Massive banding issue in Photoshop with new monitors :(

R

Rikki

2[H]4U
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Oct 8, 2000
Messages
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Hey folks,

I bought a pair of BenQ LED backlit monitors about a month ago after everyone saying how amazing they are, but as soon as I started to use them in Photoshop I could see issues with the colour selector and a really bad banding issue in the gradients :

BenQ monitor and the same for my new Dell U2311H (at 1920x1080):
benq1.jpg


Dell 19" 1907 which is about 4 years old (at 1280x1024):
benq2.jpg


I thought this was a monitor issue and I wasnt really that impressed by them anyway so I went ahead and bought a Dell 23" U2311H E-IPS and installed it on Saturday.

To my horror its doing exactly the same kinda thing with the banding in photoshop :(

I'd thought with the BenQ it was a monitor issue but this is proving that not to be the case.

I installed the latest nVidia drivers from their site, reset all display settings to default, checked I was of course running in 32bit color mode and not 16bit etc etc but its still the same.

The graphics card is a 512mb 8800GT, not Oc'd or anything and its been running happily for the last 2 years with my two old displays:

Dell 19" - 1907FP @ 1280x1024
Dell 17" - 1024x768

But running with my two new montors both at 1920x1080 its giving me this weird banding.

Can anyone shed any light?

My rig spec is as follows:

Q6600 @ 3.4GHz
4GB
nVidia 8800GT 512mb
Windows XP Home SP3 with all latest updates
Latest nVidia drivers etc

Thanks,

Rik
 
Did you run calibration yet or even try adjusting the contrast? I would expect that issue with any properly calibrated monitor.
 
Nope, havent run any calibration on any monitor in my life and never seen this before. The old 2006 edition 19" Dell doent do it (albeit at its 1280x1024 res) and it was uncalibrated. :(
 
You might want to try the U2311H settings they used in the FlatpannelsHD review:

color: Standard
Brightness: 30
Contrast: 75
Input Color Format: RGB
Mode Selection: Graphics
Sharpness: 50
Dynamic Contrast: Off
(Response time: Overdrive)
RGB: Custom
• R: 99
• G: 95
• B: 98

If that doesn't help take a look at the nvidia control panel and check if the graph of the desktop color settings is a straight diagonal line from corner to corner. (I think it was brightness 50, contrast 46, gamma 9, others 0)
(if these settlings don't change anything it could also be that the 1920x1080 resolution is interpreted as "TV" and the TV color settings screw up the picture... so you might also have to check/deactivate the nVidia TV color settings.)

and if it's only a problem in photoshop but not other programs... it could be that you've got a color profile attached to your monitor that doesn't fit your model.
go to Windows Display Properties / advanced / color management. if there's a profile, delete/deactivate it.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the indepth reply, I shall go and check that out.

Reason Im so puzzled is because I've had a lot of different monitors connected to the PC and this is the first time its done the banding.

21" Dell (Sony Trinitron) CRT
19" Dell 1907FP TFT
24" Acer (crap)
24" HP (didnt like the wide gamut)

Then with the 24" BenQ and 23" Dells giving me the banding.

I shall check out what you say though, thanks again :)

Rik
 
Fixed!

For some reason the wrong ICC profile was set up in Display Properties, an area Ive never gone into myself!

So I deleted it and reinstated the sRGB one :)
 
Rikki said:
Fixed!

For some reason the wrong ICC profile was set up in Display Properties, an area Ive never gone into myself!

So I deleted it and reinstated the sRGB one :)
Click to expand...

well its good to hear that it was such and easy fix. Now you can sit back and enjoy your new display
 
Half true :)

The panel has a cloudy area at the bottom right (seems common these days with Dells) so wondering if I want to play RMA roulette with it :S
 
If you are looking for the color accuracy of a CRT with a LCD or Plama you are not going to get it.most if not all panels have a color gamut that is less than what a CRT can deliver and that is why you are seeing color banding
 
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