Calibration of Adobe RGB monitor

[ad9t]

I just took delivery of a BenQ SW320 monitor. I need help selecting a screen calibration device.

The BenQ SW320 covers most of the Adobe RGB Color Space, and has "Hardware Calibration With Palette Master Element Software”. The hardware calibration is supported with these calibrators; X-Rite i1 Display Pro / i1 Pro / i1 Pro 2 & Datacolor Spyder 4 / Spyder 5. At first, it seems like using this hardware calibration makes the most sense, but many of the calibration tools have sensors that actively monitor ambinent light. When the light changes, they will change the calibration. My office has large windows, and the light changes significantly. Would it be better to use a calibrator with a light sensor and software calibration?  I do not need extremely accurate color matching.

If I use the hardware calibration how do I set the color options on the computer? The operating system is Windows 7.

I want to be sure the software license for the calibrator allows it to be used on any number of computers. We have several other computers in the office that can benefit from calibration.

Thanks

Jeff

[aaron125]

I never use the ambient light monitoring feature of any colorimeter or spectrophotometer/profiling app combo on any monitor I've used.

With my Eizo CG242W, I'd simply create as many different profiles as I desired because they could all be accessed and chosen as the current profile using the tray tool in Win7. This way, I could very quickly and easily change the profile for, say gaming, watching movies (both very similar in that I wanted the highest possible contrast ratio and not so concerned with the best colour accuracy), photo editing, soft-proofing for gloss/lustre/baryta style substrates or matte or watercolour style materials, etc.

Luckily for me, I almost always worked in a reasonably dark room, so the ambient light wasn't changing too much, but I've used my screens in rooms where the ambient light did change and I could never get used to the monitor changing due to the ambient light variations. It just annoyed the hell out of me.

You might like the feature but perhaps just give it a try first and then, if you do as I did, turn it off forever.


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[Royce Howland]

I'd personally recommend getting the i1 Display Pro colorimeter for use with this monitor. I've tested both it and the Spyder 5 on my BenQ SW320 and various other monitors, and both copies of the colorimeters I own produce acceptable results. But years of experience and testing numerous copies of different models of X-Rite and Datacolor devices have convinced me to trust the X-Rite devices more. So that's what I use myself, and recommend.

I don't use the ambient light adaptation function of any of these tools. I feel it's a bit of a gimmick that solves a problem the wrong way. IMO it's far better to work in a work room with stable ambient light, or to control the ambient light in your work room if it's highly variable. Also, using the ambient light adaptation of any of the calibration tool's own software packages (X-Rite i1Profiler or the Datacolor Spyder software) would by-pass native hardware calibration of the monitor, which defeats part of the benefit of having such a monitor. The solution for me is controlling the ambient light and using monitor hardware calibration.

You don't need to set any colour options in the operating system. Palette Master Element software, or the colorimeter's own native software, will automatically set up everything that needs to be set in Windows 7. Windows itself has very little in the way of colour settings; mainly it's just installing the generated ICC profile and associating it as the default profile for your monitor. Beyond that, everything to do with colour settings typically happens within applications. Depending on what software you're using, you may or may not need to manually configure some things within app-specific colour settings.

I believe X-Rite and Datacolor calibration software typically can be installed and used on multiple computers in accordance with the license terms, but your best bet on that is to consult the actual license agreement on the package you're considering buying. I'd look it up on mine but I never keep that documentation.

Having gone through that, you say you don't need "extremely accurate color matching", so some of how I've described going about it may be moot for your case. Perhaps you don't need a hardware calibrated monitor. Perhaps you don't even need to calibrate at all, and could simply use one of the monitor's builtin presets like its Adobe RGB mode. If you share some info about what you're trying to accomplish and what your tolerances are, perhaps we can offer more useful input...

[daicehawk]

I vote for i1 pro and DispcalGUI+Argyll. Never used ambient light adapatation nor believe it to be of any value.

[ad9t]

Thanks everyone. Looks like the i1 Display Pro is the way to go.

I am doing scientific imaging. Most of the time I just need to be able to spot relative differences within an image. My old monitor at work was terrible. I would look at images using my 5K iMac at home and could see detail that was completely invisible at work. Even without calibration the BenQ SW320 should solve that problem.

[Royce Howland]

It sounds like you had a very poor monitor before at your work location. If it was a super budget model, possibly it was a 6-bit panel which means it would crush areas of subtle (sometimes not so subtle) tonal or hue differences. I reckon just about any way you choose to set up the SW320, it will be dramatically better for your needs... even if uncalibrated.