how do you guys get the best colors for your monitor?

[etegv]

Hi, guys

I've owned a lot of monitors and have never been 100% happy with the colors. I've tried to tinker and did get close, but never 100%

how do you guys get the best colors? I've adjusted colors with the monitor settings and did see improvements, but I want them to be a bit better. Also tried WIndows Calibration tool (prob need to tinker with that some more)

Should I purchase a calibration tool? I am willing to spend the money as long as they're worth and will give me the best colors.

Thanks

 

[Nobu]

Hi, guys

I've owned a lot of monitors and have never been 100% happy with the colors. I've tried to tinker and did get close, but never 100%

how do you guys get the best colors? I've adjusted colors with the monitor settings and did see improvements, but I want them to be a bit better. Also tried WIndows Calibration tool (prob need to tinker with that some more)

Should I purchase a calibration tool? I am willing to spend the money as long as they're worth and will give me the best colors.

Thanks

Define "better"

More accurate, better contrast/depth, less washed out?

I don't care too much personally, but usually I'll turn the brightness all the way down, then turn down the backlight (if I can) until black looks black or I start to lose contrast, then I'll set the contrast to a reasonable level. Don't usually mess with the colors, except to make them slightly warmer (my preference).

 

[pendragon1]

if you need it or really want it buy the tool. your eyes could be off too

 

[etegv]

Define "better"

More accurate, better contrast/depth, less washed out?

I don't care too much personally, but usually I'll turn the brightness all the way down, then turn down the backlight (if I can) until black looks black or I start to lose contrast, then I'll set the contrast to a reasonable level. Don't usually mess with the colors, except to make them slightly warmer (my preference).

Yea, less washed out would be nice. Maybe more color and less of the washed out effect. I will try to turn the backlight and brightness down. Thank you

if you need it or really want it buy the tool. your eyes could be off too

Maybe. But do the tools help? Will I be amazed? I am very curious

 

[pendragon1]

Yea, less washed out would be nice. Maybe more color and less of the washed out effect. I will try to turn the backlight and brightness down. Thank you




Maybe. But do the tools help? Will I be amazed? I am very curious

it sounds like you want color accuracy, so yes. idk, maybe.

 

[owcraftsman]

1st don't buy a monitor unless it's been thoroughly reviewed and has been professionally calibrated with an icc profile you can use to plug into windows. In other words a known high rated product.
Where do you find one worth your consideration? I trust RTings and TFT Central
The guides will tell you what the best setting are for your monitor for best results whether it be using one of TFT icc profiles or Calibrating with a tool.
I invested in a Spyder 5 express to create my own icc profiles, but I use the aforementioned best setting for any given monitor 1st before calibration. I've had it for more than 5 years and have calibrated many monitors even some friends and still works perfectly. As a tinker bot nothing is ever good enough and I have since upgraded to an X-Rite display pro which can also work with OLED TVs and projectors etc. Bottom line there is little difference in the end result and I can highly recommend the Spyder5Express if you can find one. It has been replaced by the SpyderX which I cannot comment on other than to say if it's any good as the original it would be worth it. I've seen them as low as $59 but typicall 140ish. Bottom line it will be around for a long time and many monitors to come and your eyes will thank you for it.

 

[etegv]

1st don't buy a monitor unless it's been thoroughly reviewed and has been professionally calibrated with an icc profile you can use to plug into windows. In other words a known high rated product.
Where do you find one worth your consideration? I trust RTings and TFT Central
The guides will tell you what the best setting are for your monitor for best results whether it be using one of TFT icc profiles or Calibrating with a tool.
I invested in a Spyder 5 express to create my own icc profiles, but I use the aforementioned best setting for any given monitor 1st before calibration. I've had it for more than 5 years and have calibrated many monitors even some friends and still works perfectly. As a tinker bot nothing is ever good enough and I have since upgraded to an X-Rite display pro which can also work with OLED TVs and projectors etc. Bottom line there is little difference in the end result and I can highly recommend the Spyder5Express if you can find one. It has been replaced by the SpyderX which I cannot comment on other than to say if it's any good as the original it would be worth it. I've seen them as low as $59 but typicall 140ish. Bottom line it will be around for a long time and many monitors to come and your eyes will thank you for it.

Don't see ICC profile for the monitor, will that be an issue?

Amazon doesn't have the Spyder X, but they do have the Spyder X pro for around $150. I am willing to buy as long as I can get good/decent colors (something that I can enjoy, colorful, etc.)

 

[TrunksZero]

Woah woah, before you go and drop $150 bucks on a colorimeter... you might want to look up if things like ICC colour profile's even apply in game's... which they usually don't. Along with some apps. Making some of the calibrations efforts of those colorimeter's not entirely helpful. Although it still an awesome tool to calibrate a display, ICC profile or not.

https://pcmonitors.info/articles/using-icc-profiles-in-windows/

If you want a little more pop for free. Try looking into the "digital vibrance" setting if you have a nVidia GPU or if you have an AMD GPU look at the the "Digital Color Enhancement" settings.

 

[kasakka]

My take is that you want your monitor set so that it can produce any content as accurately as possible. For most things the average user does, that means calibrating it for sRGB. For free the best you can do is find recommended settings from reviews, but ignore any specific ICC profiles that might be posted or individual color adjustments because those won't work on your particular example of the same monitor.

Most good monitors nowadays are good enough with just the recommended settings when not dealing with color critical work. If you want to get your monitor spot on, buy a colorimeter. Games generally don't support ICC profiles so beyond calibrating the display from its OSD it's not that useful for anything but desktop use.

I don't like any of the "digital vibrance" or whatever oversaturation tools people use to "make it pop".

 

[TrunksZero]

Me either generally. But he mentioned "pop" and it's a free quick n' easy setting to take a peek at.

 

[drutman]

Your visual fidelity is only as a good as the source. I recommend getting a colorimeter such as a Spyder and calibrate your monitor. Second the quality of 4K and 8K varies depending on source. Use the link to the video below to look for banding, the Red system is well over 100K with the lenses. Can eyeball and adjust brightness and contrast.

 

[owcraftsman]

Don't see ICC profile for the monitor, will that be an issue?

Amazon doesn't have the Spyder X, but they do have the Spyder X pro for around $150. I am willing to buy as long as I can get good/decent colors (something that I can enjoy, colorful, etc.)

No you can create an icc profile with the colormeter after using the review recommended setting of the monitors menu. And yes the SpyderX pro would be great if money is no issue.
icc profiles can be used in game but it needs to be setup in your GPU's control panel for the specific game.

I have tried all the free stuff and nothing compares to the results with a proper calibration. Again I've gone through plenty of monitors over what really is a short amount of time considering how long they last, so if you are anything like me always wanting the next best thing then you will get your monies worth out of it. Keep in mind even if you keep your monitor for 10 years you'll likely re calibrate every 3-6 months as with anything else our monitors will degrade over time. The Spyder software will remind you when it's time to re-calibrate.

 

[TrunksZero]

You can run into issues doing that as well.

Using ICC Profiles in Windows

Games misbehaving​

Some games, such as certain Steam titles, will choose to completely ignore desktop colour data including any applied ICC profile. It might be tempting to ‘enforce’ the profile on games that don’t use the desktop settings. This can be done using a utility such as a DLL injector (ColourClutch), another enforcement utility or running in ‘borderless window’ mode. When enforcing a profile in this way you often end up with the games incorrectly transforming (or partially transforming) colour and gamma data. Games that disregard the desktop settings use a range of different baselines for colour and gamma information which differs from that of the Windows desktop environment. So even if the ICC profile is ‘enforced’ it won’t be doing what it should, basing its corrections off the desktop rather than game baseline. Such games are designed to work with the GPU’s default LUT and gamma configuration only and once you change this ‘logic’ all sorts of issues can occur. You can get some minor banding issues even if ICC profile are used ‘properly’, but that doesn’t compare to the more noticeable issues that can occur if the profiles are enforced. Gamma issues, shade crushing, extensive banding, grey neutrality issues and incorrect colours are all quite common.

If you’re using a monitor with a good colour setup from the OSD there is really no need to apply an ICC profile for any game, but that can’t be said for all monitors unfortunately. There are plenty of games out there that will use the desktop colour settings as their baseline, meaning that they will be able to use at least some of the data contained in the ICC profiles. As noted earlier, this would exclude colour gamut transformations. But on monitors where the image simply doesn’t look at all appealing after OSD adjustments alone, things can certainly look better once an ICC profile is used. Just be aware of those titles that seem reluctant to use ICC profiles and don’t be surprised if these games don’t quite look right if you enforce the profile.

ICC profiles are not ideal. However it's still worth doing a calibration without the ICC.

 

[etegv]

You can run into issues doing that as well.



ICC profiles are not ideal. However it's still worth doing a calibration without the ICC.

So color calibrators have issues with games? I guess I should've mentioned that this is primarily for PC games (steam and origin). Just want to enjoy games with nice colors

Should I go ahead with the purchase?

Your visual fidelity is only as a good as the source. I recommend getting a colorimeter such as a Spyder and calibrate your monitor. Second the quality of 4K and 8K varies depending on source. Use the link to the video below to look for banding, the Red system is well over 100K with the lenses. Can eyeball and adjust brightness and contrast.

do colorimeters work with games? or is it something that affects photos/movies? I thought they worked for everything (games, photos, movies, etc.)
thanks

 

[pendragon1]

no and no. yes saying "for gaming" would have helped, you dont need a meter for that as games just do whatever the hell they feel like. look on rtings for your display and try their recommended settings. or google model+best settings or something like that.

 

[TrunksZero]

Ok so the Colorimeter can still be used to calibrate the monitor. Just the ICC profile you often create when doing such a thing is less important, as games rarely work effectively with it. However you can still calibrate and dail in the monitor without creating and using an ICC profile. Using the colorimeter, it's software and the monitor OSD controls (so check to see what you can adjust for your monitor). But it's $150 bux... and you will rarely use it and it really might not make a massive difference. Upside, you can from then out always make sure your displays(TV or monitors) are well calibrated.

I've used them for work, but it didn't really impress me enough to buy one or use one at home. Nor enough to go around calibrating all the monitors that don't need it.

 

[kasakka]

Ok so the Colorimeter can still be used to calibrate the monitor. Just the ICC profile you often create when doing such a thing is less important, as games rarely work effectively with it. However you can still calibrate and dail in the monitor without creating and using an ICC profile. Using the colorimeter, it's software and the monitor OSD controls (so check to see what you can adjust for your monitor). But it's $150 bux... and you will rarely use it and it really might not make a massive difference. Upside, you can from then out always make sure your displays(TV or monitors) are well calibrated.

I've used them for work, but it didn't really impress me enough to buy one or use one at home. Nor enough to go around calibrating all the monitors that don't need it.

Yeah a calibrator for average use was more relevant in the past when monitors came with absolutely abysmal calibration but nowadays most better monitors are good enough with recommended settings.

 

[XoR_]

If you want accurate colors it is best to buy monitor with hardware calibration. That way you can calibrate display and save calibration to display and have calibration work with everything and without headaches. Those monitors which have this capability have also better quality overall and often do not really need calibration as much.

Regarding calibration process there are two things which are calibrated gamma and gamut.
1. Gamma - this is something buying calibration tool can improve - unfortunately not always and it comes with its own bag of issues
2. Gamut - to get gamut correction you need profile AND application which does gamut correction - unfortunately many do not

Gamma correction is the only thing which can work everywhere... though it still doesn't work with all games. Some profile loaders can force profile to reload and make it work with more games. Works for all windowed and full screen windowed games.

Gamut correction as I mentioned does not work with all applications and no way to force it where it doesn't want to work. Fortunately web browsers have this. Unfortunately - though I am not sure recently, in the past it never worked - it only works for static content and not where it is most needed: videos. You can definitely have color corrected videos but in your normal players, not necessarily in web apps. Maybe it improved in recent years but I really doubt it. I have good monitors so I do not have need to use color correction in Windows.

Another thing: if you are able to calibrate and actually get consistent results also depends on your monitor.
Gamut needs to be either perfect match to sRGB/Rec.709 or larger. If there is undercover age it is still possible to correct colors which your monitor can display but of course it won't display colors it cannot.

IPS panels are the only LCD panels which you can calibrate and get consistent results. VA gave gamma shift so gamma will vary across the screen. In fact only one point on VA screen (per eye) will have correct gamma otherwise it quickly rises and most screen surface (especially if you sit close) has lower gamma. Hence if you worry about color quality you should avoid VA panels. They do have better contrast ratio but much worse overall quality. IPS panel + ambient light has sufficient contrast ratio though so that is not an issue. TN panels I won't comment for obvious reasons. OLED is great but who has OLED monitor...

Personally I can recommend LG 27GP950. It has great colors from factory and can be hardware calibrated like professional monitor but its actually 160Hz 4K gaming monitor with VRR, also HDMI 2.1

 

[TrunksZero]

IPS panels are the only LCD panels which you can calibrate and get consistent results. VA gave gamma shift so gamma will vary across the screen. In fact only one point on VA screen (per eye) will have correct gamma otherwise it quickly rises and most screen surface (especially if you sit close) has lower gamma. Hence if you worry about color quality you should avoid VA panels. They do have better contrast ratio but much worse overall quality. IPS panel + ambient light has sufficient contrast ratio though so that is not an issue. TN panels I won't comment for obvious reasons. OLED is great but who has OLED monitor...

Sorta... you can calibrate a VA panel in a consistant way. You just need to be aware that they have heavier off-axis view angle shift than IPS. So depending on panel size,viewing distance etc that may or may not be an issue. And so long as your aware it's there, you should be ok. But really only a thing to worry about if your doing colour critical work. Like say pro level photo, video, art or copy work. Even then so long as your aware of your hardware, you should be ok. But XoR is right, IPS is the most worry free LCD panel tech.

 

[OpenSource Ghost]

Definitely get a colorimeter, but stay away from Spyder series. X-Rite i1Display Pro or ColorMunki are more accurate. For software all you need is the latest HCFR, DisplayCal, and ArgyllCMS, all of which are free.

You can apply full calibration in movies with madVR renderer and in games with DWMLUTGUI or ReShade LUT. You need to create 3DLUT's for them using the hardware and software I listed earlier.