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Question

What color mode should I set my monitor to before calibrating it for Photoshop?

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
May 14, 2018
5 replies
11109 views

I'm going to calibrate my monitor for the first time and I would appreciate some advice for this newbie please.

My monitor is a NEC PA301W and it has five "picture modes"; sRGB, AdobeRGB, High Bright, Full Gamut, and DCI. The PA301W is advertised as a wide gamut display.

My main working space in Adobe Photoshop will be sRGB (images for the web) so before profiling my monitor, should I set the monitor mode to sRGB or should I keep it set to Full Gamut mode. Does the mode of the monitor matter when it is being calibrated? I understand I'll need to make manual changes to the brightness and contrast before calibrating.

The calibration device I will be using is a ColorMunki Display.

Thanks for reading.

This topic has been closed for replies.

Bob_Hallam

Legend

The monitor white should not be paper specific. That's what the simulation profile is for. or Absolute colorimetric rendering The environment is a whole different issue, and without getting into a dissertation on the subject I'll assume the OP understands those variables and leave them out of the scope of this question.

A monitor profile is there to describe a displays calibrated condition so it can display other media properly using ICC profiles.

To do that the white point must be native, and not casted. Visual tweaking may be necessary to figure that out. To check the accuracy of the monitors native white point you can use a set of printed squarea like the file attached on different white papers.

The reason for this is that the monitors controls and profiling tools cannot adjust pastel colors. Those care controled by the accuracy of the monitor If the paper used to print these patches is casted in the environment it's being viewed in then it will not produce a good match to an industry standard paper using the corresponding industry standard ICC profile.

ICC programmer and developer, Photographer, artist and color management expert, Print standards and process expert.

D Fosse

Community Expert

You clearly haven't used NEC Spectraview or Eizo Colornavigator. Fine tuning the white point is a core function in this software, which communicates directly with the 3D high bit LUT in the monitor.

Monitor profiles are relative colorimetric, absolute is not supported in the profile spec. That means white remaps to white, end of story. 255 255 255 in the document remaps to 255 255 255 in the monitor. If you want to accept the manufacturers preset white point, that's your choice. But that's all you get.

There's no such thing as an "uncast" white point. That's a misunderstanding. The white point has to be something, it can't be _nothing_.

Simulate paper color is a rough and inaccurate approximation. It kind of gets you "closer", but you have no way of knowing how close.

Bob_Hallam

Legend

Hmm, I would expect a more respectful attitude from an ACP. Let's keep this a helpful thread to the OP and less a personal attack, for someone you don't know. Your comments although demeaning are quite inaccurate. I have beta tested for NEC since 1995, installed the largest professional network of calibrated displays at press side serving US accounts, and have been elected to serve on the ICC stering Comittee for 11 years straignt and have just in the last 5 years steped down due to personal time constrainsts. I also hold a US Patent in Color Technology.

Monitor profiles are written as relative colorimetric. But where Absolute colorimetric rendering is needed is the simulation profile, used to tell the monitor what it is displaying. So for example ISO 15339-RPC5 or RPC5 both have different device gamuts and profile whitepoints. Using these in Absolute colorimetric rendering intent is the most accurate way to color manage a system. I have seen users that are unable to produce well formed profiles in their workflows and resort to the having different monitor white points for papers, but that is not the proper application of ICC technology. The monitor profile is a device profile and if made properly and nothing else changes can and should be used in it's most accurate format. One that describes the monitor white properly in the environment it's in.

Optically brightened papers can not be used for this process. So checking for optical brightners in the printing paper for the test image I posted is the first step. That can be done with a UV light source. UV can not be adjusted for in the ICC profile process as it relates to the proper display of images on any monitor.

When this calibration portion is done properly on non-optically brightened papers or optically brightened papers viewed in an environment without a UV component to the lights used to view the prints. So ISO 3664 Compliant Viewing may produce metamerisem failure due to the fact that the display can not match optically brightened reflectance.

You are correct in that setting up the monitor white point is dependent on the light in the viewing environment. Where the OP must be careful is using supplied whitepoints for papers because your enviroment may be different. The correct method is to accurately measure and profile the display, setting the whitepoint of that profile properly, then recognizing where this display system can fail to produce a metameric match.

ICC programmer and developer, Photographer, artist and color management expert, Print standards and process expert.

Bob_Hallam

Legend

Use Full Gamut, set the monitor to native White point and calibrate using an ICC version 4 matrix pased profile for the best accuracy.

ICC programmer and developer, Photographer, artist and color management expert, Print standards and process expert.

D Fosse

Community Expert

Native white point is just another way of saying "I don't know". The white point should be set very carefully - that's what determines the whole environment you're looking at. Color management works relative to the white point. It also determines how your display matches printed output.

If you want screen to print match, you set monitor white to visually match paper white.

With an NEC PA, you normally do that in the Spectraview software. With any other calibrator that doesn't access the monitor's internal LUT, you do it in the monitor's OSD menu.

Version 4 usually works, but can cause problems in some configurations. Version 2 is safer.

Grigor Poghosyan

Participating Frequently

Windows has option of monitor color caliboration you'd better automatically set all colors with that option .

D Fosse

Community Expert

These are color space emulations. You don't want any of that. You want the monitor to run in full native gamut. Any emulation will limit the monitor's native color space.

You can use a ColorMunki, but, quite frankly, it's a terrible waste. These units have programmable LUTs that will perform any adjustments in high bit depth internally in the monitor. The ColorMunki doesn't access this - it just adjusts the video card in 8 bit depth, with a very real risk of banding and other artifacts. An NEC PA should always be used with Spectraview software. That's what they're designed to do.

You can use a wide gamut monitor for web (I do that without issues), but then you must use a fully color managed web browser! Not only that, you must make sure the browser treats untagged material - which you'll find a lot of out there - as sRGB and assigns sRGB to it. Firefox does this in "mode 1", and I think that also goes for Chrome and Opera, at least if you set them accordingly.

You can also use Spectraview with Multiprofiler to make an sRGB emulation and switch on the fly (without needing to go through the OSD menu).

Per Berntsen

Community Expert

https://forums.adobe.com/people/D+Fosse wrote
Firefox does this in "mode 1", and I think that also goes for Chrome and Opera, at least if you set them accordingly.

No need to change any settings in Chrome and Opera - they are fully color managed out of the box - like Firefox in mode 1.

I believe Safari works the same way, but since I don't use a Mac, I can't confirm it.

The browsers to avoid are Internet Explorer and Edge, they are not color managed, and will display images over saturated on wide gamut displays.

D Fosse

Community Expert

I seem to need you to confirm this every time, Per - I don't use these browsers and don't remember from one day to the tip of my nose

Safari has to do this now. They don't have any choice, since Apple started to fit MBPs and iMacs with DCI-P3 wide gamut panels. So I just assume that's how it works these days, without ever hearing any solid confirmation that this is indeed so.

Yes, definitely avoid Edge/IE. They and wide gamut monitors are mutually exclusive.

War Unicorn

Community Expert

Those sound like presets; more than likely they're just base settings that the ColorMunki will correct no matter what you pick. You could experiment to see if there are differences.

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