Calibration white point and intensity target for NEC PA271W

[The View]

I'm about to calibrate my NEC PA271W for the first time.

The Spectraview II software recommends a D65 target of 6500K for white point and 140cd/m2 for intensity.

Is D65 a good standard?

140cd/m2 seems to be very bright. It's blinding me. I'd rather have it darker, but what's the point of calibrating a display if one would just change the settings on one's own preference.

What's your take on white point and brightness settings?

[D Fosse]

The target should be one that produces a good match to the final printed result. Your perception is influenced by the ambient light, that's why you have these options.

6500K is what most people use. Some find 5000 better, or anything in between.

140 cd/m2 is almost certainly too bright unless you're outside in the sunlight. The recommended starting point for a "normally lit" environment, whatever that is, is around 110-120. Personally I find that too high and have set mine to 90, but then I like to work in rather dim light.

Some monitors don't perform well at low luminance settings. I had a Dell U2410 that could only reach as low as 120 at minimum brightness (but that had to be calibrated through the video card, no direct communication with the monitor). Now I'm using a pair of Eizo Flexscans that go down to 80 comfortably, and I'm sure the NECs will as well.

[D Fosse]

BTW there's an interesting exercise that shows you how much the environment influences your perception: If you have Lightroom, or Photoshop CS6 with optional dark interface, try to judge an image there and then compare in the traditional light Photoshop interface. Do they seem different? I bet they do.

[tho_mas]

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/why_are_my_prints_too_dark.shtml

[The View]

The target should be one that produces a good match to the final printed result. Your perception is influenced by the ambient light, that's why you have these options.

6500K is what most people use. Some find 5000 better, or anything in between.

140 cd/m2 is almost certainly too bright unless you're outside in the sunlight. The recommended starting point for a "normally lit" environment, whatever that is, is around 110-120. Personally I find that too high and have set mine to 90, but then I like to work in rather dim light.

Some monitors don't perform well at low luminance settings. I had a Dell U2410 that could only reach as low as 120 at minimum brightness (but that had to be calibrated through the video card, no direct communication with the monitor). Now I'm using a pair of Eizo Flexscans that go down to 80 comfortably, and I'm sure the NECs will as well.

I think the PA 271W goes down to 80 without problem.

Room lighting is of course a factor, just like simultaneous contrast in color.

Looks like one has to experiment what brightness is the best. I'll do another calibration tonight and will set the brightness to 100 cd/2.

By the way, those of you who work with the NEC Spectraview software: how many steps did you choose in the calibration menu? 36 or 52?

[The View]

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/why_are_my_prints_too_dark.shtml

Totally reasonable in regards to printing.

But what about the web. Our professional websites are more important to us for getting work than our printed books.

We want the images to look right to prospective clients.

That said, I know that many people in fashion and advertising do not calibrate their displays. So we can't actually plan how they'd see the images.

I remember an interesting chapter about CMYK printing in the classic "Professional Photoshop" where the author adjusted the image for a range of things that can happen on a printing press.

Shouldn't we also edit our web images to the range of things that can happen to our images when viewed on different displays on the web? And edit them again under a different calibration setting for print?

[Tim Lookingbill]

But what about the web. Our professional websites are more important to us for getting work than our printed books.

We want the images to look right to prospective clients.

That said, I know that many people in fashion and advertising do not calibrate their displays. So we can't actually plan how they'd see the images.

Found this interestingly thorough review of the old NEC 2490WUXI model praising its sRGB gamut "Standard" color response compared to how most folks will see skin tones on a non-calibrated wide gamut display viewed on non-color managed browsers/image viewers...

http://nec2490.blogspot.com/

Scroll down to "No Wide Gamut Issues" titled section.

I just can't believe anyone making a living especially in the fashion/advertising industry would be editing/viewing their work on non-calibrated/non-profiled displays especially if they're wide gamut. Not only would they be seeing their work  from wonked out color induced edits on the web but saturation would be turned up to 11 or the reverse of that.

[digitaldog]

But what about the web. Our professional websites are more important to us for getting work than our printed books.

The web is an entire crap shoot filled with untagged documents, browsers that don't have a clue about ICC profiles for displays or images etc. You can get a good match on your system when you have all the proper items set up, but nothing guarantees anyone else viewing that web content will. It's the good old wild west in terms of color management on the web.

[Andrew Makiejewski]

I tried it at 140 for a while and found it to bee still too bright.

Have been using it at 120 for about a year now and it better matches my prints when viewed under the proper lighting conditions.

Andrew

[Tony Jay]

Calibrating NEC monitors:
1. D65 is usually fine for the white point.
2, Luminance is a whole different ballgame. Many (most) beginners are scared to drop the monitor luminance to the appropriate levels. NEC equipment can comfortably handle 80 cd/m2. I use 95 cd/m2 because my working environment is rather dim. Yours may differ but 140 cd/m2 is too bright for most indoor environments. The only way to know what the correct luminance is for your environment is to experiment for yourself and see how the prints come out.
3. As Andrew Rodney has stated there is nothing one can do about images posted on the web. Since neither the applications in which they are viewed nor the viewers monitors are likely colour-managed the only thing one can do is correctly colour-manage the images before posting, and hope.

Tony Jay

[digitaldog]

I tried it at 140 for a while and found it to bee still too bright.

For that print viewing conditions next to the display. On the other hand, with my dimmable GTI booth set at 50%, I HAVE to set the luminance to 150cd/m2 to get a visual match. And while I could lower the booth, according to NEC, a SpectraView is hard pressed to hit a native luminance much below 140-150cd/m2, at least when new.

The only reason people set their old CRT's to 80-90cd/m2 was they were hard pressed to be able to output anything higher than that. So we worked in dim, cave like conditions with low print viewing conditions. That's not necessary with LCD's.

Anyone who suggests a cd/m2 setting without taking the print viewing conditions next to the display in mind is just barfing up numbers out of thin air <g>

[digitaldog]

1. D65 is usually fine for the white point.

It's a good starting point but in no way guarantees a match. D65 was way too cool for my print to screen match. D50 way to warm. I had to do a lot of trial and error testing to end up with a 5750 CCT Kelvin to get a match. It works for me, probably not for others. The correct value is the one that produces a match. That's why display calibration products that do not provide full control over the white point settings (to save a few bucks) isn't a good investment. It's kind of like a lens that only has 4 f-stop and shutter combo's. It can work, but only if you're lucky.

[Tony Jay]

It's a good starting point but in no way guarantees a match. D65 was way too cool for my print to screen match. D50 way to warm. I had to do a lot of trial and error testing to end up with a 5750 CCT Kelvin to get a match. It works for me, probably not for others. The correct value is the one that produces a match. That's why display calibration products that do not provide full control over the white point settings (to save a few bucks) isn't a good investment. It's kind of like a lens that only has 4 f-stop and shutter combo's. It can work, but only if you're lucky.

That's true.
In my case I may have to wait until I have a different working environment to see whether a different white point is required.

Tony Jay

[RachelleK]

Spectraview II allows you to calibrate to different white points and luminosities and select between them from a menu.  They have different standard presets for photo editing, photo proofing, and the web but you can also do custom ones.  I just select from the menu depending on what I am doing.  It takes maybe 15 seconds for the monitor to switch to different setting from the menu.