Calibrate with adjusted monitor hue/saturation or keep it native?

[You Too]

So here’s the thing: My Acer XV240YP 24″ IPS monitor has a post-calibration volume of 112.3 sRGB. The oversaturation is definitely noticeable when playing some colorful games. (Yes I know about Reshade but in multiplayer games you can get banned even for just using a 3DLut)

I’ve measured my display in HCFR with the settings Rec709, 2.2 gamma with 100% black input offset using an i1 Display Pro.
The first image is what I get after a greyscale calibration = only the video card LUT applied.
My monitor has hue and saturation controls for each primary and secondary but sadly no luminance control for each.
If I adjust them only by measuring at 100% saturation the rest of the saturations and hues get very messed up.

The second image is after adjusting the hue and saturation while checking the dE values and hues of all saturations (25, 50, 75, 100) of each color and achieving the lowest dE values possible overall. This still leaves the colors oversaturated at 100% saturation except for blue which is close to reference.

Now my question is, with color gradient banding and similar things in mind, should I use my custom settings and measure a new ICC profile (and 3DLut for madVR) or will the difference between 75 and 100 on some colors make it tougher for an ICC profile or a 3DLut to correct it all? Is it better to keep the monitor as measured in the first image to keep things “evenly spaced” when DisplayCAL creates a profile and a 3DLut?

EDIT: By the way, my monitor does have a so-called sRGB mode but it doesn’t clamp the gamut at all! It only sets the brightness very high.

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[Vincent]

Reset hue saturation to default. Without Displaycali calibration applied, lower saturation for RGCMY, keep track of errors with HCFR. Check that CMY do not “point outwards”, try to keep RG, GB, RB lines straight. Some displays do not have CMY saturation controls. Saturation controsl are not RGB Gains, they are others.
After gamut is close enough to sRGB (numerically or to do not notice extra saturation visually), open a gradient in non color managed app like Paint (without GPU calibration) and check if there is some issue related to monitor internal electronics like banding or such. If this happens it is not correctable (unless other owner found a solution), it’s inside monitor.
If all goes OK, make DisplayCAL calibration. A simple profile will do the job (MTX + BPC) keep grey calibration speed to medium or slower to fix all issues in grayscale.

[You Too]

Thanks Vincent. I wish the saturation controls in my monitor didn’t affect luminance though. Also, if correcting the primaries and secondaries, the lower saturations end up severely undersaturated. I’ve tried both of my suggested methods now and the 3DLut for madVR ended up with more errors if I adjusted the hue and saturation so I’ll keep it untouched.

I hope I can get an AMD graphics card someday so I can just clamp the gamut. Nvidia still didn’t introduce that option with their “color accuracy mode” or what it was called. Either way I’m glad I didn’t get a wide gamut monitor.

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