Wide gamut monitor problems

[martynas_kundrotas1]

<p>I just switched from a crt monitor to a wide gamut NEC P221W. Now i read about wide gamut displays before buying, but i kinda thought it wouldn't be that bad. I also read about color managed apps, liek firefox, photoshop and such, but i don't see any difference between color managed or not. Everything looks wrong, colors are too intensive, especially red. Any idea what am i doing wrong? I don't have a calibrator yet...</p>

[alan_chan4]

<p>If you are using Windows, everything will look oversaturated except colour profile aware softwares like Photoshop etc. But for this to work, you will have to profile the monitor using i1D2 or Spyder3 etc. Firefox is able to display profile embedded jpegs correctly by default. To force it to display all jpegs correctly even those w/o embedded profile, you have to set gfx.color_management.mode to 1 (default is 2).</p>

[martynas_kundrotas1]

<p>Well as far as i know windows 7 is color managed. The problem is i have no idea how to get those normal colors, should i create a profile myself?</p>

[joe_c5]

<p>Even if you had a profile, many applications will not use the profile.</p>

<p>Until you have a profile, I recommend using the monitor controls to set it to sRGB mode.</p>

<p>If you profile it, you will probably want it set to either NATIVE or R,G,B depending on whether you adjust the monitor’s white balance or not.</p>

[martynas_kundrotas1]

<p>When in windows 7 i set the color profile to SRGB, none of the so called color managed apps correct the colors. When i change it to adobeRGB for example, then i can clearly see the difference, between color managed and not. In firefox when i enable color management, they seem about right. Is this the correct way? Until i get a calibrator that is.</p>

[martynas_kundrotas1]

<p>Well, actually no, the colors still aren't right, they aren't as saturated as before, they seem awkward now and washed out :/ I don't understand a thing...</p>

[patricklavoie]

<p><em><strong>Everything looks wrong, colors are too intensive, especially red. Any idea what am i doing wrong? I don't have a calibrator yet...</strong></em></p>

<p>you have the answer right there ; )<em> </em></p>

<p>for me getting a highend monitor without a calibration device is like putting cheap tire on a 100k car.. just dont make sense.<em> </em></p>

<p>Theres is no problem related to a wide gammut monitor vs application .. the fact is that most browser are not color managed period. so you need to save the images with a sRGB colorspace for them to look good when posted on the web.</p>

[bgelfand]

<p>I agree with Patrick. As soon as I calibrated and profiled my monitor, everything looked better, even the desktop.</p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<p>Along with what others said, don't even think of editing any of your images without calibrating it with a hardware device. I'm afraid the days of doing it by eye on a wide gamut monitor even if you set it to sRGB mode are over.</p>

<p>If you don't calibrate and try to use the monitor's OSD to set it to some undefined color characteristic, hue/saturation will not look correct in color managed apps. You'll eventually want to edit your images because in this state your reds may seem to be a desaturated orange, skin tones with too much green or maganta when they're not.</p>

<p>When you post these edited images on the web converting to sRGB, others will see something quite different than you intended.</p>

[joe_c5]

<blockquote>

<p>When in windows 7 i set the color profile to SRGB, none of the so called color managed apps correct the colors.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I had been suggesting setting the settings of the monitor itself to sRGB, not windows. That is expected behavior, though, since most images are sRGB already, so color correcting them from sRGB to sRGB would have no effect.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>When i change it to adobeRGB for example, then i can clearly see the difference, between color managed and not. In firefox when i enable color management, they seem about right. Is this the correct way? Until i get a calibrator that is.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>If you do not have a correct profile yet, for a wide gamut monitor AdobeRGB set as the monitor profile will probably be better than nothing. Really you will need a profile for your specific monitor, though.</p>

[martynas_kundrotas1]

<p>Well, thanks for the responses :) It seems i can't get away without a calibrator :/</p>

[digitaldog]

<p>No, you can’t get away without calibrating the display and building a profile be it a wide gamut or “sRGB like” display. Its just with a wide gamut display, you see how incorrect not having either a calibrated and profiled display or using ICC aware applications are. With the “sRGB-like” display, things don’t look as awful, but they are still not correct. Outside ICC aware applications, or viewing such app’s with a good display profile, the colors you see are simply not correct. Even if you view sRGB images.</p>