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Author Topic: Is 8 bits enough for color critical work on wide gamut displays?  (Read 2334 times)

ConorPeterson

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Is 8 bits enough for color critical work on wide gamut displays?
« on: November 05, 2009, 03:34:01 pm »

Hi all, I've read so much about monitors in the past couple days that I'm beginning to think that they ALL have some sort of crucial flaw, so I'm writing in the hope that somebody can give me a reality check. There are two NEC monitors that look interesting to me, the 2690WUXi2 and the P221W.

Correct me if I'm getting this wrong: hardware calibration in the monitor is the best approach when precision matters, but even if your monitor has 10 or 12 bit lookup tables, you're still only seeing 256 distinct shades per channel due to a video card bottleneck that's unlikely to budge for years. So it would follow that wide gamut displays are less *accurate* because the 256 shades are distributed across a much bigger spectrum, which I suppose would mean that they're more likely to show banding.

My question to the color experts around here: In practice, is this a non-issue? Do you feel comfortable soft-proofing prints on a wide-gamut display? Does it take an extra print or two before you feel like you nailed the colors?

My primary output is either Epson 9800 (a 9900 soon, I'm told), but I don't have direct access to these printers, so getting the file right at home will help me cut lab time. Also, I work mostly with scans of sheet film, typically from an epson 750 but sometimes a drum scan. (Color accuracy on film is another matter entirely; my main concern here is WYSIWYG proofing for digital output.)

I guess I'm asking because if I spend $1300 on the 2690 only to realize I have to make two or three reprints anyway, I may as well save several hundred dollars and opt for the less accurate and narrower-gamut P221W, which would free up some funds to improve other areas of my workflow.

One other thing: I'd love to hear from anybody who's used the 2690 v.2 in its sRGB mode, as I've read the new version can actually be calibrated to sRGB, which would make me feel a whole lot better about electronic slide submissions and things like that.

Thanks.
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tho_mas

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Is 8 bits enough for color critical work on wide gamut displays?
« Reply #1 on: November 05, 2009, 05:30:38 pm »

Quote from: ConorPeterson
hardware calibration in the monitor is the best approach when precision matters
yes

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but even if your monitor has 10 or 12 bit lookup tables, you're still only seeing 256 distinct shades per channel due to a video card bottleneck that's unlikely to budge for years.
The monitor will redraw the image and as long as the monitor has high bit internal processing and the source image is in 16bit you definitely take advantage of that.
On a monitor with a 10bit (or higher) LUT you can adjust the white point (so the RGB chanles) literally without a loss of differentiation in the gray axis.
So if you want to calibrate the monitor (you should) 10bit LUT is a must.

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they're more likely to show banding.
no. Banding is mostly a mismatch of the generic TRC ("Gamma") of the monitor and either the calibration curve on the graphics card (Video-LUT) or the TRC of the source image... or both.

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In practice, is this a non-issue?
basically yes as long as the monitor is adjustable in the hardware... i.e. RGB chanels with 10 or higher bit accuracy, Gamma adjustment or at best full hardware calibration.
An 8 bit wide gamut display might also be okay as long as you don't adjust a white point and/or TRC that differs to much from its generic preset. But me I would prefer a high bit sRGB monitor over a low bit wide gamut monitor.

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Do you feel comfortable soft-proofing prints on a wide-gamut display?
yes

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Does it take an extra print or two before you feel like you nailed the colors?
you have to get used to every new part of the workflow. But once you are you don't have to print a lot of test images. It depends much more on the calibration and in particular the viewing conditions.
« Last Edit: November 05, 2009, 05:33:08 pm by tho_mas »
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