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Discussions about cameras, lenses, accessories, and image-processing.
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Display colour calibration - have I done it right? 6 years 7 months ago #1342

  • Desmond Hokin
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Hi everyone, I'm hoping a few folks can help with objectively advising if I have calibrated my screen properly.

My i1Display finally arrived this week, and so far has been very easy to use. I'm on a Mac, and applying the generated colour profile was pleasantly easy to do (I can NOT say the same for Windows.. what a pain in the neck that is to apply a colour profile, anyways I digress..)

In short, I'm quite happy with the changes in colour. Details in shadows are much better displayed - and colours in general look much more natural and closer to what I 'remember' how they looked like when I took the shots originally However, I could easily be biased, which is when I realised it might be helpful to ask others on here for feedback.

  • The software generated the attached reports - can anyone offer their opinion on how 'good' / correct this result is based on the numbers in the tables? I ask because a lot of consumer products set the bar very low for themselves when it comes to assessing their own quality/performance..

  • The second part of my query is that with the new and improved colour profile, all images now have a slightly yellow-ish colour caste. I selected D65 as my target whitebalance at the time of generating my colour icc profile, which I understand to be most neutral / ideal. Is this yellow-ish colour caste the right and my "new normal", or should I be using a different whitebalance target number and generate a new icc profile?

many thanks in advance.

PS. there are several other report types available , I'm happy to generate and upload any of those too if that makes it easier to answer my query .

EDIT: The Forum shrunk the images - I've reuploaded them as PDF - hopefully the numbers are readable if zooming in now....
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Last edit: by Desmond Hokin.

Display colour calibration - have I done it right? 6 years 7 months ago #1348

  • Les Peters
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I'm not sure I'm looking at the right monitor's specs when I study the details of your screen. From what I saw, and I may be wrong, the screen would appear to be largely for video gaming and movie watching, but there is a chance I'm looking at the wrong model. The screen I looked up doesn't achieve the full sRGB colour range, which is going to make things difficult for achieving correct colour. I would expect a screen which is being used for video or still colour processing to have at least a full sRGB prolile capacity, and preferably an Adobe RGB one. There are many monitors on the market which reportedly deliver this. There was a time when colour profiles weren't recognised by the browsers we use on the internet, but now three of the four do. To my eyes, the difference between them is quite striking.
The BenQ SW320 is a 32 inch screen with 4K resolution and Adobe RGB colour profile. It's delta is under 2, which safely takes it beyond most folks ability to discern. However, such specs don't always deliver what you might reasonably expect. DEL have something of a reputation for having some of their screens having a slight red caste on one side of their screens and blue on the other, despite them being 4k and meeting Adobe RGB capacity. It sometimes seems a matter of luck, if you believe the reviews that folk have written on B&H, Amazon etc.. Calibration doesn't fix this.
I use a Spyder 5 Elite plus for my calibration and it offers to calibrate different parts of your screen separately to achieve the most even luminescence and colour, if your monitor will allow this. I'm not familiar with either your monitor or the i1Display, but I guess that's the first thing I would be looking for.
It's not unreasonable to expect a delta <2 with a monitor built specifically for photography or video colour grading. However, this is usually achieved by the monitor using an internal 14 bit look up table to adjust the monitor's output. I wish I could give you clearer advice, but it's difficult when you don't know your monitor or the graphics card you are using.

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Display colour calibration - have I done it right? 6 years 7 months ago #1351

  • Desmond Hokin
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Thanks a lot for the feedback Les.
The monitor is Acer x34 , which I chose as being the best compromise between my uses for photography and work (and leisure time :) ). It's an AH-IPS panel with white led backlight . And specs say it should be able to do 100% sRGB. (Using an old MacBook Pro , with a 6770 Radeon card i think)

So I gather from your post that the delta measure of ~2 or less is about the limit on human perception, and reviewing the "2000" PDF format I attached earlier shows almost all the patches with a delta around 2-3 which seems good. However I now noticed that the white, gray, cream, (patch indexes 4,8,12, & 16) colours all appear to be the biggest outliers. And I wonder if that ties into the faint yellow caste I'm seeing.

What white balance target do you calibrate for? (D65 s 6500k, or something else)?
The monitor on default settings is very blue - I estimate something around 7500-8000k .

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Display colour calibration - have I done it right? 6 years 6 months ago #1355

  • Les Peters
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Hi Desmond,

People making monitors try to make them look their best in the shops where they are sold. The shops usually use "daylight" fluro lights that are set at 7,500K. If they were to set the screen up with a lesser value, the screen would tend to look dull and quite warm.

It's best to do your calibrating with the room set up exactly the same as how it will be when you are processing your images. If you are near a window, the changes to the light outside will make your screen seem different. If it's brighter than when you calibrated, it will tend to make your screen's contrast seem washed out and you'll compensate for this incorrectly. Similarly, a dull day will change the outside K, which makes things look different too. I close my curtains when I work, and have the same lights on as when Ii calibrated the screen. Some people might think this is taking things too far and that's a matter of choice. I'm rather fussy. I like my images to give the viewer a good idea of the variation between birds in different places, and print my images using ProRGB to preserve this.

To answer your question, it doesn't really matter what colour temperature you have your screen set to, so long as your calibrator is set to the same value. Personally I would never use 7500K and much prefer something around 6000 or 5500K. However, this is a matter of taste and judgement. As an aside, you might have noticed some programs switch the screen k's down to 3,500 in the last hour of the evening. It's said to help you get to sleep better. I find 7500 a bit brain wrecking myself.

I use a Colour Passport out in the field when I'm photographing or filming because I feel if you can't tell the time when a picture was taken, the image's colour probably isn't right.

Hope you enjoy your new screen and good luck with your birding.
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Last edit: by Les Peters.

Display colour calibration - have I done it right? 6 years 2 months ago #1544

  • Mark Davidson
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Hello Les,

I read your discussion with Desmond with great interest. After some research, mainly internet, I bought a BenQ 27” SW2700 monitor in August 2017 and ran the BenQ Palette Master calibration software using a x-rite i1 Display Pro colorimeter. At what frequency should I recalibrate?

Kind regards, Mark Davidson

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Display colour calibration - have I done it right? 6 years 2 months ago #1545

  • Les Peters
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Yours was a good choice. The monitor's 14 bit LUT gives excellent results for both Adobe RGB and sRGB.

I check the calibration of my monitor every two weeks. A check doesn't take long (a minute or two) and generally I find there's been no change. However, once in a while I'm taken by surprise because there's a significant noticeable difference. I've no idea why this only happens sometimes.

I will only do a full calibration if the check shows that this will be worth while. Hope this answers your question. Cheers.

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Last edit: by Les Peters.
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