Hello lovely BTers! I have just bought a Dell U2413 monitor, and am feeling a bit overwhelmed with all the options available. (I don't mean where to plug in the cables - I am capable of that!) I will be using it for Lightroom, general work (MS Word etc, web) and some gaming. Running Win 7. I don't have any hardware calibration available at the moment, but may look into this in the future. What should I be doing? Please could someone advise me in the best mode to run the monitor in, whether (& how) I need to calibrate, and so on. Do I fire and forget, or should I flick between modes for different uses? Thanks loads, Mike
Well it's fairly straight forward: -> Use a digital connector (DVI or DisplayPort) to connect the monitor to your system (DisplayPort being better, if you have both). -> Go on the monitor menu, and select Adobe RGB or sRGB color profile. Both of wich are calibrated at the manufacture. While it is a quick calibration, and over time, the wear of teh back light and panel will make this calibration invalid for color critical work. It isn't a professional grade monitor, and if you do color critical work, then you would already have a color calibrator in hand. So you are good. It's to get you started, and for non-color critical work, it's good enough, with no visible color shift over time. -> If your monitor buttons does noise when you press them, you can disable that, if you want, there is an option on the monitor menu to disable that behavior. It's under "Other Settings" > "Button sound". And that's it
That sounds manageable! But which of the two should I choose? And so I need to tell Windows/Lightroom which I am using?
Correct, as Adobe RGB is a wider gamut (1.07 billion colors) than sRGB (16.7 million colors). If I am not mistaken, the "industry standard", is sRGB, as most people don't have a monitor that can somewhat do sRGB to start with. Also, most people monitors can only display 8-bit color per channel, so 16.7 million colors. And when you consider that most people monitors are actually 6-bit panel, and emulate 8-bit colors per channel, yea not great. (it's pretty darn good for 6-bit IPS panels, but most people have TN panels) Adobe RGB is if you have compatible printer, usually used for magazine prints and such, from my understanding (I am definitively not in the field, or do color critical work. I just really enjoy colors.) Personally, as a non-professional, I use Adobe RGB on my monitor, and set Windows color profile to sRGB (essentially limiting my colors). I get a bit of over-saturation, I know, but I find it more "real life like" then using my monitor sRGB settings which I find lacks vividness from 'real life' view. Again, I am no professional, or even do photo editing, so it's a "luxury" move, I can afford to do. You probably have a better eye than me, and we definitely have different monitors, which results in, well, different results. Your sRGB might look (and I think from reviews, it actual is) better than mine. I have the Dell U2410 if you wonder, the older version of your monitor.
