Dell U2410 - which calibrator is best?

[dubcat]

hi,

I have had my u2410 since they were first released. It is an A00 revision. I read about the green tinge that lots of people were experiencing and never noticed it on my monitor.

Recently after reading about monitor calibration I started to look in to buying a calibrator. However, it seems that some calibrators are not suited for this wide gamut monitor and so I have delayed making my purchase. By the way - i do not need to calibrate my printer as I generally use internet services for my prints.

I downloaded a profile from http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/icc_profiles.htm just to see what difference it would make. It has made my screen much darker (although I have no way to really tell if this is better or worse) and now I can see a clear green shade across the bottom quarter of the screen

I've decided the best thing to do would be to buy the right monitor calibrator and just calibrate properly. Can anyone advise me as to what would work best for me as I feel like I have messed up my monitor now. My research on various forums has just left me extremely confused.

Thanks,
Dub

 

[dalex_257]

I've decided the best thing to do would be to buy the right monitor calibrator and just calibrate properly. Can anyone advise me as to what would work best for me as I feel like I have messed up my monitor now. My research on various forums has just left me extremely confused.

Sorry for reply that late but I just finally finished my calibration and profiling attempts for U2410 last weekend to a degree where I am relatively satisfied with it and wanted to share my experiences.

Firstly, since it's a wide gamut monitor, it is really impossible to calibrate with standard over the counter colorimeter devices. The reason being that the colorimeter's filters and calculated response are designed for typical monitors not the wide gamut ones. The wide gamut monitors will need either a special version of colorimeter with different filters (that's what NEC and Eizo do shippong essentially Eye-One Display with custom filters) or software that can compensate for that (that is problematic as well as there is only one I know of that does it is iColor Display and it has a generic correction matrix for wide gamut monitors that seems to work with Eye-One Display - see here for more info). The best alternative however is to use spectrophotometer like Eye-One Pro or Color Munki as these will measure the full spectrum and do not have such disadvantages. Those are quite expensive but you can look up on eBay for used ones selling hardware only as they are not so expensive. There is an excellent open source software for them that in my recent experience is far more superior than any of the commercial ones I have tried so far.

I have Eye-One Pro spectrophotometer and initially I was trying to calibrate it with basICColor Display software that i own license to and was using for the last few years. This generates LUT profiles but it was not enough for this monitor - numerous attempts that I have done produced banding in gray ramp in the shadows (this is mostly the calibration step trying to adjust the gamma to 2.2 since in Standard mode where monitor has widest gamut it is actually close to 1.9). It appeared that basICColor was not generating sufficient number of measurement patches to cover the calibration smoothly. So in the end I ended up using open source ArgyllCMS (command line only) with the UI for it dispcalGUI. This can generate test patches to any precise requirements and also is the only software capable running Eye-One Pro in high resolution mode. In the end I used 1200 patches and high res adaptive mode that generated fairly smooth gray ramp (the number of tries took me nearly a week of calibrations in the evenings). I also went to monitor's service menu (as described here) and adjusted Standard mode (6500K) and AdobeRGB mode RGB gains to be closer to 6500K (their all max values 255 was causing the monitor to be too green). This so far seemed to produce the best color characteristics and gray response with the best profile quality (my average deltaE is 0.5).

Edit: forgot to add that the Custom mode seems a bit useless because the response of it seems to be nonlinear and any calibration software will generate quite large validation errors (so you would not know the effectiveness of your measurements). More details here if you interested.

 

[ding76uk]

Eye One Display 2 by Xrite has been one of my best purchases, am pretty sure it should handle your monitor, but hopefully someone with a bit more experience will be able to confirm

 

[Kaouthia]

Eye One Display 2 by Xrite has been one of my best purchases

Same. Much better than the Spyder it replaced for me.

 

[dalex_257]

Eye One Display 2 by Xrite has been one of my best purchases, am pretty sure it should handle your monitor, but hopefully someone with a bit more experience will be able to confirm

Have you checked that link I referred to? It will build the profile but the profile will be incorrect. Search the web for wide gamut monitors and colorimeters and you will have more information as to why that is the case. Have a read of this post and the thread as well - there some interesting facts there about U2410.

The U2410 can only be profiled by a colorimeter in sRGB mode (which is emulating sRGB gamut with response similar to that of a standard LCD monitor).

Same. Much better than the Spyder it replaced for me.

I was not saying it is bad - from my experience it's best colorimeter out there. But it remains what it is - a colorimeter, which means that it cannot measure the full spectrum and its response and colour measurements are defined by RGB filter set. As I said it can be corrected either mathematically in a software with a correction matrix applied to all the measurements or by changing the filters. Again Eizo, NEC and HP as far as I know ship special version of Eye-One Display with their wide gamut monitors with the different filters. Software adaptation way unfortunately will work only with one software (iColor Display) and the matrix can be either generic (iColor Display comes with one for monitors with IPS wide gamut panels) or measured and calculated precisely by using spectrophotometer (like Color Munki) and Eye-One Display on the same measurements and computing the adaptation matrix.

 

[Kaouthia]

Getting your screen looking as identical as reasonably possible to how your prints will look, and absolute scientific accuracy are two different things.

I use HP LP2475w monitors (also wide gamut), and while the Spyder was always a little off from my calibrated prints on dye-subs, ink jets and via 3rd parties ordered online, the Eye One Display 2 is as close as makes no difference. For all intents and purposes they look the same.

As for the issues with Dell... well, after reading a few unfavourable reviews that's when I made the decision to go with HP.

 

[Kaouthia]

Again Eizo, NEC and HP as far as I know ship special version of Eye-One Display with their wide gamut monitors with the different filters.

My HPs didn't ship with anything to do with calibration. I bought my Eye One Display 2 from Native Digital. Standard retail jobby and it works just fine.

 

[dalex_257]

My HPs didn't ship with anything to do with calibration. I bought my Eye One Display 2 from Native Digital. Standard retail jobby and it works just fine.

I mean those that allow hardware LUT calibration and usually come with calibration solution already - those are generally more expensive than Dell's and the likes. HP DreamColor LP2480zx I believe is the one I have seen a review on which mentioned Eye-One.

 

[dalex_257]

Getting your screen looking as identical as reasonably possible to how your prints will look, and absolute scientific accuracy are two different things.

I am sorry but I cannot agree with that. If the only instrument you relying upon when judging the color accuracy and constancy between display and the print is your eyes then you should be aware that this will vary. You may see something as identical and somebody else as glaringly different. There is a good book that goes into great details of that ("Color Appearance Models"). This is precisely the reason for using color management and all that calibration and profiling. If judging by eye was enough no-one would have need any hardware or mathematics to use with that. The "absolute scientific accuracy" is there to tell you how far is the difference physically vs what your eyes can actually see (the latter will vary from person to person).

As for the issues with Dell... well, after reading a few unfavourable reviews that's when I made the decision to go with HP.

True it has its share of the problems, though having read all the reviews I still opted for Dell - the HP you mentioned is using the same IPS panel as Dell so has the same tinting problem (I hope that HP QA and service department though is better than Dell's) but unlike Dell HP doesn't have 12bit internal LUT.

Dell for me was pain in the backside to get right, but in the end I would say it is well worth it. It is a fantastic monitor, just more demanding to the end user.

 

[ding76uk]

Of course you can get to perfection in levels of accuracy, but that costs. Depends what you are doing with your photography as to what level you go to.

I have read forums where the Eye one has been used on the monitor in question, and is reasonable in price.

You can go to something like the X-Rite i1XTreme, but you need to decide how much you need from your calibration and how much you are willing to pay in relation to the degree of accuracy your require.

 

[Chappers]

You might want to give ColorEyes Display Pro software a try. It's not cheap, and as you have Basicolor already it may not give you much of an improvement. However I did find it gave better shadow response than most other software. It's compatible with the iOne and has a 15 day trial period

 

[dalex_257]

Of course you can get to perfection in levels of accuracy, but that costs. Depends what you are doing with your photography as to what level you go to.

I have read forums where the Eye one has been used on the monitor in question, and is reasonable in price.

You can go to something like the X-Rite i1XTreme, but you need to decide how much you need from your calibration and how much you are willing to pay in relation to the degree of accuracy your require.

i1 XTreme costs are mostly in software - hardware wise all i1 spectrophotometer devices are the same. Speaking of software, the ArgyllCMS one has similar capabilities and slightly more precise algorithms than most of the X-Rite software (cannot speak of the new one that was recently announced) and more importantly is free so the point about the cost is mute.

 

[Hairyduck]

if you can afford it go for the colormunki, fantastic bit of kit, nails printer and screen calibration in one hit every time.

 

[dalex_257]

You might want to give ColorEyes Display Pro software a try. It's not cheap, and as you have Basicolor already it may not give you much of an improvement. However I did find it gave better shadow response than most other software. It's compatible with the iOne and has a 15 day trial period

I will give it a try thanks (though I believe I read that the ColorEyes and basICColor are effectively the same software at the core with the different UI). However, I did say that I got excellent results with free software after reading some colour management forums where people were talking of much better quality of printer profiles you can get out of it.

I am yet to try the ArgyllCMS for printer profiles. Just from a personal experience, ArgyllCMS is the only software that I know that can use i1 Pro devices in high resolution mode. In this mode all spectrum measurements done with 3.33 nm step whereas most of the other consumer level spectrophotometers and software will only use 10nm steps. It may seem like negligible difference but there are some information on a web that it is actually useful to detecting some otherwise averaged out spikes in measurement of emissive sources (LCD monitors being a notable example). This particularly gets more important for wide gamut monitors where those spikes in spectral measurement can affect colour significantly. My personal experience again was that when used with U2410 it resulted in much smoother shadows (an Achilles' heel of the consumer level spectrophotometers). Again, the two profiles generated by ArgyllCMS on my monitor for standard and AdobeRGB modes) were more accurate than basICColor - even by doing basICColor validation shows better results than on profile basICColor generated itself.

 

[dalex_257]

if you can afford it go for the colormunki, fantastic bit of kit, nails printer and screen calibration in one hit every time.

ColorMunki is a great alternative to expensive packages like i1Pro (mostly due to a software price) and is a spectrophotometer so it should be good for U2410.

 

[ding76uk]

i1 XTreme costs are mostly in software - hardware wise all i1 spectrophotometer devices are the same. Speaking of software, the ArgyllCMS one has similar capabilities and slightly more precise algorithms than most of the X-Rite software (cannot speak of the new one that was recently announced) and more importantly is free so the point about the cost is mute.

So are you saying there is something in the price range of the eye one display 2 that will calibrate it? If so would like to see it.

 

[dalex_257]

So are you saying there is something in the price range of the eye one display 2 that will calibrate it? If so would like to see it.

Eye One Display is colorimeter, the rest of the Eye Ones are spectrophotometers. Colorimeter only measures emitted light and designed to produce predefined response (it's effectively three or four photosensors behind three or four colour filters).

Spectrophotometer like Eye One(except Display) and ColorMunki is measuring the light spectrum. It is therefore not designed to produce any response - it simply measure spectral constituents of light and gives you back all of it. Application then is supposed to add it up and produce XYZ tristimulus values (and LAB or RGB colours from them in turn). Spectrophotometers are more complex devices - they split beam of incoming light via very fine diffraction grade into array of photoelements. Each element reading then corresponds to the appropriate wavelength of split light (3.33nm spaced for i1).

Spectrophotometers can thus measure the light emitted and reflected (in latter case an internal lamp with predefined and calibrated characteristics of the light shines on target patch and device reads reflected light).

In the Eye One lineup I believe the least expensive one is i1 Basic and the most is i1 XTreme (not counting automated xy table solutions). In all those cases though the actual Eye-One spectrophotometer hardware is the same. The difference is the set of modules available with bundled software and some extra hardware attachments (like Beamer not available in i1 Basic).

 

[weardalered]

Well, I was considering buying a U2410 but after reading this thread, although it has given me a greater understanding, if I need to buy a spectrometer ( I have an i1Display2) then perhaps the 2209WA is a better option.

It all started so simple.......

 

[Roy C]

Well, I was considering buying a U2410 but after reading this thread, although it has given me a greater understanding, if I need to buy a spectrometer ( I have an i1Display2)
It all started so simple.......

Exactly my position - the more I read on wide gamut monitors and calibration the more unsure I am. I think I will just stick to my old CRT :bang:

 

[weardalered]

I currently have an old HP with the max luminance of a CRT

 

[weardalered]

Has anyone here with a U2410 had issues with the green/pink tint?

This seems to be the main topic of conversation on the Dell support forums

 

[dubcat]

i'M colour blind so its a little hard for me to notice however I did recently download a new profile produced by someone calibrating their u2410. Of course I know it is not perfectly valid for mine but i just wanted to try it. Well, once I used that profile I noticed a very distinct tinting to the bottom half of my screen. I've now reverted to the latest beta profile from the dell site again but im gutted my monitor seems to have this issue.

I have an a00 one.. I really wish I had never bought it given the fact it seems i am going to have to spend more to calibrate it (via colormunki) AND when i do calibrate it there is a solid chance im going to suffer from a crazy tint

I take it there is no easy fix for the tint...

My advice to others would be to avoid this monitor if you want to calibrate etc.

 

[dalex_257]

Has anyone here with a U2410 had issues with the green/pink tint?

This seems to be the main topic of conversation on the Dell support forums

I do but ever so slightly. It is only visible when you fill the whole screen with middle gray (not even white). I do not consider it very severe. In any case all my calibration time was well spend because it reduced that practically to the minimum. Apparently, this problem is with LCD panel itself and since it is the same LG panel used in U2410, HP and Samsung - they all have it to some degree.

The only thing I would advice is that when calibrating the monitors where you can clearly see the tint, place the device (spectrophotometer or colorimeter) always in the middle of the screen where it is the most neutral. Using it on left or right parts of the screen caused green or red calibration curves to be distorted emphasizing the green/pink effect. Note that this is contrary to the typical common calibration advice which says that you should choose random place on a screen.

 

[Kaouthia]

Manufacturer ICC profiles are about as useful as a brolly in a hurricane. They continually change throughout their life as parts get used more and more - and they're dependent upon the graphics card too.

 

[dalex_257]

I'm colour blind so its a little hard for me to notice however I did recently download a new profile produced by someone calibrating their u2410. Of course I know it is not perfectly valid for mine but i just wanted to try it. Well, once I used that profile I noticed a very distinct tinting to the bottom half of my screen. I've now reverted to the latest beta profile from the dell site again but im gutted my monitor seems to have this issue.

For this monitor the variation between LCD panels seems to be especially big so using anyone else's profile is useless. DELL's profile is only the profile so it does not contain LUT calibration curves for graphics card and won't change anything from native monitor response.

I have an a00 one.. I really wish I had never bought it given the fact it seems i am going to have to spend more to calibrate it (via colormunki) AND when i do calibrate it there is a solid chance im going to suffer from a crazy tint

I take it there is no easy fix for the tint...

There is - you have 2 options:

1) Send your monitor to DELL to update firmware to A01 (or even to A02 which seems to be the most recent one).

2) Find the leaked A01 firmware (google for it - there are some chinese Dell forums where it was leaked) and apply it yourself.

The A01 firmware fixed a lot of banding and tinting issues to some degree. I even think that having the number of problems with A00 Dell themselves leaked the A01 firmware - it's just too coincidential and never happened to their monitors before.

 

[weardalered]

There is - you have 2 options:

1) Send your monitor to DELL to update firmware to A01 (or even to A02 which seems to be the most recent one).

2) Find the leaked A01 firmware (google for it - there are some chinese Dell forums where it was leaked) and apply it yourself.

The A01 firmware fixed a lot of banding and tinting issues to some degree.

But it did not fix it!

Dell have even suggested changing to sRGB, which seems to defeat the object of getting a wide gamut monitor in the first place.


I may not be able to afford a ColorEdge but I am now looking at a FlexScan as an alternative.

 

[dubcat]

I'll do the upgrade and .. well .. i guess then i have to fork out for colormunki

 

[dalex_257]

But it did not fix it!

I did not say it fixed it entirely - I said "to some degree". From all the reports I read it made it better and less pronounced. The A01 though definitely fixed sRGB and AdobeRGB dithering problems so at least this should be upgraded to get them working correctly.

 

[dubcat]

I did the upgrade. Next step - work out a way to explain to the wife that I need a colormunki! Any suggestions?

 

[dalex_257]

I did the upgrade. Next step - work out a way to explain to the wife that I need a colormunki! Any suggestions?

Boost the Red or green colours in Custom mode and show her her photo saying that calibration will avoid that

Seriously though - how does the Standard mode and AdobeRGB look now?

One thing that A01 does though is that the predefined settings in RGB gains set in Service menu are no longer valid (since your monitor was calibrated with A00). So when you get your calibrator (ColorMunki or the other) open Service menu and tune up AdobeRGB and 6500K (that is Standard mode) RGB values so that the calibrating software shows 6500K. This will get it as close to optimal as possible.

 

[dubcat]

I don't use standard or adobe modes. I therefore have nothing to compare them to.
Sorry.

 

[dalex_257]

I don't use standard or adobe modes. I therefore have nothing to compare them to.
Sorry.

So what are you using then: Custom, sRGB?

Standard mode is the only one that gives you full monitor gamut - i.e. uses maximum monitor potential. AdobeRGB is the next one (it is slightly smaller in one area).

 

[dubcat]

Sorry I meant to say I only ever used standard mode and there does not seem to be any change. I did think the color cast was worse but can't be sure and for now am just putting it down to paranoia.

 

[dalex_257]

Sorry I meant to say I only ever used standard mode and there does not seem to be any change. I did think the color cast was worse but can't be sure and for now am just putting it down to paranoia.

Ah I see. Still I'd advise to go through the RGB calibration from Service menu to get it closer to 6500K and get rid of any colour casts (you still need a colormunki of i1 for that).

 

[dubcat]

Didnt you say that colormunki can calibrate standard mode because it is a spectrometer rather than a colorimeter? Can i3 calibrate standard mode too then!?

What is the point of calibrating RGB mode if i never use it?

 

[dalex_257]

Didnt you say that colormunki can calibrate standard mode because it is a spectrometer rather than a colorimeter? Can i3 calibrate standard mode too then!?

The i1Pro is a spectrophotometer as well (in my view a better one but also more pricier than colormunki). The i1 Display is the only one in i1 family that is not a spectrophotometer. Again, you can use a colorimeters as well as soon as you can compensate their response - the only software that can do this afaik (which incidentally works quite well with i1 Display and this monitor) is Quato iColor Display.

What is the point of calibrating RGB mode if i never use it?

I think you misunderstood me - I was not referring to RGB mode (I assume you are talking about Custom mode where you can adjust RGB gains?).

In all Dell monitors there is a hidden Service menu that enables individual RGB gains adjustments for all other preset modes. That's how they configure it on the factory with all those Warm, Cool and other modes - just reduced Red or increased Blue gains. Theoretically the full gamut can be achieved by opening this menu and for the Standard mode set all gains to 255 (by default they are quite lower). For my monitor however doing so was giving significant boost to green so native LCD response was greenish. I then simply used the i1 and calibration software in white point measuring mode where it constantly measured white point and adjusted RGB values via service menu until the white point was around 6500k (the native U2410 white point in Standard mode with max RGB was somewhere around 7000K for me). For me that resulted in RGB (255, 242, 249) for Standard mode. Then I calibrated the monitor and profiled as usual.

The Service menu access is documented somewhere on Dell forums. But I can describe it here to save you time. You basically do as follows:
1) switch it off
2) whilst off press second and fourth buttons (from the top)
3) keep them pressed and switch it on
4) keep them pressed until it goes through switch on cycle (where all buttons lit and start to fade)
5) if done correctly all the buttons should lit and not fade - in this mode press the topmost button to pop the service menu up

In that menu navigation up and down (and setting the values as well) is via 2,3 buttons and entering/exiting one of the settings is 4 button. If it is a bit tricky to get the sequence above - try a few times (I can never make it first time round).

Two more things I can advise:

a) take the photo of this menu first time you open it with all factory settings (Dell says on the forums it does not support your changes to it so you'd need to revert them back if you need to send it to Dell)

b) the Standard mode is called "6500K" in that menu and the others (except AdobeRGB and sRGB) also have different names.

 

[ding76uk]

So all wide gamut monitors need this level of tweaking? Seems a hell of a lot of work to get the monitor working its best.

 

[dalex_257]

So all wide gamut monitors need this level of tweaking? Seems a hell of a lot of work to get the monitor working its best.

How did you came to this conclusion? I was only referring to Dell and only to U2410. It is because of three factors really:

1) U2410 does not have programmable monitor LUT (like more expensive NECs and EIZOs). Well at least not the one available to end users (it does have it in reality though)

2) U2410 has "unusable" Custom mode which is what you'd expect to be used with fine-tuned calibrations (the 6axis controls there cause non-linear colour changes and Dell has admitted that it is a problem with their firmware)

3) The other modes don't have end user controllable gains but the ones available via Service menu is the next best thing. The reason why they are usable is that U2410 internal LUTs are 12bits even though LCD and vide-card output are effectively 8bits This means setting the gains in monitor's LUTs will have less effect on color gradations than via videocard or calibration via videocard LUTs.

Dell U2711 for example which is effectively larger version of U2410 does not have (2) problem so if I'd had that I would have simply used Custom mode.

 

[ding76uk]

How did you came to this conclusion? I was only referring to Dell and only to U2410. It is because of three factors really:

1) U2410 does not have programmable monitor LUT (like more expensive NECs and EIZOs). Well at least not the one available to end users (it does have it in reality though)

2) U2410 has "unusable" Custom mode which is what you'd expect to be used with fine-tuned calibrations (the 6axis controls there cause non-linear colour changes and Dell has admitted that it is a problem with their firmware)

3) The other modes don't have end user controllable gains but the ones available via Service menu is the next best thing. The reason why they are usable is that U2410 internal LUTs are 12bits even though LCD and vide-card output are effectively 8bits This means setting the gains in monitor's LUTs will have less effect on color gradations than via videocard or calibration via videocard LUTs.

Dell U2711 for example which is effectively larger version of U2410 does not have (2) problem so if I'd had that I would have simply used Custom mode.

Sorry that was meant to say Do. Just wondered if all wide gamut needed loads of tweaking to get them right

 

[dalex_257]

Sorry that was meant to say Do. Just wondered if all wide gamut needed loads of tweaking to get them right

Most of them are more expensive and have build in calibration facilities with control over monitor LUTs. These are really easy to use and configure - you basically use the calibrator and the software does the rest and uploads all the data to monitor to adapt its characteristics. This is what you pay premium for.

Dell and the other cheaper options do not have that (at least not enabled to end user) so they require more efforts to get right especially when manufacturer got it wrong (like with U2410).