technology (their Ultrasharp line, I think) perform well. I would personally only go with the models that are stated to be able to reproduce 1.07 billion colours; the 16.78 million colour display units are sRGB compliant only.

[Aeros]

I have had a little experience here , so this makes me dangerous, like the one eyed leading the blind. But here's what I have done and it works for me as far as getting WYSIWYG results. I'm working with a Dell T7610 workstation and dual generic PNP monitors on a NVIDIA Quadro K2000 VC. I used a Spyder4 screen calibration system to sync and calibrate both screens. Its a tricky operation as ambient light plays a significant role in how Spyder reads your screen. I have fluorescent overhead light that dose not uniformly light my studio so it took some heavy thinking (hard for me) to sort it out. at he end of it all I was humbled at how much it takes to accurately calibrate a screen.

I would rely on a system like Spyder to calibrate and help it as much as you can by giving Spyder input that is as accurate as possible, (ambient light etc.). There is one more consideration, I couldn't understand why my prints (Epsom Stylus Pro 9900) were darker than I expected, until the penny dropped. It was because all screens are backlit and thus give a brighter image than the substrate printed on, is not backlit and therefore not as bright, so one must make adjustments on the monitor to get the correct brightness on the print. It takes the production of a few scrap prints to reach your goal, even if you try to save money with test prints on cheaper substrates, you will get different results when you change, as different substrates may be coated or uncoated which will effect saturation of the ink into the paper and thus affect colour and tone. So the final acid test will be on the substrate you will finally print on. If you print giclees on canvas, then you have to print tests on canvas, expensive but......

[wd88]

When I bought my first flat screen screen for my computer, I read that the lifespan of these devices would be around 7 years; about 2 years longer than the old picture tube CRT models. Technology has been updated and I see no additional data as to how long newer screens might last. I do re-profile my main screen once or twice a year and compare it to the previous profile. So far I have not noticed any significant noticeable colour shifts between two profiles, so suspect that no significant screen deterioration has taken place.

The screen I am typing on and the secondary screen I use for parking menus onmy photo editing computer both show a blue colour cast even after profiling, so those screens cannot be corrected enough to bring them to where they should be. One of them is a lower end Dell that is in the same price range you are looking at the other is a laptop screen. Fortunately, my main work screen one profiles quite nicely; except for the previously noted minimum brightness setting which can't be turned down low enough. So the only thing I have to compensate for this as part of my print workflow is a brightness adjustment.

I haven't tested and profiled every computer screen out there, so can't know for sure but suspect that the lower end ones are engineered to a price point, rather than for accurate colour reproduction. I wouldn't want to guess as to even hazard a guess as to how well the screen you are considering will perform for you. I can only assume that screens that are reasonably compliant with the AdobeRGB colour space are more likely to be designed for good colour accuracy. There are no guarantees here, as Eizo; a high end screen maker that makes screens for photographic work, turns out some models that are sRGB only. Their pro models are 99% AdobeRGB compliant.

All I can suggest is that unless you find someone who has the appropriate level of experience with the model you are looking at, you are on your own. The general consensus on this site base on what what I've seen from other site members suggests that Dell screens using IPS technology (their Ultrasharp line, I think) perform well. I would personally only go with the models that are stated to be able to reproduce 1.07 billion colours; the 16.78 million colour display units are sRGB compliant only.

Thanks Manfred that was very helpful and the sort of answer I was expecting/hoping for.
In that case, does anyone out there have experience of changing from an old 3007wfp monitor to a u2413 or u2414 h monitor?
Tft central is super helpful but abit over my head.
Thanks to everyone for all the advice.

wd

[dragon76]

Thanks Manfred that was very helpful and the sort of answer I was expecting/hoping for.
In that case, does anyone out there have experience of changing from an old 3007wfp monitor to a u2413 or u2414 h monitor?
Tft central is super helpful but abit over my head.
Thanks to everyone for all the advice.

wd

Hi WD. I don't have much experience with DYI printing so I cant comment on that side but I have used Dell displays for a number of years and I have owned a few ultrasharp models namely; 2709w, 3007wfp and 3007wfp-hc and now u2711. I think the problem is the anti glare coating which causes colour issues for me. The 3007 is the worst. it's kind of ok with the 2711 and can be compensated with screen calibration. Maybe it has something to do with it being an IPS panel. Dell use a H3 coating that most professionals don't like. As far as I know, they use the same H3 coating until the XX14 series. For digital processing, IMO, the 3007wfp is obsolete, being an TFT LCD, 16.7 million colour and limited colour gamut. the HC version is still ok being 92% gamut (according to Dell). Until the next generation of displays, IPS panel is still the way to go. u2711 is still the favourite flagship model and you can pick one up for a good price these days. The alternatives are: Eizo and NEC; a friend of mine own an NEC PA271 and it is a quality display and I'm sure their 24" line up would be in the same quality. Hope this help. Cheers Dean

[wd88]

Thanks Dean

That is very useful information.
I think the only way to find out if there is a significant difference is to take the plunge and order another screen.
Eizo and Nec are a bit over my budget for now so a Dell it will have to be.
If I do decide to buy one I'll let the rest of you know how I get on.

Thanks again.