Question about color accuracy (post- calibration)

[Duvan]

I'm reading reviews on Rtings and in the color accuracy post calibration part, to get close to 100% sRGB the brightness is often lowered from say 50-70 to 15-30.
Doesn't the monitor look all gray with that kind of brightness? For general use, do people really use that kind of settings or is it more for photo editing and the likes that you want to use that kind of settings?

I also wonder how good the ICC profiles on Rtings for example would work on another of the same model monitor. Not perfect I guess but it should work somewhat at least?

 

[eddiew]

Not sure what Rtings is, but I use a hardware calibrator on my screens and have never once lowered the brightness from what is comfortable. Think they are about 70-80%.

I don't know for sure what the accuracy is, but the ones that are meant to have a near full sRGB gamut tend to report 97-98%. This is good enough for most people. If there is a touch of drift in the mid values it's unlikely the human eye will pick it out

Actually, I leave one monitor un-calibrated on purpose. It's off colour and I know it; but this is the worst case of how other people might perceive your content and you need to know about it!

I would honestly never take a colour profile off the internet. Every unit tends to be a little different. If you honestly care, get yourself a proper calibrator.

 

[mrk]

If the OSD controls are set during calibration to meet the initial pre-calibration targets (his is part of the process in any decent cal app anyway) such as the desire luminance and standard white balance and gamma (6500K and 2.2) then the icc profile has to only adjust and calibrate the final steps to get the end result after the colour palette measurements are taken and the icc profile is stored for your GFX card's LUT.

Personally I was never a fan of the ICC profile method. Not all apps/browsers are colour profile aware, so you'd end up getting a range of colour variances depending on the app you are using.

You would also need to recalibrate every time you installed a new GFX card driver as the colour processing may have changed in that new driver, likewise if you change GFX card etc etc.

My preferred method was to have a monitor with a built in LUT, then all calibrations are stored directly on the monitor, no matter what input source yo used, you'd get the same calibrated picture. I also found that in extreme cases, icc profiles would created a duller "white".

Using an icc profile from online won't give you the same results. Every single monitor even same models is different, that's why they need to be calibrated individually for that specific panel. This is less of an issue with OLED as they have no backlight and uniformity is even among other things.

I am now on QD-OLED and have not done an icc profile calibration purely because to my eye and having it side by side with my old LG IPS there is no reasonable difference in the colour accuracy for the fatory SRGB calibration which is rather great as new monitors like these don't have built in LUTs.

I'm reading reviews on Rtings and in the color accuracy post calibration part, to get close to 100% sRGB the brightness is often lowered from say 50-70 to 15-30.

This is generally true for LCD monitors. My LG was at around 17 brightness, but as mentioned, since it was calibrated directly to the monitor's LUT and not the GFX card's, the brightness was pure and everything looks excellent. If you've only used monitors at high brightness before, this would seem dark but you soon adjust to it and anything out of the box feels way too bright.

The value depends on the panel as each one varies. On the LG the 17 brightness correlated to around a 100cd/m2 luminance. Typically for office use the recognised standard is between 100 and 120cd/m2. For comparison, my QD-OLED is at 53 brightness to get the same luminance. You can still claibrate to accurate colour values with any brightness as long as it's not at either extreme of the brightness scale else the calibration profile will have a hard time without mashing up all the colours.

For me as long as Dell keep at it with the SRGB mode accuracy going forwards then far as I am concerned the factory calibration is as good as I ever need it to be for my photo editing and I'll let the i1d2 gather dust.

 

[Duvan]

Thanks for sharing!

Rtings is rtings.com which reviews a lot of monitors. You can download their calibrated CSS profiles.

I personally prefer accurate colors but the sRGB modes seem to decrease brightness to the extent whites look very gray. So I would use that mode but try to increase brightness to some extent. But okay so color accuracy should remain if not overdone?

Anyway I didn't know some apps do not 'respect' the ICC profiles. That makes ICC less useful. And makes sense to use the OCD to adjust colors...?

I was not even aware of the LUT concept. But okay I understand the monitor can have an internal LUT to the GPU LUT? How do you set them? Is it common for gaming monitors to have that or is it more for those made for color editing?

 

[mrk]

It's not that it looks grey, it just looks different to wha you're probably used to (as in not pure paper white on a display" - White on this monitor looks like paper white, which is expected. As there's no white OLED, the white is generated from the primary quantum dots and is as pure a white as OLED gets currently.

If you look at a sheet of paper in normal light, it looks kind of grey as opposed to bright white, whereas say a white kitchen appliance has a more obvious white to it?

As for LUT, no gaming monitor I know of has them, in fact only a handful of monitors now have them, they are a couple from LG still and the rest being from the suual photo editing geared brands like Eizo etc. My old LG was not a gaming monitor with only 60Hz and no VRR etc, but it was geared as a productivity monitor with accurate colour calibration abilities. These new QD-OLEDs seem to be a jack of all trades, you have the colour accurate modes, and a factory calibration that is actually usable out of the box.

If you want to cover all bases with great visuals but also accurate colours, then stick it in creator mode, SRGB and set the gamma in creator mode to 2.4. Brightness 53 and contrast 66. If you adjust the latter to something beyond these then the creator mode gamma may need to be dropped back to 2.4 - But from my testing the above values look near 1:1 colour accurate to my old LG, although with infinity contrast now because OLED.

You don't need to set an LUT, it's automatically applied if a calibration is done, whether via GFX card or internally to the monitor.

 

[EsaT]

Doesn't the monitor look all gray with that kind of brightness?

You get gray precisely if you don't lower the brightness, which is really misleading naming in LCDs:
Because of LCD panel being capable to blocking only limited percentage of the back light and always letting some through, "brightness" actually sets the black value.
And contrast then adjusts how much brighter white is than black.

So if you want to squeeze out what ever performance from very compromised LCD tech is available, you keep contrast high and drop brightness.
Keeping brightness high and lowering contrast is basically smashing barely capable to standing tech to knees with axe.

 

[Baddass]

I'm reading reviews on Rtings and in the color accuracy post calibration part, to get close to 100% sRGB the brightness is often lowered from say 50-70 to 15-30.
Doesn't the monitor look all gray with that kind of brightness? For general use, do people really use that kind of settings or is it more for photo editing and the likes that you want to use that kind of settings?

I also wonder how good the ICC profiles on Rtings for example would work on another of the same model monitor. Not perfect I guess but it should work somewhat at least?

Changing the brightness control doesn’t impact of influence colour accuracy or colour space in any way. On 99% of all monitors it simply controls…well, the brightness. It changes the backlight intensity and the only reason why a review would specific a certain brightness setting is when they are calibrating to achieve a certain brightness level. That is commonly 120 nits, 150 nits or sometimes 200 nits

However it is totally fine to set the brightness at something completely different, whatever is comfortable for your ambient light conditions, viewing environment and personal preference. Like the user above who runs at 70-80% brightness. It won’t impact any other aspect of the calibration, it only changes brightness.

And no, it shouldn’t make the whites look grey, you’re not changing the grey tone. You’re only changing how bright it is.

Rtings is rtings.com which reviews a lot of monitors. You can download their calibrated CSS profiles.

Are you talking actually about CSS profiles or ICC profiles here? CSS profiles are used to calibrate a colorimeter with a higher end device to make the calibration tool more accurate. ICC profiles are the resulting profiles used on your pc in colour aware applications.

I personally prefer accurate colors but the sRGB modes seem to decrease brightness to the extent whites look very gray. So I would use that mode but try to increase brightness to some extent. But okay so color accuracy should remain if not overdone?

Totally fine to adjust brightness to whatever you feel is comfortable. It won’t impact anything else

 

[RussD]

I use a Datacolor Spyder X Elite. Before that it was the Syder 4 elite. My Brightness on my Dell monitor is 43 from 75. On my NEW Asus ProArt 24" it is 20. sRGB is 100%. At default it was 95 set for Gamers. Far Far too bright. Don't touch anything else only the brightness. As for the new GFX card driver updates it don't change anything. I use both monitors for Photography. After Calibration make sure that Microsoft Colour drivers match it if you in Windows.