Color Calibrating Cintiq Pro 16"

[rexc]

First of all, a big thank you to Florian for this wonderful software. I have used DisplayCal with i1DisplayPro to calibrate my Dell U2415M and U2414H monitors (98~99% and 94% srgb coverage respectively) with close-to linear calibration and tone response curves.

I was able to get a cintiq pro, but I just can’t calibrate it properly. The cintiq pro boasts 85% Adobe RGB coverage at CIE1931, but I am unable to calibrate at the usual print/web-art settings (D65K, 100~110 cd/m, and hopefully 100% sRGB coverage). Regardless of what I try, the results come out to  ~87% sRGB coverage with a serious lack of blue and purple, and more-than-srgb colorspace of green.

The  Cintiq Pro line is supposedly the industry leader in pen displays, so I think my lack of solid understanding of color calibration is preventing me from proper calibration rather than the device’s limitations.

That said, I’m really shocked and upset that the device doesn’t have hardware buttons for controlling rgb, brightness etc. Those settings are all controlled by wacom’s software. I’m hoping this doesn’t hinder color calibration, since DisplayCal’s FAQ states that software-controlled rgb gain settings doesn’t work with color calibration.

I tried calibrating with CIE 1931 observer, whitepoint 6500K, white level and black level as measured, and several different tonal curves (Rec 709, Rec 1886, sRGB), but  to no avail. The sub 90% sRGB coverage makes the cintiq feel like a $400 wacom-alternative instead of top-of-the-line product. I used Rec 1886 for my monitors, since BT 1886’s gamma setting supposedly doesn’t crush black levels (correct me if I’m wrong) – and got wonderful calibration results.

Out of the box, the cintiq is set at gamma 2.2,  emits 130 cd/m and too much green. No preset color settings (sRGB colorspace, AdobeRGB colorspace etc, 65K color temp etc) would make it emit anywhere close to a neutral grey. I switched to custom color setting, which allows me to adjust rgb gain and offset via software. I set the gamma to 2.4, and decreased green rgb gain in wacom’s software to get neutral grey (as per i1DisplayPro’s readings using DisplayCal) and conveniently get ~110 cd/m in the process. I tried calibrating to Rec 1886 tone curve (no ambient light adjustment, no black point correction, no black output offset)

Even if I get a linear calibration curve with an acceptable tone response curve, the sRGB gamut coverage is abysmal as I have described above. What am I doing wrong? Is there a fundamental understanding of color calibration that I am missing? Also, could someone explain what input shaper curves mean? The curves are far from linear, while the output shaper curves I get are roughly linear.

Thank you all in advance.

Rexc

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[rexc]

A quick correction – I said I was able to get target brightness and neutral grey by simply bringing down the green gain. I don’t know how I was able to achieve that out of the many times I tried calibrating. It could have been false memory. More times than not, I tried different variations of RGB gain and brightness settings. while keeping the adjustments to a minimum.

[Vincent]

Choose one of the factory presets close to “native gamut, native white”.
Make a fast matrix profile without calibration with DisplayCal and your i1d3 (no correction if you do not know what to use).
Check where R, G & B are placed. This way you can spot if there is some kind of gamut limitation. You can see 2D projection in CIE xy/CIE a*b* plane of gamut bondaries and compare them to sRGB.

Note: Although specs says Cintiq pro 16 is ~85% AdobeRGB coverage… it would be very very very weird that they do not lie but intersection leaves out blue-magenta instead of cian-green of usual sRGB-like monitors like your dells or some new P3-like displays (hence low sRGB coverage).
If that is the situation… it is a good reason to return it and buy some other model.

[rexc]

Hi Vincent,

Thank you for helping! I did a “profile only” run with a factory preset that I think is closest to native gamut and native white.
It seems like I got a bad device; the blue is gimped quite a bit. it’s hard to think that a cintiq pro is this bad.
I’ll just return it.

I tried uploading a screenshot(<100kb png file) of the result I got but somehow it wouldn’t upload.

[Author]

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