Well I finally took the step (leap) and bought a LCD screen for photo editing. My money tree in the garden is still fruitless, so I had to buy a cheaper model compared to the Eizo $1500+ models. I have read many reviews and searched many forums and decided the Samsung 215TW (S-VPA) was a good choice for 425 euros. It’s a model discontinued in the Netherlands, so I was a bit lucky.
My first impression is good. Full HD trailers looked amazing on the default settings. My ‘old’ screen is an 17 inch CRT, so the extra space was very welcome.
I tried to calibrate the LCD with my Monaco Optix XR Pro software and DTP-94 colorimeter. Determining the correct contrast/brightness settings is a bit difficult. At this moment I have Brightness: 22; Contrast 67 and this gives me a whitepoint of 130cd/m^2 and blackpoint of 0,16cd/m^2. My guide was a printer-ramp file and choose a setting I just could see all gray values from RGB 1,1,1 up to RGB 254, 254, 254, this means no clipping at the black and white end. For the rest native color temp and gamma 2.2
Profiling. First try was (with slightly different calibration settings at this point) creating a Table-based 3D profile (60% gamut compression), 99-patches; since this is recommended for LCD screens. After this an evaluation and the results disappointed me. I got high deltaE values in the 2-3 range and a few much higher with the yellow color giving me a deltaE of 11 (!). I know the evaluation process is only to determine a drift over time, and not a measurement of profile quality, but it disturbed me nevertheless. The black-to-white gradient showed me steps from black to white.
I tried a few more contrast/brightness adjustments, but the high deltaE did not change. Finally I tried the normal non-table-based profile and this gave me a much better deltaE, with a maximum of 2.8.
Problem with all this is how do you know the profile is accurate and you can trust your eyes during color correction?
I have a few questions:
The screen has a few pre-sets with the names: Text, Internet, Games, Movies and Custom. The custom setting is what I use now, but can I use the other settings when I e.g. play a game and return to my Custom setting when I have to work again? … or would this influence the colors?
Any comments on the above, is this the way I should profile my display? I’m still a bit nervous and are tempted to use my trustworthy 17-inch CRT again.