Blocked Up Blacks on New Monitor

[Tim Lookingbill]

Glad you got some action out of Dell support. Make sure they don't send you a refurb or at least get a clear return agreement and full warranty if the replacement isn't up to snuff.

And to just be completely upfront about my LG 27" from Best Buy I had to return the first one because the sensitive touch buttons didn't work. My local Best Buy just let me walk back and get a new, unopened boxed one off the shelf for an exchange which is the current one I'm using.

Good luck.

[Michael Bailey]

For those of you waiting on the edge of your seat for the resolution to this story, it is this:
After over an hour on the phone with someone at Dell, I was told they'd send me a new monitor. Two days later I could see by Fed Ex tracking that the device was on the truck in my neighborhood, when Dell suddenly cancelled the shipment! Grrrrr! Apparently they wanted more proof of purchase, even though they didn't think to ask me for it until the very hour that the shipment was due. It took another week, and conversations or emails to four different parts of the company, for the replacement to arrive.

Lessons learned:
---stay away from Dell
---do not allow service people to send me to another part of the same company for information. ("To find out when your product is to be shipped, call this number or email this address....") You work for Dell. You find the answer and tell it to me.

Long story short, new monitor looks just the same as the old one. In Adobe RGB, there is still no separation in the blacks and near-blacks. I returned both monitors.

The unresolved question: Am I being unrealistic to expect to see a full grayscale in Adobe RGB on an LCD display?

[kaelaria]

Its you.

[Michael Bailey]

Its you.

I'm sorry, but I don't know what you mean. "It's you" as in, "yes, your expectations are unrealistic," or, "it's you" as in, "you're doing something wrong."
If I am doing something wrong, I'd be happy to find out what it could be, especially as Dell promotes the management of color on their device as a nearly-one-step process. I profile and calibrate to their instructions. I check that Windows sees and applies the monitor profile. And I set Photoshop color to Adobe RGB and make sure the document I make in it uses that profile. Nobody at this forum or Dell has been able to tell me that I'm missing something.

[papa v2.0]

Hi

Out of interest what profile is assigned to the greyscale ramp?

Iain

[digitaldog]

The unresolved question: Am I being unrealistic to expect to see a full grayscale in Adobe RGB on an LCD display?

Nope, you just need to move up to a better product like a SpectraView or Eizo.

I'm sure after a similar conversation about display quality and what to buy on another site, Tim will agree. Stay away from Dell.

[Michael Bailey]

Original poster again.

Iain: I might have used the word gra(e)yscale too loosely. Although the values were all monochromatic (white, gray, black) the file was RGB, in Adobe RGB (1998).

Digitaldog: Thank you for your reply. I will bear it in mind as I search for a replacement. I have been half tempted to look for something cheap, using a logic of, "It can't be any worse, and at least this way I'll only be out a few hundred bucks if I'm wrong." Instead I will look into Spectraview.