Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Computers & Peripherals => Topic started by: WombatHorror on March 01, 2014, 02:26:27 am
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Picked it up during the nice Presidents' Day sale.
Part 1 - the resolution, oh the resolution:
PHOTO:
Wow, the resolution (3840x2160) does make photos look different compared to old 1920x1200 monitors. Everything seems a bit more film-like/slide-like somehow, a bit less digital looking, smoother, more natural, like a giant magnified slide table or something almost. Instead of seeing a digital image you just see an image.
It's quite nice for nature photography since when you have tons of trees you can better make out all the little leaves and bark textures and twigs and such and they don't all blob together as much and even when you have distant wooded panoramas on the far horizon instead of a bunch of blobs on the trees they manage to maintain some true leaf and branch detail now so they look more like photos and real life, it looks more like you are there looking at it than staring at some digital blobbing.
It also helps quite a lot for this one shot I have of a giant cliff boulder hillside covered in tiny ferns. At full UHD you can finally make out all the little ferns details enough that the image finally works out OK on screen.
Fine feather detail in birds, little details in rocky surfaces and lichen covered rocks and so on.... so nice!
People shots, wow, sometimes it feels like you are right there in the room with them!
Look at an old 8MP shot from an older DLSR and you almost get to see the entire image at 100% view! Only the differing aspect ratio prevents it.
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TEXT:
Text is much, much more like real printed text in look. That is SO much nicer. It makes reading documents, browsing the web, typing documents out SO much nicer! No more fake, bleary pixelated text!
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VIDEO:
Jaw drops.
OMG, oh wow, holy smokes, well done 4k video is simply unreal, holy cow!! wow!
At least for the samples I can find that are all of: actually real 4k, properly focused, not too horrible compressed.
The "1080p is already more than eye can see and just a marketing scam being pushed on people" crowd is so beyond clueless. All their talk about how you need at least an 80" screen is pure garbage. The difference is very clear just on this little 24" monitor.
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OVERALL:
Booting up to the old NEC 1920x1200 screen man the desktop looks so ancient, lo-res and grainy and weird after a day on the new UHD screen!
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Part 2 - the internal color engine and gamut:
Colors seem to be pretty rich and in the same ballpark as my old NEC PA241W in that regard. It has a few more shades than the old CCFL wide gamut monitors and a decent bit more than the original CCFL wide gamut monitors. I believe it's about the same gamut as the new NEC PAxx2W series wide gamut monitors.
I'm not sure if the color-engine is quite as linear and precise, but it seems to be fairly close in native gamut mode between the two monitors. It might possible be as good as the NEC PA series in this mode, maybe.
In sRGB emulation the NEC PA is simply perfect with the ultra-linear calibration and 14 bit 3D LUT working to perfection, the Dell isn't bad but it's not like you get the 100% flat saturation tracking curves and such of the PA, not too bad though and about what a decentish regular gamut monitor without a fancy 3D LUT would give you and probably a bit better overall than a regular gamut monitor with no internal LUT at all I'd say as those usually have a fair amount of noticeable banding after calibration due to having to calibrate within the 8 bits themselves and most are not able to get the primaries all so close to true sRGB locations.
Dell is kind of vague as what the internal LUT system is. I'm not sure if it is linear 14bit or 3D 14bit. The fact that even matrix profile calibration takes so long and the sRGB mode doesn't seem to have quite the same perfection to the saturation curves makes me wonder if maybe it's not 3D? Or maybe they simply didn't make the base point or polish up the color engine quite as well.
One possibly terrible thing is that is gives only two calibration slots and, at first glance at least, it seems like there isn't a way to save a calibration and then instantly load it to swap from this to that to that as you can with the NEC PA. I have a horrible feeling that if you need more than 2 you might need to constantly do the entire calibration process again and it takes a LONG time even for the matrix based calibration for some reason. I like to calibrate to native gamut and three different backlight settings and the same for sRGB with sRGB TRC and the same for sRGB with gamma 2.2 which would need nine slots. OK, I get by reasonably well with just two brightness levels for each but that still needs six and I guess I could forget the sRGB with sRGB TRC and just stick to firefox always for web image viewing, fine enough, but that still leaves me needing four slots and there are only two. I hope there is a way around this. I didn't dig too deep yet. If not, I really hope there is a way they could update the software to be able to write calibration to a file and then load it into the screen and that it is not hardware locked and only able to be written directly into the screen during calibration. I might be stuck with just a single backligt choice for wide gamut mode and sRGB mode :(. This might be the only major downside for those not gaming. (although I guess I can use the slots for native gamut bright and dim conditions and then get by the with the pre-calibrated sRGB mode and apply an external calibration as required to bring it a trace closer over time or to gamma 2.2 from sRGB TRC as needed)
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Part 3 - odds and ends:
The AG coating doesn't have the sparkle effect and isn't quite so ponderous as on the older IPS AG-coated monitors like the NEC PA241W, which could be a touch annoying. I like the new AG coating better for sure. I hear the NEC PAxx2W series has a new AG coating too, not sure if it is the same coating as on this one or not.
A few times each half of the screen started rendering at a fraction of a second delay making for bad tearing being the two sides, simply powering off and then on again seems to always fix it. I think it's only happened when messing around changing from calibration to pre-built and other modes a lot, not quite sure what triggers it. The fix seems to be easy enough though for the few times it happened. It really only happened the first day when I was constantly swapping modes all over the place.
I've been running the screen over Display Port 1.2 to get the 60Hz refresh rate.
I don't seem to notice any horrible over drive issues like some Dells had back when I last tried a Dell (circa 2006ish???).
No dead pixels that I can see.
Screen uniformity without the compensation being used appears to vary across the screen from 81cd/m^2 down to 68cd/m^2 and color temp from like 6600K to 6100K (going roughly by memory from 5x5 grid of measurements) so I guess it can hit as much as 20% off, apparently even the new NEC PA242W some copies are hitting 20% luminance variance with the compensator off so I guess that is how it goes with the new LED lit screens in some cases, unless you are lucky you may have some variation with compensation turned off.
I tested out the compensator unit in it today. It can be programmed with an i1 Display Pro too yourself. It actually appears to work quite well which is nice and contrary to a few very early reports I heard where some review guy claimed it didn't seem to do anything. Oh believe me it does, maybe about as well as the NEC PA series I'd say. With the Dell it is either 100% on or 100% though, as with Eizo, and unlike NEC where you set it to varying degrees to trade varying amounts of CR away vs uniformity. OTOH the NEC compensation is fixed so it if things shift during transport of the monitor the compensation might no longer be as ideal a match. You can run the compensator at 3x3 or 5x5 grid level. I ran it at 5x5 and was able to tame luminance % off by region from like 5-20% differences down to just 0-2% (all but one block of the grid, I believe, to just 0-1%)! For white balance uniformity it takes it from like peak low to high WB differences of like 400 down to like 100 with avg differences closer to like maybe 40.
So the feature really does work.
On my copy (and it will likely vary if you get a screen with better or worse native uniformity the numbers will rise or lower for CR) with compensation on I got like 700:1 CR in native gamut mode or sRGB with gamma 2.2 mode. On my NEC PA241W with compensation on I got like 580:1 CR in native gamut mode.
With compensation off in pre-programmed sRGB mode with sRGB TRC it does 900:1 CR.
They don't use the special polarizers in IPS screens anymore unfortunately, not since the series before even the older PA241W at least so you get the typical white wash on black at any off angle at all. The Dell may be even a bit worse in this regard than the NEC PA241W especially at the bottom two corners which it tends to get some of that wash, on the Dell the wash tends to be a trace reddish tinged at the bottom (blueish at the top although is does it less up there and more whiteish on the NEC and perhaps a trace more on top on the NEC but less at the bottom corners perhaps).
I do wish it was 16:10 instead of 16:9, since physically, all images other than very wide ones clearly look smaller on it (even if more detailed) and the extra vertical real-estate can be nicer at times for computer work.
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Part 4 - Windows and other programs and UHD:
For TV/movies/videos my CPU/GPU (i7 3770 and GTX670) seem to be powerful enough to drive even blu-ray to upscaled UHD so in that regard there is probably no scaling issue, at least not for me. I didn't try hooking up an external cable box to it yet. Not sure how it will deal with the 1920x1080. I fear it might just center a tiny 1920x1080 box in the middle of the screen. Maybe it will scale it though since those boxes are 30p I think.
Windows scaling is a bit weird.
It scales up the icons OK on the desktop and renders the icon text at twice the res in each direction so it's really smooth looking and the proper size and the same for Wordpad and other such programs (although in a few cases some text in some places like message headers in Windows Live Mail is slightly clipped at the top). But folders get overly large top grab border bars.
Firefox and IE can also be set to scale up text so text on web pages an all appear to physically be the same size on the UHD screen as it was on the old 1920x1080 screen only now it's much crisper and realistic looking since each letter is made out of 4x as many pixels. As for images on webpages, Firefox and IE seem to automatically scale all images by 2x so they appear the same size as they did on the old screen and not like tiny postage stamps (OTOH they don't use simple 1->4 scaling but some sort of interpolation of sorts so the images are maybe a trace less hard-blocked crisp). Not sure yet but Chrome might just interpolate the entire rendering area up including text and screen drawn elements so it doesn't seem to make use of the extra res for anything other interpolation sp it seems to do the worst job of the various browsers and not really the one you'd like to use on such a monitor.
One annoying thing is that Adobe Reader and Irfanview, as with Chrome, seem to make full use of the extra res for display IF you set windows to 100% mode, but not if you set Windows to 200% mode so that everything isn't horribly small. When you do the latter then they seem to to 1920x1080 and then have Windows interpolate their entire windows up 2x in each direction. So PDF files don't make use of the extra resolution and Irfanview doesn't let you view images in 4k glory when you use the 200% mode that makes Windows liveable at 4k. So you have to log off and toggle back to 100% when using Ifranview or Adobe PDF reader which is rather cumbersome to say the least. I hope they update those programs to decide to NOT use the 2x interpolation flag Windows sends for the image rendering. Maybe it's time for me to finally write my own image viewer (irfanview has this annoyance with UHD, fastpicviewer seems to handle tone curve mapping differently than Photoshop/Firefox/Irfanview/etc., fastone seems to fail at CMS in some important scenarios, etc.).
I'm sure as I try out more programs there will be some that will have the UI become a mess to unusable at 2x scaling.
FastPicViewer works fine no matter what Windows scaling is set to (although I still feel it does something a bit odd with how it's CMS handles tone mapping, it seems to add a bit of contrast and make darks too dark compared to any other color-managed software). You get full glory of UHD images no matter what you set Windows scaling to.
Photoshop handles the images fine no matter what windows scaling is set to as well and the menu and pop up text are rendered large and crip, almost too large at times, but the control icons and top menu bar and pop up menu text and all are super small. You have to lean close at times, but to me it's worth that little struggle. It's a shame Photoshop Windows didn't get the UHD UI update that the MAC version did before they went cloud, oh well. I'll lean close rather than go cloud (not that cloud Windows has fixed this yet anyway).
Didn't try to hook my MAC Mini up yet, that has me a bit worried to say the least, need that to code iphone/pad apps and hopefully won't need to buy a second cheapo little screen and still a bit worried about driving games.
As for gaming, I haven't tried out too much yet. I fear some older programs and some very recent may be trouble as the old ones might not allow UHD settings and I'm not yet sure if the monitor or graphics card will scale them properly. And the very latest may allow UHD but become too choppy. That said, I tried F1 2011 and was pleased to find that I actually get, with all settings maxed out (other than AA which was at 4x), it to deliver 40+ fps at full UHD resolution. Star Wars Battlefront II handles UHD with maxed settings with ease too and Tomb Raider Underworld appears to as well. I'm having issues getting SW Battlefront I to work, not sure if it is a Windows 7 thing or a resolution thing, something odd in the graphics settings menu it goes crazy. Not yet sure how make the graphics card scale up were you to want to not run games at UHD.
Oh and this is all with Windows 7 64 bit, 32GB memory of fast DDR3 memory, Nvidia GTX670, Intel i7 3770 since the specs obviously will make a huge difference in such matters.
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Part 5 - summing up:
Anyway it's probably not quite as fancy a screen as the NEC PA series, which really do everything completely perfectly from what I've seen pretty much, but it's not bad at all either, and it actually does have a truly working uniformity compensator (perhaps a first for a non NEC PA or higher-end Eizo???) and the UHD is pretty amazing, so amazing that I will keep the Dell and sell my PA241W. I don't think NEC will have UHD in PA series until very late 2014 and for the smaller sized monitors like this one I have a feeling not until 2015+, although they may have a sub-PA series UHD 24 coming out in some months. The 2 calibration slots thing will be a mess though (although I guess I can use the slots for native gamut bright and dim conditions and then get by the with the pre-calibrated sRGB mode and apply an external calibration as required to bring it a trace closer over time or to gamma 2.2 from sRGB TRC as needed).
I still hold that the monitor is one the single most important pieces of photography equipment, maybe almost the most these days. It's not all about the camera body and lenses. And especially with UHD screen where you can basically see an 8MP all at once on the screen and I think ever more so since, being honest, people only get to ever see a small fraction of the shots they take printed out.
You really are NOT seeing your images without something like this! THIS is how they look, like true images and not grainy, pixellated and digital.
And wow I really am loving it. Some of the 4k clips are just wow! And seeing still images on this holy cow!! And text for web browsing and documents oh man! All things considered overall I have to say this is, I think, the best monitor I have ever used. Just loving it!
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MAC PART:
OK, wow, actually got my MAC Mini to be able to support 3840x2160 or 1920x1080p HiDPI modes. It took a lot of searching and some hacking and some serious scares along the way though! And most google searches only lead you to partial solutions or talk that it's impossible. But 2 hours later it works.
I have no clue what Apple fans go on about how MS has no clue compared to Apple when getting UHD running on a regular MAC is so tricky and not directly supported in the OS. Direct support was only for 1920x1080p (which interestingly enough the Dell UP2414Q actually WAS able to scale to fit the screen and run at 60Hz, although it doesn't do simple scaling but interpolation so it's a bit blurry looking from the interpolation). And supposedly there is no way to make it work, even with hacks, if you have already upgraded to Mavericks, which thankfully I had not.
Once you do all the hacking though it appears, at first glance, to work quite well though and perhaps better than Windows although I can't yet say. I don't have much software for the Mac since I basically only use it for tablet development. Although Apple still has 60Hz support locked out for some reason running at UHD so you have to live with either 30Hz and UHD or 60Hz but interpolated by the monitor 1920x1080.
Anyway when I did these steps and used HDMI I got locked into a no signal mode and my HDMI port now seems to be locked out of working with this UHD Dell monitor, although the port still works if I use with other monitors that it recognizes as being different brand. And then I found that using DisplayPort it still works with the Dell even at UHD and I can get in and reset things for this monitor.
Anyway here are the steps:
0. Make sure you have NOT installed Mavericks! AFAIK it only works with OS SUB 10.9, at least so far.
1. use the DisplayPort and not HDMI connector.
2. Go here and follow the http://code.google.com/p/mac-pixel-clock-patch/wiki/Documentation to install the mac-pixel-clock patch to unlock higher pixel clocks.
3. Go here http://www.madrau.com/srx_download/download.html and download and install SwitchResX and select UHD mode for DisplayPort.
4. Go to create custom resolutions in SwitchResX and simple make a new 3840x2160 mode. Exit out of SwitchResX and agree to save changes.
5. Go here http://cocoamanifest.net/articles/2013/01/turn-on-hidpi-retina-mode-on-an-ordinary-mac.html and follow the instructions to turn on HiDPI mode options.
6. Re-boot. You will notice that the HiDPI modes offered by the OS Display preferences are stinking options, there is no 1080P natural scale factor option and the ones they offer make the screen shake and are too lo-res.
7. So go back into SwitchResX and you will now find a 1080P HiDPI option. Select that and then finally you have both UHD AND all the text and icons not being hideously small running even on a MAC Mini or other non-retina MAC (maybe much older models this won't work for, my MAC Mini is only a bit over a year old)
So wow even a non-retina, little old Mac Mini can drive it just fine! Well, so long as you didn't go to Mavericks! Hopefully they will hack Mavericks too. Or even better Apple will just unlock the port as well as make all of these options built-in and obvious and also get 60Hz drivers going too.
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Thanks for sharing your review and also the steps you had to make to get it working on a Mac!
Any post calibration/profiling deltaE numbers you can share?
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Regarding the MAC hack, it should be OK for the DisplayPort and if you have Intel 3000 or 4000 or later or other such chipsets that have been UHD/4k approved on other systems.
Can't guarantee what happens to an older MAC.
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Regarding the MAC hack, it should be OK for the DisplayPort and if you have Intel 3000 or 4000 or later or other such chipsets that have been UHD/4k approved on other systems.
Can't guarantee what happens to an older MAC.
FYI, MAC is a computer tech acronym meaning Machine Access Control. “Mac”, on the other hand, is an abbreviation of “Macintosh”!
;D
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FYI, MAC is a computer tech acronym meaning Machine Access Control. “Mac”, on the other hand, is an abbreviation of “Macintosh”!
;D
haha eh whatever Apple/Orange MAC/Mac all the same to me ;D
I'm an Atari/Amiga guy. ;D Or was as long as I could be.
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You really are NOT seeing your images without something like this! THIS is how they look, like true images and not grainy, pixellated and digital.
That's an odd POV. It looks that way on that output device because that's a different output device than your previous display. It isn't right or wrong, it is what it is on that output device. And if you love that look, great, as long as you always view using that output device. Now you want to make a print, or have other's view the image on another device. It looks as it looks there, grainy, pixellated and digital because that's exactly what that output device renders from those numbers. After all, you're working with a big pile of numbers! You want to see the image as it actually, really is? Well you can view the RGB/CMYK/LAB values but that isn't an image of course.
Glad you like the display and thanks for the review but let's put things into proper perspective. You're seeing your image how the output device (and the person handling the data within reason) presents the image. One could say: you're really are NOT seeing your images without something like an Epson 9900 too.
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That's an odd POV. It looks that way on that output device because that's a different output device than your previous display. It isn't right or wrong, it is what it is on that output device. And if you love that look, great, as long as you always view using that output device. Now you want to make a print, or have other's view the image on another device. It looks as it looks there, grainy, pixellated and digital because that's exactly what that output device renders from those numbers. After all, you're working with a big pile of numbers! You want to see the image as it actually, really is? Well you can view the RGB/CMYK/LAB values but that isn't an image of course.
Glad you like the display and thanks for the review but let's put things into proper perspective. You're seeing your image how the output device (and the person handling the data within reason) presents the image. One could say: you're really are NOT seeing your images without something like an Epson 9900 too.
Well, I'm not the only one who put it this way though. In fact, on another forum a few people even messaged me that I had put into words exactly what they were feeling about their new UHD monitor or had been going around saying about it.
It's a tipping point thing, at a certain resolution things, once the point is hit, start taking on a different sort of look. You don't start seeing what the image is constructed from so much anymore as just the image.
Images look a lot more like on prints on this than on any lower res monitor I've used.
I've had some other monitors before and there was not this huge change in the feel of how things looked moving from one to another before.
At a certain point, so much detail is lost from any typical modern digital image that most monitors just don't show all the texture and detail and so much is lost and combine that with the fact that you see the pixels and what the image is made up from much more that gives it a digital look and it really does feel like with an HD monitor or below that you aren't really seeing your image as it is in a sense. With the UHD it's a more like looking out a window, looking at something real sort of feeling and it's more of a smooth, natural look that something all clearly pixellated.
Make a nice decent sized print and compare to a 1024x768 monitor image and it's a similar feeling in a way.
It's like with a 'retina' type tablet vs a regular one. Read a magazine, book or newspaper on a regular one and it looks all nasty and grainy and pixelleted and digital-like and then read it on a 'retina' resolution type one and it looks like a printed page, smooth and beautiful, natural and real.
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Well, I'm not the only one who put it this way though. In fact, on another forum a few people even messaged me that I had put into words exactly what they were feeling about their new UHD monitor or had been going around saying about it.
Ah OK, just makes no sense to me no matter how many people state it.
This statements make senese to me: You really are NOT seeing your images on a display without something like this!
Images look a lot more like on prints on this than on any lower res monitor I've used.
But they don't look exactly like a print (and can't for oh so many reasons). Which kind of print, which kind of paper, what dynamic range (which is vastly different from a display, this or older).
Images look a lot more like on prints on this than on any lower res monitor I've used.
Yes they are different. But the proof is in the output and you have one output device you prefer which is fine. Each output device is it's own reality. You ARE seeing your images as they appear on every device they appear on, they are all different, they all represent what is actually a big pile of solid colored pixels.
Again, One could say: you're really are NOT seeing your images on a print without something like an Epson 9900 on Luster paper.
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Ah OK, just makes no sense to me no matter how many people state it.
This statements make senese to me: You really are NOT seeing your images on a display without something like this! But they don't look exactly like a print (and can't for oh so many reasons). Which kind of print, which kind of paper, what dynamic range (which is vastly different from a display, this or older). Yes they are different. But the proof is in the output and you have one output device you prefer which is fine. Each output device is it's own reality. You ARE seeing your images as they appear on every device they appear on, they are all different, they all represent what is actually a big pile of solid colored pixels.
Again, One could say: you're really are NOT seeing your images on a print without something like an Epson 9900 on Luster paper.
Try a UHD/4k monitor and get back to us. Yes of course it's not as high res as a large print and the gamut and DR and so on cahnge a bit. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the tipping point between where the res is so low that you don't get to see all the fine textures and so on and details in your scenes and you can make out the blocky pixellated structure or not. However you describe it there is a big whoa factor of a fine print or a view on an UHD monitor compared to on an HD monitor or under. And it does give one more a feeling of looking at a slide magnified on a slide table or something, smooth, detailed.
Again like how a magazine or book looks vs that material on a lo-res tablet vs on a retina type pad.
at a certain point so much is lost by going so low res that it just doesn't feel like you are truly seeing your image anymore in a way
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Try a UHD/4k monitor and get back to us.
Oh I have!
Yes of course it's not as high res as a large print and the gamut and DR and so on cahnge a bit
Exactly. Same image data right?
Let's not oversell this. This (or the 4K units I've looked at) may be awesome looking but it's usually only one part of the process. IF the final output is that display, fine. For many, that's an intermediary device. To say you have to use one to see your files or images is either obvious (yes, you need a specific 4K display to see what your images look like on that 4K display) or it's a tad confusing. We have to output our pixel values, and that's all they really are, onto all kinds of devices and each device is somewhat unique in terms of the output rendering. The gamut of my 4900 printer simply blows the doors off your 4K display. Your 4K display blows the doors off the Epson in terms of the possible dynamic range. Same darn pixels in each case.
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Oh I have! Exactly. Same image data right?
Let's not oversell this. This (or the 4K units I've looked at) may be awesome looking but it's usually only one part of the process. IF the final output is that display, fine. For many, that's an intermediary device. To say you have to use one to see your files or images is either obvious (yes, you need a specific 4K display to see what your images look like on that 4K display) or it's a tad confusing. We have to output our pixel values, and that's all they really are, onto all kinds of devices and each device is somewhat unique in terms of the output rendering. The gamut of my 4900 printer simply blows the doors off your 4K display. Your 4K display blows the doors off the Epson in terms of the possible dynamic range. Same darn pixels in each case.
Well I think you are understating the difference UHD makes for looking at one's images and the big difference in feel it gives compared to any various lower res displays. We will have to agree to disagree.
At the end of the day I'd say that the vast majority of images taken never get printed and only get seen on screen. It takes a long time and tons of money to print thousands of large images.
As for the gamuts, does the 4900 really have that huge of a gamut?? Wow, that would be pretty impressive for it to out do a wide gamut monitor. I didn't know they had reached that point yet for printers, pretty impressive.
I know all of the regular more consumer-ish printers like say Epson R800 or R3000 and such have gamuts that are overall much smaller than a wide gamut monitor (and even compared to sRGB, they are mixed, there are a LOT of sRGB colors they can't print, although OTOH they can also print a decent number of colors that sRGB clips).
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Oh I have! Exactly. Same image data right?
Let's not oversell this. This (or the 4K units I've looked at) may be awesome looking but it's usually only one part of the process. IF the final output is that display, fine. For many, that's an intermediary device. To say you have to use one to see your files or images is either obvious (yes, you need a specific 4K display to see what your images look like on that 4K display) or it's a tad confusing. We have to output our pixel values, and that's all they really are, onto all kinds of devices and each device is somewhat unique in terms of the output rendering. The gamut of my 4900 printer simply blows the doors off your 4K display. Your 4K display blows the doors off the Epson in terms of the possible dynamic range. Same darn pixels in each case.
Actually I just found a 3D plotting of the NEC PA271W gamut (actually a bit smaller than on this Dell and on the newer NEC PA272W) compared to the 4900 gamut (not sure what paper they used though) and the 4900 gamut definitely doesn't blow the doors off of the UP2414Q gamut! It probably exceeds it a little bit one or two areas, which is very impressive for a printer, but it also falls far short in others and overall the wide gamut LCD gamut looked much bigger to me.
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As for the gamuts, does the 4900 really have that huge of a gamut?? Wow, that would be pretty impressive for it to out do a wide gamut monitor.
Here's a 2D map, useful only to show on the web doesn't give the full picture a 3D map does. Here's a PA272W at full gamut vs. a 4900 using Luster paper.
(http://www.digitaldog.net/files/4900vsNEC.jpg)
One slice of the 3D map, the red overlay is the Epson.
(http://www.digitaldog.net/files/4900vsNEC1.jpg)
The primaries of an emissive display show a larger gamut and one that's very simple in shape as expected. But look at the Epson in terms of gamut in the entire green/blue axis. Much larger!
But I think you're missing my point. The same RGB pixles can be sent to both devices. They ARE different. One isn't better per se, and as you point out, often we don't print our images. I'm not suggesting the Epson is truer, better, but simply different and one can add any output device into the mix and it produces what it produces. If you want to say this 4K display is a huge improvement in seeing your images 'on a display' compared to the last display, I'll buy that easily. To suggest as I think you did, based on the exact written word: You really are NOT seeing your images without something like this! fails to take into consideration it is simply one possibility and that you are always seeing how your images appear when they appear on some output device. It is fairly obvious one ink jet can be better than another just as one display can be better than another. You're not really working with an image, you're working with a big pile of math to define a huge number of solid colored squares. You have to view it somehow. Each device is the reality of that situation. Statements like: You really are NOT seeing your images without something like this, appears to me to be an over-sold and somewhat simplistic statement in an otherwise very useful review.
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I haven't seen a 4k monitor. But I have seen a 4k HDTV. Watching movies on it at the store made me really take notice of the smoothness and quality of the image. The additional resolution really made a superb difference. My next HDTV will be a 4K, probably 65". Can't wait to display my pictures on it with a slide show.
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I haven't seen a 4k monitor. But I have seen a 4k HDTV. Watching movies on it at the store made me really take notice of the smoothness and quality of the image. The additional resolution really made a superb difference. My next HDTV will be a 4K, probably 65". Can't wait to display my pictures on it with a slide show.
Yeah I imagine it must be breathtaking to see them on 4k at giant size. HDTVs make image viewing VERY immersive.
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actually irfanview and adobereader and so on work fine so long as you find their icon and make sure to select the don't scale option, then they run at full resolution even when Windows is set to 200% scaling
after a few weeks i am VERY pleased with this whole UHD on a desktop thing! a few little issues with a few things, but mostly it all works perfectly and man it's just NOT to be missed, so fantastic for photos and anything to do with text (including browsing the web) and even more and more for video
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sRGB emulation modes:
Actually, after some better testing, I think the Dell UP2414Q sRGB mode can be programmed better than I thought. Originally I thought it might not manage to measure out quite as linearly as on the NEC PA241W, but after getting some calibration files for my i1D3 to get it to measure this display well using some software that makes it easy to examine how well sRGB is emulated, it actually seems to do very well. I still need to run the test back on the PA241W again using this probe, but I think the results are going to be pretty close between the two and nothing in it at all really. The Dell actually nails the primary luminance and saturation curves and gamma ultra well too.
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Native gamut modes:
the Dell has a bit larger color gamut than the NEC (the new xx2 series of PA from NEC probably match the Dell though, to be fair, I'm comparing an old NEC to a new Dell here).
The linearity of 3 curve+matrix profiles after argyll profiling seems to measure out to be about the same, a little better for the NEC in some areas and a little worse in others.
Oddly, the 3 curve + matrix profiles without BPC that measure very well on both, visually look a bit better on the Dell. For some reason 3 curve profiles by Argyll on the NEC leave a few bits more off-color tints on grayscale and didn't quite work out for me, not sure why. The difference is less with BPC profiles, but still there. Using the NEC SV II generated 3 curves profile however instead of the Argyll ones and the tints are totally gone and perhaps even just a hint better than Argyll + Dell.
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Differences in calibration software and so on:
One nice thing is that the NEC lets you define any number of calibrated modes and then you can load them into the calibration slot. The Dell only allows you to calibrate straight into calibration slots and it only has two which is really not enough. They do load instantly though (takes a few seconds on the NEC). I think I found a cheat of sorts to go from 2 to 4 if you use DisplayPort though. I didn't verify yet, but a few things hint that using the miniDP vs the DP connector means using two different sets of CAL1 and CAL2. So if you get a DP/miniDP adapter you can probably use that two swap and thus get 4 internally calibrated modes to pick from (just barely enough to sort of get by with) instead of just two.
SV II from NEC runs much faster, apparently the PA screens are pre-calibrated to have the 14 bit 3D LUT so utterly linear that they don't even need to measure to change the tone response or just about anything else other than overall brightness and white balance while the Dell calibration software seems to need to run through a whole ton of patterns to gets things set to a very nice linear calibration so it takes MUCH longer to run a calibration on the Dell.
For whatever reason, the Dell software seems to try to slightly overshoot the x coordindate of the xyY system for the red primary when you make an sRGB emulation, it tends to want to make it 0.004-0.005 higher than you ask it to dial in. So you need to enter like 0.636 instead of 0.640 for other programs to end up measuring 0.640 afterwards. I'm not sure yet but it might be there is a slight saturation/luminance non-linearity with my copy of the Dell at 75% saturation for red, so maybe it is using a slightly high x 100% red to avg out the best value for both of those together? Not sure yet, I will measure more and measure the NEC too.
The NEC can be set to use factory measured primary locations. I'm starting to think those actually might be more accurate than even i1 Pro or corrected i1 Display Pro 3 measurements. So maybe for realt true to life primaries that lets you get a bit closer. I don't think the Dell allows that. Although if you chose to let the probes set the values then you get basically the same out of both (and the Dell makes it easier to do that, since you have little playing around to figure what values to enter in to fake it to give sRGB standards as measured by probe).
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Calibration, BPC, absolute, relative, PS vs other programs:
Earlier I had suggested that two monitors were hardware calibrating gamma 2.2 TRCs to absolute black, but I'm pretty sure I was wrong. They both seem to be calibrating to some modified form of relative black so as to not dump away like 12+ shades of tones or something. If you apply profiles with no BPC to either you will see a ton of black shades drop away as the image programs correct to true gamma 2.2 (which IPS screens can't come remotely close to hitting at the low end since their blacks are way too faded out).
Earlier I had mentioned that images don't look the same using most programs as they do in PS even when all are color-managed. The tone responses seem to be different with most types of monitor profiles. With most other programs tending to show a bit more crushed shadows, more contrast.
The difference seems to arise from the fact that most monitor profiles directly profile the monitor and don't write idealized curves out.
NEC SV II writes out idealized curves for everything it can (it can't if you chose to calibrate to native gamut). If you tell SV II to say calibrate to Gamma 2.2. It simple stores and EXACT mini gamma 2.2 entry into the monitor profile and the profiling is not based on any measured response from the monitor at all. The monitor isn't truly gamma 2.2 since the blacks don't go dark enough and the calibration is done relative to monitor not absolute black. So this basically cooks in a form of BPC (black point compensation) so even programs that don't do much, if any, BPC tend to show things looking closer to Adobe PS which does a ton of BPC. The difference is particularly apparent when viewing images stored as gamma 2.2.
Most other software actually profiles the monitor's tone response and stores whatever it measures into the profile. So the profiles generally tell programs to much darken up the deepest shadows, especially for gamma 2.2 files. If the programs apply BPC they don't darken it up as much since they start the tone curve from monitor black instead of ideal pitch black. Most programs seem to apply relatively little BPC. Adobe PS, however, always applies complete BPC though so you barely get any crushed blacks at the bottom end at all and the files tend to show brighter shadows and a touch less contrast than they do in many other programs.
Not applying a ton of BPC gives a truer sense of just how dark you trying to set your shadows and you won't be shocked so much if you move to OLED one day. OTOH, not being able to see the bottom 8-15 shades or whatnot isn't too pleasant and doesn't let you get a great look at your images. Plus the eye tends to work in a partly relative fashion. And going to extreme DR of OLED you might need to tweak things a bit anyway. So in practicaly reality, in some ways, the forced extreme complete BPC that Adobe uses actually might be the best way to go. For sure for editing, where not being able to see what you are editing wouldn't be so hot at all.
By SV II writing out idealized curves, all programs think the monitor needs no correction so even if they don't do BPC, this effectively forces them too so results in other programs become a bit more similar to PS than with true monitor tone responses being written out. The NEC is super linear so even without measuring it produces darn close to ideal black point relative gamma 2.2 or whatnot so it all works out well.
If you calibrate NEC to native gamut then it has to measure and write a full profile out and then you get bigger differences between PS and many other programs.
If you have a monitor that happens to be quite linear, like say UP2414Q from Dell, you could decide to toss out the Dell profile and create a cooked in idealized BPC profile with it and get the same behavior. Some profiling software can be set to truly cook in a full level of BPC too. Although for some reason I have trouble making curves profiles from argyll even with BPC set to cook in to make other programs act like they are using full-on BPC. I thought long agao using COlorEyes software that asking it to cook in BPC cooked it in a lot more for some reason.
Cooking BPC into argyll profiles makes them measure out somewhat less linearly (although oddly, to the eye, sometimes the gray tones look more neutral, especially with the NEC, not quite sure the mismatch there).
Anyway, whatever. The internal calibrations of both the NEC and Dell are actually pretty similar. Any differences I noted in how software showed images on them was SOLELY due to the type of monitor profiling I had been using (each brand defaulted to a different type).
It would be possible write image viewing software that behaved more like photoshop. I'm having trouble finding such software though. It's odd Adobe hasn't released their own image viewer using the PS engine. I may try to write one (don't expect it next week :D:D:D).
Firefox/Chrome/Irfanview tend to behave pretty similarly when it comes to BPC and tone response mapping. FasttPicViewer under WCS mode tends to be a bit different. FPV under it's native CMS tends to be radically different and makes most images shadows look much darker and gives more contrast and pop to most images than any other software (even in WCS mode it does a little often). FPV under WCS overall looks a bit more like FF/C/I although not quite the same, sometimes less black crush than anything other than PS and yet still often tends toward more contrast and it seems to have a weird bug under some (not most) monitor profiles where it uses some tone much brighter than 0,0,0 for 0,0,0 under WCS though.
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Photoshop bug:
Photoshop actually seems to have some nasty bugs if you set GPU drawing mode to Normal or Advanced (default!). Setting it down to Basic makes the bug go away. Sometimes it will shift tone response slightly or add weird tints to certain ranges of an image. With some monitor profiles it's hard to notice, with some quite easy. It seems to be more noticeable the wider the gamut the image is stored in. So for an image stored as sRGB you might barely notice the main bug at all, but for an AdobeRGB stored image you might notice it a trace to a decent bit and for an image stored as ProphotoRGB you might notice it a decent bit to a lot. Note taht it doesn't matter if the image has few saturated colors, even with a pure gray tone you might notice these issues. All that matters is what gamut the image is stored in.
I would suggest turning it down to Basic. You never know when the bug might be slightly altering how it renders images to the screen and never know that you might be correcting in tone and tint for this bug and not for things in your actual image!
Now you might not notice it much, for some monitor profile types and corrections stored in profiles it will barely show up no matter what, but for others quite a lot (at least given non-sRGB images).
Supposedly there are also some color tint bugs in Normal/Advanced modes were doing certain types of profiling previewing and such.
The bug seems to be in both PS CS6 as well as the most recent CC version and it seems to affect both Windows and Mac versions as well as computers running Nvidia or AMD/ATI or Intel GPUs(which probably means ANY type of GPU at all, i.e. a pure Adobe issue).
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I can confirm that you can go from 2 to 4 internal calibration slots using the miniDP vs DP trick.
It turns out that it gives two calibration slots for DP connection and two slots for miniDP connection, but each is a different pair.
So you can calibrate say miniDP for bright conditions and hook up using DP and then maybe at night switch over to hooking up to DP with an adapter. So you could calibrate bright sRGB and native gamut and dark conditions sRGB and native gamut. Or maybe native gamut and three different printers. Whatever the case.
I'd still much prefer the ability to load in files to get unlimited choices as with NEC, but at least now that I found a way to get to 4 slots, that helps a LOT. 2 slots was kind of a drag.
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I can confirm that the calibration software that comes with it does make sort of odd choices at times when trying to calibrate to specific targets. I find that I sometimes have to give it slightly altered white point and primary xy targets in order for it to measure to a perfect sRGB simulation in say HCFR3. If you do that it makes the sRGB sim measure out just as well as the NEC PA though (even there you have to feed it special primary targets, although not white point, although it's possible the built-in factory measure primary locations are more true, although once you mix and match probe and factory you'll of course never be able to use stuff like HCFR3 to have it measure as if it was perfect, even if perhaps it is moreso).
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For kicks here are plots from calibrating an sRGB with Gamma 2.2 emulation mode on it (suing HCFR 3 with i1D3 with BG LED file):
(http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s6/v138/p262097183-5.jpg)
(http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s12/v178/p359503875-5.jpg)
(http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s12/v183/p42626683-5.jpg)
(http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s6/v135/p415899736-5.jpg)
(http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s7/v156/p62308240-5.jpg)
(http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s6/v135/p113459468-5.jpg)
(http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s7/v163/p219892425-5.jpg)
primary luminance tracking:
(http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s7/v157/p284600089-5.jpg)
primary/secondary saturation and tone shift tracking:
(http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s7/v158/p329271530-5.jpg)
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For kicks here are plots from calibrating an sRGB with Gamma 2.2 emulation mode on it (suing HCFR 3 with i1D3 with BG LED file):
Gotta love those delta-Es :)
Off-topic, but where's the current HCFR version? I used 2.1, but that doesn't support i1Display Pro, and I'm planning to use that to re-calibrate my projector instead of my old Spyder.
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Gotta love those delta-Es :)
Off-topic, but where's the current HCFR version? I used 2.1, but that doesn't support i1Display Pro, and I'm planning to use that to re-calibrate my projector instead of my old Spyder.
I forget where I found it. But somewhere out there is a link to HCFR 3.
Actually found it fast: http://sourceforge.net/projects/hcfr/files/
make sure to install the i1D3 profile files in the right place, it's sort of a weird place, let me think where it was, put hte ".edr" files into AppData/Roaming/Argyll (so yeah you also need to install Argyll first) oh and then you need to use a command line program that comes with Argyll to convert the ".edr" files from i1D3 to ".ccss" files. It took me a while to find out how to get the i1D3 working with it with the proper calibration files for my display types.
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I forget where I found it. But somewhere out there is a link to HCFR 3.
Actually found it fast: http://sourceforge.net/projects/hcfr/files/
make sure to install the i1D3 profile files in the right place, it's sort of a weird place, let me think where it was, put hte ".edr" files into AppData/Roaming/Argyll (so yeah you also need to install Argyll first) oh and then you need to use a command line program that comes with Argyll to convert the ".edr" files from i1D3 to ".ccss" files. It took me a while to find out how to get the i1D3 working with it with the proper calibration files for my display types.
Thanks for the tips, I'll take a look at it!