Seems like a long shot but has anyone known someone to accept payment to calibrate a monitor for them? I've bought a Dell UT2410, which has excellent colour reproduction--when calibrated. Buying a colorimeter would cost almost as much as the monitor itself, paying someone who already owns one to calibrate it for you makes a lot more sense to me.
Getting someone to calibrate your monitor
- Thread starter auric
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The Spyder3pro is a good calibrator you can find it around £90 on the internet, calling somebody to calibrate it for you is gonna cost you probably more than that+overtime, as the panel settles, you may need to recalibrate and that all adds up.
The question is why did you go for a wide gamut monitor(U2410)? Wide Gamut is mainly for professionals, no matter how much you calibrate it your desktop colors will always look over-bright and the whites will never be whites but more like dirty whites, unfortunately is the nature of IPS monitors which are only good for photo editing and graphic design at professional levels.
You will very likely end up running the monitor with the sRGB setting, once got fed up of the neon like REDs and YELLOWs, which means that you could have spent half of what you spent for the U2410 for a decent TN monitor from samsung, Benq or Acer.
The question is why did you go for a wide gamut monitor(U2410)? Wide Gamut is mainly for professionals, no matter how much you calibrate it your desktop colors will always look over-bright and the whites will never be whites but more like dirty whites, unfortunately is the nature of IPS monitors which are only good for photo editing and graphic design at professional levels.
You will very likely end up running the monitor with the sRGB setting, once got fed up of the neon like REDs and YELLOWs, which means that you could have spent half of what you spent for the U2410 for a decent TN monitor from samsung, Benq or Acer.
I thought good colours meant good colours. How can dirty whites be a good thing for professionals?
Anyway, I didn't want a TN screen because of the poor viewing angles and washed out colours, and I had read that IPS panels are the best, not just "the best for photo editing and graphics work". I want something that doesn't feel like too much of a downgrade from my CRT on the colour front. I do intend to use it for games, so I chose the IPS panel with the best balance between quality and response times.
It cost me £380 off of ebay, is that such a bad price?
IF you think I made a bad purchase, do you have a better non-TN panel that you'd recommend?
Anyway, I didn't want a TN screen because of the poor viewing angles and washed out colours, and I had read that IPS panels are the best, not just "the best for photo editing and graphics work". I want something that doesn't feel like too much of a downgrade from my CRT on the colour front. I do intend to use it for games, so I chose the IPS panel with the best balance between quality and response times.
It cost me £380 off of ebay, is that such a bad price?
IF you think I made a bad purchase, do you have a better non-TN panel that you'd recommend?
no, I apologize, I didn't mean you have made a bad purchase the fact is that many gamers (obviously not your case) are approaching this screen as one of the best monitors ever thus not realising that in order to get a good image on it you need to calibrate it and even start switching between different color presents depending on what kind of work you are doing on it, sRGB for web browsing and word processing, Game for games etc and Standard/Warm/Cool for photo editing/graphics.
In many cases once seen the blown up colors people start moaning about the screen thinking that there is something wrong with it and that calibration will fix everything.
I dunno about TN mate, I have really only been looking at IPS lately and the U2410 is the best of the bunch for that matter. Shame is plagues with issues like the Green/Pink tint and bad dithering in sRGB.
How is yours? setting a white background do you notice any kind of gradient when looking at the screen from left to right?
In many cases once seen the blown up colors people start moaning about the screen thinking that there is something wrong with it and that calibration will fix everything.
I dunno about TN mate, I have really only been looking at IPS lately and the U2410 is the best of the bunch for that matter. Shame is plagues with issues like the Green/Pink tint and bad dithering in sRGB.
How is yours? setting a white background do you notice any kind of gradient when looking at the screen from left to right?
It's not arrived yet. I know that I never use S-RGB mode on my CRT (SM1100DF) which looks a bit hazy, my hand-tuned colour profile looks much nicer; bold colours but not offensive to the eyes. The monitor seems pretty good for me considering it was the "budget" 21"er at the time (paid about £280 for it about 5 years ago, if I remember right); I've only become an LCD convert to get the extra real estate. I'll be able to line them up side-by-side when I get the Dell and take a snap of them both.
I'm still confused about why you'd need to switch between different modes and why some or better suited to certain tasks. I thought if the colour on the screen was accurate to the colour the graphics card, that was all that mattered...
"Plagued with issues" doesn't sit well with me, nor does it seem to level with "best of the lot". no one mentioned a plague of issues in the reviews I read. Guess I can only wait and see.
I'm still confused about why you'd need to switch between different modes and why some or better suited to certain tasks. I thought if the colour on the screen was accurate to the colour the graphics card, that was all that mattered...
"Plagued with issues" doesn't sit well with me, nor does it seem to level with "best of the lot". no one mentioned a plague of issues in the reviews I read. Guess I can only wait and see.
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Never understood peoples whine about TN panels, yes you could argue about vieiwing angles but when are you gonna be 100 degrees from the side etc?
And for colours they do not look washed out, my old samsung has amazing colours, very bright and a high amount of contrast, maybe not real world colours but it defintely looked good.
Paying someone to calibrate your screen would only work if they came round to your house or leant u a colorimeter. You'd need to calibrate it specifically for your combo of graphics card and monitor. As a start, and something which can often help improve things as a start, try he ICC profile and monitor settings from the review at tftcentral.co.uk. Might help
I'm wondering how calibrating a monitor works. Does the ICC profile alter the settings through your gfx card driver (those sliders in my nvidia control panel for example) or what? Isn't tuning at the gfx card level going to be fundamentally different and inferior from tuning at the monitor level?
Are you being serious? Even sitting back in my chair would result in a colour shift, darking the entire image. That's exactly why I opted for the U2410 and I'm glad I did - great viewing angles, great gaming performance, great display. TN panels really aren't very good... but they're cheap. It's like arguing that Blu-ray isn't needed because DVD has great picture quality; some people may think that but it doesn't make it true.
yes, it is different, but that is what happens with nearly all monitors. The only adjustments which you can make to the monitor hardware is through the OSD, which only alters a few crude settings for RGB, brightness and contrast (normally limited to those). To get proper colour accuracy, the colorimeter has to adjust things at the GFX card Look Up Table level. so it's a combo of both, but the monitor adjustments are not really very important, and successful calibration is far more hinged on the alterations at the GFX card LUT
A hand full of high end monitors do allow calibration via the monitor's LUT and a profile is created and stored in the hardware itself. only really for graphics pro monitors though, you wont see it often
Where is the gfx card's LUT? Is it stored in a file somewhere?
My current CRT monitor has a few more options than what you mentioned, I can make the display warmer or colder, and can adjust the strength of each colour to 30 different places. Don't know if the Dell will feature that much. I'm wondering if I really need to go the expensive colorimeter route or if calibrating by hand will be sufficient that my untrained eye won't notice colours being off.
My current CRT monitor has a few more options than what you mentioned, I can make the display warmer or colder, and can adjust the strength of each colour to 30 different places. Don't know if the Dell will feature that much. I'm wondering if I really need to go the expensive colorimeter route or if calibrating by hand will be sufficient that my untrained eye won't notice colours being off.
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I use a Pantone Huey calibrator. They retail for about £60 and do a pretty decent job for an entry level device. A nice feature is that you can leave it sitting on your desk and it will automatically adjust the display depending on ambient light conditions. Well worth the money in my opinion.
probably not. you only need high end colour accuracy if you're doing a lot of colour critical work. It's also useful if you need to match the output of a screen to a camera, scanner, printer etc to ensure all give you the same colours.
setting the screen with a software calibration tool will get your screen "feeling" nice to the eye and will probably do you...it wont necessarily give you any REAL colour accuracy, but do you really need it?