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hi!
New here, so please be wary of my ignorance. I’m new to calibration, not an expert on screen technologies and jargon, and also new with this software. I’ll try to include as much information as I can to explain my problem.
Goal: I’m an amateur wildlife photographer. My primary reason to calibrate is color temperature, I don’t want my photos to appear too hot or too cold. A secondary reason is exposure, they should not be too dark or too light either, yet color temperature is definitely the most important of the two problems.
My monitor is the Alienware AW3418DW. The screen is mostly used at night (no daylight) in a dimly lit personal office. Lighting are dim spot lights, none directly pointed at the screen. I started out using this screen out of the box yet after some reading followed the advise from TFT Central to use it in custom color mode: RGB: 93, 93, 100.
Yet this did not really take away my low trust in it being accurate, hence I purchased a SpyderX Pro and used their software. Prior to calibration, I put the monitor back in standard mode and also ensured no Nvidia color settings were applied. During calibration, I increased brightness using OSD to meet their target indicator, and that’s it.
The post calibration result shocked me. Whites looked very yellow. Brightness was much higher. Contrast (or perhaps perceived contrast) was very low. I understand that I may be conditioned to prior settings so I did all I could to verify if this yellow tone really is correct. I did a calibration on a laptop in the same lighting conditions, post calibration on that screen, whites were even warmer. I compared web pages and photos with 2 other devices, an iPad Pro and an iPhoneXS and concluded that color temperature is dramatically different (both mobile devices MUCH cooler). So now I have 4 devices in the same room, 2 calibrated, 2 factory-calibrated, all having wildly different color temperatures. Today I took the calibrated laptop to work and compared with 6 other screens (all cheap non-calibrated LCDs) and again noticed a wild difference, all 6 screens being much cooler than my calibrated laptop screen.
The above experience made me lose trust in the calibration result, it seems absurdly warm, not even close to any other device I verified with in the real world. I understand that comparing to non-calibrated devices will lead to differences, but not differences this huge. There’s no point in having a calibrated screen if its so far off any other screen., we’re not talking a subtle difference here.
This left me frustrated because the whole idea was to skip human judgement and have a neutral measurement. My naive idea to use this device, run it for a few minutes, and be done with it, fell apart. I simply don’t trust the result. I also struggle to find truth. I’m seeing so many Youtubers praising this thing and it all looks like such a breeze. Were they naive to just take the result as-is? Or did they simply have better results, and I did something wrong? I don’t know.
Reading some Amazon reviews of other frustrated users, I came to know of the existence of DisplayCal software. So that’s why I’m here, thank you for making it. I will surely donate later, once I get through this process.
Prior to DisplayCal calibration, I put the monitor back to standard mode and uninstalled the ICC profile created by SpyderX software. I followed the on screen instructions and mid-way calibration correctly set the brightness and RGB values using OSD to meet the target mid points.
Post-calibration, one problem seems solved: color temperature. The new result is not extremely hot/yellow. Compared to the factory state, whites have warmed up slightly, yet not in extreme ways, which seems reasonable. Probably it was slightly too cool before. I repeated calibration on a second screen in the same office, and got almost identical results, which gives me trust.
So far, so good. The only thing I’m now struggling with is brightness/contrast/vibrance. I admit that I don’t entirely understand how these things relate to each other, so I will explain how I perceive it.
Contrast seems significantly lower compared to the factory state. I notice this by things being lighter, flatter, and colors seem a little washed out, being less vibrant. It’s not a pretty sight.
Which could be acceptable if this really was a correct result, but I doubt it. Comparing the same photo from the calibrated device with a “neutral” device like the iPad and iPhone, both devices have bigger contrast and deeper, more vibrant colors. The calibration result suggests I could actually make my photos darker and more contrasty, but if I do, they would be too dark on those devices, clipping details.
So whilst I’m happy with the color temperature result, I don’t know what to do with contrast. It’s not usable in its current state because it looks awful on the calibrated screen, but also does not seem meaningful as the implied head room in contrast and low exposure on the calibrated screen do not seem real. If I would take the calibrated result as a true reference for photo editing, I would apply way too much contrast and saturation to photos, as experienced on other screens.
Hoping to get some help on the contrast issue. I did find a few other threads with similar issues, but I don’t always understand the advise. So if you have advise, I hope you can make it beginner friendly 🙂 Sorry for the long story!
SpyderX Pro on Amazon
Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.Hi,
Comparing the same photo from the calibrated device with a “neutral” device like the iPad and iPhone
you cannot take an uncalibrated/unprofiled device like a mobile phone as reference. If anything, your calibrated & profiled screen now is the reference you should be relying on.
Thank you. I do understand that it is to be expected that comparing a calibrated screen with a non-calibrated screen leads to differences.
This would be fine if I have a 100% trust in the calibrated result, which I do not. It looks very unnatural (low contrast, washed out color). Every other device at my disposal shows way better contrast and more vibrant/saturated color.
You could now claim that all those other devices are wrong, but even if that is true, it is not useful at a practical level for my use case. If I take 100% faith in my calibrated screen, I would currently need to push contrast and saturation of my photos way more than I did before. Perhaps make them darker as well. So that they look good on my calibrated screen. If I actually did that, they would look terrible (too dark, oversaturated) on most devices/screens.
Hope you understand my dilemma. The gap between calibrated/non-calibrated in terms of contrast seems way too large, no matter which other device I test.
The newer iPhones (7 and up) have DCI P3 gamut natively, likely with a gamma 2.2 transfer function, so you need to be working in that color space in Photoshop et al (document profile).
