Wide gamut question

[erothrax]

Hey, If I get a wide gamut monitor does it make colors inaccurate to original colors? In movies/games/desktop and everything, just wondering...

 

[daveswantek]

Everything, but color aware apps like photoshop. A good calibration device will improve the situation with a custom profile that you will have to create, but it will not be exact.

Dave

 

[Nenu]

The monitor may have an sRGB profile in its setup to prevent the extended gamut from being used.

 

[Forceman]

The sRGB emulation may or may not work well, they seem to be hit or miss. For me, for the most part, the wide gamut isn't really noticeable. Like everything, people notice different things, and have different tolerances for stuff so YMMV.

 

[walkman]

Forceman: Are you saying the sRGB emulation is hit or miss for a particular brand/model, or for each individual monitor?

 

[gkovacs]

Normal RGB images on a wide gamut monitor look overly saturated, sometimes even with a neon feel to them (especially reds and greens).

sRGB mode on the DELL 3008WFP is unacceptable. Colors are off, sharpness is weird and the entire screen just looks disturbing, not a tiny bit similar to a regular gamut monitor.

Other monitors with internal LUT may have better sRGB modes, but on the DELL it's simply bad. Your best bet is to calibrate it and use color managed apps (like the Adobe Creative Suite) for your critical work. Make sure you check with the calibration device manufacturer that it supports wide gamut monitors, as there are problems with some of them.

Fortunately there is a nice color managed image viewer (called FastPictureViewer) and a Firefox extension that provides color management for browsing, so only games and video (and the Windows Explorer) will be off.

 

[Forceman]

Forceman: Are you saying the sRGB emulation is hit or miss for a particular brand/model, or for each individual monitor?

For different brands/models - some manufacturers do a better job with it than others.