# Need Your Help with Selecting a New Monitor Please



## Tinkerbell (Jan 22, 2020)

I am looking to replace my monitor and I need your help, please, in purchasing a new one for using in LR and PS.  What I would like to get is a 24" monitor in the mid to low high-end price range.  I would truly appreciate it and greatful if you could please supply the brand and model number for your suggestions that you are actually using and have success with.  Thanking you in advance and I truly appreciate any suggestions and input you can provice.


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## Victoria Bampton (Jan 22, 2020)

Hi Tinkerbell, welcome to the forum!  

I'd look at NEC and EIZO, both brands do quality monitors, you won't go far wrong there. There's a BenQ one that looks interesting at a lower price point. Does depend on your budget and accuracy requirements though.


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## Tinkerbell (Jan 22, 2020)

Thank you so much for your reply.  I have looked at the BenQ240 but they said if you get a good model and I don't know how to tell or what procedures need to be done to see if it is a good one or not.  Also what particular models would you suggestion for Eizo and NEC?  Thanks again.


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## Paul McFarlane (Jan 22, 2020)

Depends on your budget and just how accurate you need the screen to be. I process photos commercially so color accuracy is essential, thus use the ColorEdge range. But they are very expensive, so unless it's essential to have total accuracy look at their other offerings.


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## Tinkerbell (Jan 22, 2020)

Hi Paul,  I do not process photos commercially but for one of my friends, she does have some of my pictures sent out as birthday cards, etc. for her many clients.  My budget is probably around $500 to $800.  I would like to be able to print out what I am seeing on my screen.  Right now with my monitor (which is a low budget one) after is has been calibrated is not what is always printed out.  They are either too light or dark or over/under saturated and sometimes alright.  This is why I am looking for another monitor.


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## Conrad Chavez (Jan 22, 2020)

Tinkerbell said:


> what particular models would you suggestion for Eizo and NEC?


For NEC, they make displays at all kinds of quality levels, from simple office work (which you don’t want) to high end color. For the best color accuracy, the NEC displays you want are in the SpectraView line. The SpectraView models that have product names starting with PA are closest in quality and capability  to Eizo ColorEdge displays. For BenQ, you want the product names starting with SW. Similarly, Asus has a ProArt line (names starting with PA).


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## Tinkerbell (Jan 22, 2020)

I believe you prefer Eizo over NEC displays for quality.  I don't know if it matters but should I be looking for a monitor that displays both sRGB and RGB or not.  My current monitor is only sRGB and I have read that some people who are having problems with trying to get the colors to match, even after calibration, from screen to print with RGB go back to sRGB.


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## Linwood Ferguson (Jan 22, 2020)

I also use the NEC SpectraView, and like that they have hardware LUTs built in, I think it removes some of the vagaries of those done in the video cards.  At least mine seem quite stable.  I have a LCD2490WUXi that's many years old (certainly superseded) and still going strong, and a probably 4 year old PA271W that might be still current. If you get those get the SpectraView Software and colorimeter.  While the software can use other colorimeters, I found it more accurate (I had two Spyders, that gave wildly different results from each other, at which point I got the SpectraView as a tie breaker).


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## Conrad Chavez (Jan 22, 2020)

Tinkerbell said:


> …should I be looking for a monitor that displays both sRGB and RGB or not.  My current monitor is only sRGB and I have read that some people who are having problems with trying to get the colors to match, even after calibration, from screen to print with RGB go back to sRGB.


The answer to this depends on your comfort level with how color management works: How color spaces and color profiles affect the colors you see, and how comfortable you are resolving color mismatches related to color management. Yes, you might see unexpected color mismatches among different applications on a wide gamut (Adobe RGB or P3) display. It usually happens when some part of the workflow doesn’t fully support color management, like a free photo viewer program or some web browsers. If you have a good understanding of how color management works across various software and hardware, color mismatches on a wide gamut display are no mystery; you’ll know how to figure out where the problem is and how to address it.

If you aren’t yet comfortable with color spaces and color profiles, you’ll be more comfortable working on a display that reproduces the sRGB color gamut. Although sRGB is limited, and might not show you all of the colors in your images or your output device, color consistency among applications will generally be as reliable as you’re used to.

If you intend to improve your understanding of color management (for one thing, it’s a valuable professional skill to have), then I’d suggest getting an accurate pro display that can be switched between wide gamut and sRGB. (My NEC SpectraView supports multiple switchable color spaces.) You can start with the display set to sRGB for now, or when editing for media that are very sRGB-based such as web design. But you’ll be able to switch the display to wide gamut:

When you want to see more colors than sRGB can reproduce
As you learn more about using color management to handle different color spaces
As you learn how to reconcile color-managed applications (like Lightroom) with non-color-managed applications
Keep in mind that while calibrating is essential, it doesn’t solve problems related to some applications being set differently (or incorrectly), or not supporting color management at all. That’s why people still see problems even though the calibrated their wide gamut display. They have to understand color management too.


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## Tinkerbell (Jan 22, 2020)

Ferguson said:


> I also use the NEC SpectraView, and like that they have hardware LUTs built in, I think it removes some of the vagaries of those done in the video cards.  At least mine seem quite stable.  I have a LCD2490WUXi that's many years old (certainly superseded) and still going strong, and a probably 4 year old PA271W that might be still current. If you get those get the SpectraView Software and colorimeter.  While the software can use other colorimeters, I found it more accurate (I had two Spyders, that gave wildly different results from each other, at which point I got the SpectraView as a tie breaker).



I take it then that the SpectraView Software and colorimeter did a good job of calibrating the monitor without any problems.  Should I be looking for a monitor that is only RGB or both sRGB and RGB?


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## Tinkerbell (Jan 22, 2020)

Conrad Chavez said:


> The answer to this depends on your comfort level with how color management works: How color spaces and color profiles affect the colors you see, and how comfortable you are resolving color mismatches related to color management. Yes, you might see unexpected color mismatches among different applications on a wide gamut (Adobe RGB or P3) display. It usually happens when some part of the workflow doesn’t fully support color management, like a free photo viewer program or some web browsers. If you have a good understanding of how color management works across various software and hardware, color mismatches on a wide gamut display are no mystery; you’ll know how to figure out where the problem is and how to address it.
> 
> If you aren’t yet comfortable with color spaces and color profiles, you’ll be more comfortable working on a display that reproduces the sRGB color gamut. Although sRGB is limited, and might not show you all of the colors in your images or your output device, color consistency among applications will generally be as reliable as you’re used to.
> 
> ...



Thank you so much for your input on this matter which is greatly appreciated.  I am leaning more toward getting a sRGB and RGB monitor so I can see exactly how the RGB affects the images since I am used to sRGB only.  Yes, I would like to improve my understanding of color management especially where you indicate how color spaces and color profiles affect the colors that you see.   Might you be able to explain this a little more for me please, if you have time, for I am still in the learning process and always looking forward to understanding and learning more.   I do understand that both LR and PS should be set to the same color space and camera set to RGB but not sure about the color profiles.  Where and how can I learn more about color management as you indicated above so when problem(s) do come up I can be more comfortable resolving them?  Thanking you again for all of your help!!


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## Linwood Ferguson (Jan 23, 2020)

Tinkerbell said:


> I take it then that the SpectraView Software and colorimeter did a good job of calibrating the monitor without any problems.  Should I be looking for a monitor that is only RGB or both sRGB and RGB?


I have one of each actually.  For the NEC that does wide gamut, you can set it to do sRGB only, and I found that works better.  For reasons still a bit unclear, having one wide and one not yielded incorrect colors on the wide gamut monitor even on color managed applications.

If price is not significantly different, you might consider doing that to preserve your options.  But if your work is primarily viewed on the web (where 99.9% of the viewing public, maybe a few more 9's, can only see approximately sRGB) an sRGB monitor will be just fine.


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## Tinkerbell (Jan 23, 2020)

Ferguson said:


> I have one of each actually.  For the NEC that does wide gamut, you can set it to do sRGB only, and I found that works better.  For reasons still a bit unclear, having one wide and one not yielded incorrect colors on the wide gamut monitor even on color managed applications.
> 
> If price is not significantly different, you might consider doing that to preserve your options.  But if your work is primarily viewed on the web (where 99.9% of the viewing public, maybe a few more 9's, can only see approximately sRGB) an sRGB monitor will be just fine.



Thank you so much for your reply and input.  If I get the monitor that is sRGB and RGB model (NEC PA243W), can each of these two color spaces be calibrated independently for this monitor?  Do you know if this is a good monitor?


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## Linwood Ferguson (Jan 23, 2020)

Tinkerbell said:


> Thank you so much for your reply and input.  If I get the monitor that is sRGB and RGB model (NEC PA243W), can each of these two color spaces be calibrated independently for this monitor?  Do you know if this is a good monitor?


It looks like the 24" version of the 27" I have and the answer is yes.  Let me be more specific -- you should be able to calibrate it to EITHER sRGB -OR- Adobe RGB (or DCI or a couple others).  It is only one of those things at a time of course.


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## Tinkerbell (Jan 23, 2020)

Ferguson said:


> It looks like the 24" version of the 27" I have and the answer is yes.  Let me be more specific -- you should be able to calibrate it to EITHER sRGB -OR- Adobe RGB (or DCI or a couple others).  It is only one of those things at a time of course.



If I understand you correctly, I cannot calibrate the monitor for both sRGB and also calibrate the color space for RGB.  If calibrated for sRGB then want to use the RGB then I will have to recalibrate the monitor to use that color space?  Both of these color spaces cannot be calibrated on the monitor so you can flip between the two of them.  Thanks again for your input and you have been very helpful.  I take it then that you like your 27" monitor.


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## Linwood Ferguson (Jan 23, 2020)

Tinkerbell said:


> If I understand you correctly, I cannot calibrate the monitor for both sRGB and also calibrate the color space for RGB.  If calibrated for sRGB then want to use the RGB then I will have to recalibrate the monitor to use that color space?  Both of these color spaces cannot be calibrated on the monitor so you can flip between the two of them.  Thanks again for your input and you have been very helpful.  I take it then that you like your 27" monitor.


Your question I think betrays a disconnect.

An image is in a color space.  The monitor can be set to show colors over a given gamut.  When it gets calibrated, it gets a profile associated with it that describes it (in a sense it says "to make this monitor show red, send it this value" for representative colors).  

So if I have an image that is AdobeRGB, and I display it in Firefox (which is color managed) it takes the pixel values and does math to display them on the monitor according to the profile.  It will do the same if it was ProPhoto instead.  And it does the same if the image is sRGB.  So if you take the same image, save it as three different files with different color spaces, and display all three at once -- they should look ALMOST the same. 

Now as an aside: If you display them in an application which is NOT color managed, you get three very different displays.  Which one is right is the one that most nearly matches the monitor.  But most applications are color managed so this is mostly moot.

Another aside: When I convert that image to sRGB, I may have actually lost information -- colors outside the gamut are translated to be within the sRGB gamut.  If I convert then from sRGB to AdobeRGB I do not get the same image back.

The "ALMOST the same" is relevant.  There are some colors in AdobeRGB or ProPhoto that simply cannot be represented in sRGB.  So if your image has some of those colors, and your monitor is in wide mode, then the sRGB image will have some colors that are a bit different, maybe a bit too dull or dark or just the wrong huge.  But it's rather odd colors, not the common ones.  Many images will require extremely careful viewing to see any differences, and sometimes you will not seen any at all.

But if your monitor is in narrow mode (i.e. limiting itself artificially to the sRGB color space), the process of displaying all three on sRGB will largely make them identical, because it will have given a profile that indicates it is limited in what colors it can show, and the color management software will translate the out-of-gamut colors in two of the three images into the closest it can achieve.

Just to make this more complicated you have to consider your audience.  Most of the web viewers can only see sRGB size gamuts (though more are getting wide monitors all the time).  Many print labs will only accept sRGB (whether or not their printers might have wider gamuts, unfortunately).  One can happily stay in sRGB for years and never really miss wide gamut.  But there is something there you are missing.  Not much, but something.


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## Johan Elzenga (Jan 23, 2020)

Tinkerbell said:


> If I understand you correctly, I cannot calibrate the monitor for both sRGB and also calibrate the color space for RGB. If calibrated for sRGB then want to use the RGB then I will have to recalibrate the monitor to use that color space? Both of these color spaces cannot be calibrated on the monitor so you can flip between the two of them.


First of all, RGB is not a color *space*. sRGB is a color space, AdobeRGB is a color space, ProPhotoRGB is a color space. These are all variants of the RGB color *model*. Some other color models are CMYK and Lab. When you talk about 'RGB', you apparently mean 'AdobeRGB'.

If you calibrate your monitor and create a profile, you will get a monitor profile that describes the color space the monitor is in. However, some monitors can be set to a certain color space (in hardware). So you can switch it between its native space, sRGB and AdobeRGB. That is probably what you are referring to. If you set your monitor to sRGB, then you must use sRGB as your monitor color profile. Same as when you switch your monitor to AdobeRGB; you must then also switch your monitor color profile to AdobeRGB. It would be even better to create your own 'Monitor sRGB' and 'Monitor AdobeRGB' profiles, because there could still be a small difference between the colors that the monitor produces when set to sRGB and the standard sRGB color space.


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## Tinkerbell (Jan 23, 2020)

Johan Elzenga said:


> First of all, RGB is not a color *space*. sRGB is a color space, AdobeRGB is a color space, ProPhotoRGB is a color space. These are all variants of the RGB color *model*. Some other color models are CMYK and Lab. When you talk about 'RGB', you apparently mean 'AdobeRGB'.
> 
> If you calibrate your monitor and create a profile, you will get a monitor profile that describes the color space the monitor is in. However, some monitors can be set to a certain color space (in hardware). So you can switch it between its native space, sRGB and AdobeRGB. That is probably what you are referring to. If you set your monitor to sRGB, then you must use sRGB as your monitor color profile. Same as when you switch your monitor to AdobeRGB; you must then also switch your monitor color profile to AdobeRGB. It would be even better to create your own 'Monitor sRGB' and 'Monitor AdobeRGB' profiles, because there could still be a small difference between the colors that the monitor produces when set to sRGB and the standard sRGB color space.



Thank you so much Linwood and Johan for such an indepth explanation, which is greatly appreciated, in trying to further my knowledge on this issue.  As mentioned before, my current monitor is only a sRGB and when I would calibrate it I would set it to Native and let the ColorMunki Display do its job.  Now that I am looking at getting a better monitor which displays both sRGB and RGB this is where I am unsure how to accomplish this.  Sorry for my lack of knowledge on this but if you could be patient with me, I would really appreciate it.  I am willing and very eager to learn more so what I see on my monitor is what is going to be printed out, which currently I am not getting.  

I have some questions if you could explain a little more for me please:

1.  I don't know if I am asking this question correctly or not but when calibrating a monitor that can show both sRGB  and AdobeRGB is it set to Native mode which then calibrates the monitor and creates the profile?  Then if I put the monitor color space to sRGB, this is now calibrated and if I switch the monitor over to Adobe RGB this is now also calibrated?  I am looking at purchasing the NEC PA243W.

2.  (It would be even better to create your own 'Monitor sRGB' and 'Monitor AdobeRGB' profiles, because there could still be a small difference between the colors that the monitor produces when set to sRGB and the standard sRGB color space.)  
*(Q *How would I go about creating my own 'Monitor sRGB' and 'Monitor AdobeRGB' profiles?  Not sure how to do this?

3.  (So if I have an image that is AdobeRGB, and I display it in Firefox (which is color managed) it takes the pixel values and does math to display them on the monitor according to the profile.  It will do the same if it was ProPhoto instead.  And it does the same if the image is sRGB.  So if you take the same image, save it as three different files with different color spaces, and display all three at once -- they should look ALMOST the same. )  
(*Q*  If I understand this correctly, I have an image edited in AdobeRGB and save it as an Adobe RGB image and do the same procedure for sRGB, these will look the same.  Or, is it that both of these must be saved as sRGB to look the same?

Thanking you again for all of your help


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## Linwood Ferguson (Jan 23, 2020)

We are somewhat talking past each other.

For understanding, I think it is best to stop thinking of the monitor as being an sRGB or AdobeRGB monitor.   Calibrating the monitor produces a profile for the monitor, and that profile is a translator.  It converts the pixel values of an image into the display's pixel values.  Part of that conversion is to translate the color space of the image; part of that conversion is to accommodate the vagaries of the monitor itself.

That conversion of the color space through the profile is why, simultaneously, an image in sRGB color space and an image in ProPhotoRGB color space will both look right on the monitor. 

The additional adjustment the profile provides related to the specific monitor is why you can calibrate two monitors (which get two different profiles) and have the same image look the same on both.  

One way to think of this is like language.   Let's say photos are in English, French or Spanish.   Monitors on the other hand speak Latin or Greek.  Worse, each monitor speaks a slightly different dialect of Latin or Greek.

The profile is a translation.  It let's the English photo display on the Greek monitor.  You can get a generic cheap profile (think a tourist pamphlet)  and get a decent translation; this is what you might get from Windows or Mac out of the box.  Or you can hire a scholar fluent in the right dialect of Greek (this is a calibrated profile) and get even better translation. 

Pushing a metaphor too far is always iffy but lets' try: A wide gamut monitor is (modern day) greek.  A narrow gamut monitor is classic Latin.  Most aspects of your photo -- most aspect of life -- can translate just fine into Latin.  But there are going to be some concepts, like quantum mechanics or virtual reality, that really have no words in Classic latin.  So if your "photo" involves a street scene, it gets rendered perfectly on your Latin monitor, but if it involves some modern concept that never really existed in ancient Rome, then your photo is missing something on the Latin monitor, but might look just fine on your Greek monitor that has all the right words.

Enough with the metaphors... my real point is while there is truth in it, it is better to think of a monitor as wide or narrow than as sRGB or AdobeRGB.  In narrow mode with a suitable profile, it has a limited vocabulary which is just fine for most colors, but a few will not show up quite right, they will be shown in a color close to right, but not quite right.  When the same monitor is in wide mode with a suitable profile, its color vocabulary will be more broad, and all the colors can be see properly.

Now holding that thought let's talk color space.... 

When you edit, it is always best to keep the ability to represent all the colors and shades originally captured.  This means you want a wide bit depth (normally 16 vs. 8) and you want a wide color space (AdobeRGB, ProPhotoRGB are probably the two most common).  This is less about viewing it than it is about preserving your options.   Editing is almost literally a process whereby you stretch and compress parts of images -- which means you are scaling the color values.   The more values (bit depth) and further into the spectrum you have available, the less likely these editing steps will lose important details. 

Generally speaking you only want to convert the color space to another if your target requires it.  It is NOT required to display on a monitor, the monitor's profile will take care of that regardless of whether the monitor is wide or narrow.

Now if your target is, say, a web site, you may want to convert the OUTPUT image to sRGB, because there are still a lot of users on the web who do not have color managed browsers.   Probably no longer a majority, but some.  From Lightroom you do not do that conversion inside lightroom while editing, it occurs on export or publish -- it does not affect the original image.  in Photoshop it is possible to do it before you save an image, but it is better to do the same -- keep the photoshop "original" in a wide space, and export for a specific purpose.

Bear in mind that by default LR reading a raw image will manage it internally in a wide gamut regardless of what you do.

As a matter of recommendation:

1) If you plan to have one narrow and one wide monitor, and use both at the same time for editing, I suggest you set the wide monitor to narrow mode, and I think you will have less issues managing your color and editing, 

2) If all of your monitors (or your only) are wide, set it for wide, calibrate it, and do not think about the color space until you need to export or publish, then pick the color space based on that target, and embed the profile (there's an option for that on most exports). 

Other than as a learning experiment, changing profiles back and forth will be an exercise in frustration (but yes, Spectraview lets you do that on the fly)


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## Johan Elzenga (Jan 23, 2020)

Tinkerbell said:


> 1. I don't know if I am asking this question correctly or not but when calibrating a monitor that can show both sRGB and AdobeRGB is it set to Native mode which then calibrates the monitor and creates the profile? Then if I put the monitor color space to sRGB, this is now calibrated and if I switch the monitor over to Adobe RGB this is now also calibrated? I am looking at purchasing the NEC PA243W.


Yes, calibrated is calibrated. You do not have to do this separately for each color space the monitor can be set to. But you do have to switch your monitor profile when you switch the monitor to another color space.



Tinkerbell said:


> 2. (It would be even better to create your own 'Monitor sRGB' and 'Monitor AdobeRGB' profiles, because there could still be a small difference between the colors that the monitor produces when set to sRGB and the standard sRGB color space.)
> *(Q*How would I go about creating my own 'Monitor sRGB' and 'Monitor AdobeRGB' profiles? Not sure how to do this?


You would switch the monitor to sRGB, and then use a Spider or ColorMunki to create a color profile. Then you switch to AdobeRGB and create another profile.

Mind you, this is only relevant if you intend to switch the hardware settings of the monitor to different color spaces. You don't have to do that however. You can use the monitor all the time in its native color space, with a profile created for this native color space.


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## Linwood Ferguson (Jan 23, 2020)

Tinkerbell said:


> (*Q*  If I understand this correctly, I have an image edited in AdobeRGB and save it as an Adobe RGB image and do the same procedure for sRGB, these will look the same.  Or, is it that both of these must be saved as sRGB to look the same?



Let me try to answer this aspect explicitly though I hope it was implicit above.  The answer is that it depends on the monitor, and it depends on how precisely you define "the same".

Scenario: You have an image that started as raw, and you export it as sRGB, export it again as AdobeRGB.

Now you display both images on a narrow monitor -- they should look the same, almost identically the same.  Note 1 below. 

Now display both images on a wide monitor -- they will look nearly the same, but ***IF*** the original image had more extreme colors, outside the sRGB gamut, in the sRGB version these will have been replaced with a similar color almost, but not quite the same.  

But let's consider the image -- maybe it's just a portrait.  Skin tones, hair color and the like are well within the sRGB gamut. In such a case, the images all look the same on wide or narrow gamut monitors, and whether converted to sRGB or AdobeRGB.

Note 1: The conversion of out of gamut colors to a more narrow gamut is not always done the same, so let's say you had a really deep purple not in the sRGB color space.  If you export from LR to sRGB, LR will produce a purple within the sRGB Gamut.  If instead you display on a narrow monitor (near the sRGB color space) then the profile and monitor and drive cooperate to do the same conversion, but may not do it precisely the same way.  To the eye it's likely indistinguishable, but it may not be exactly the same result.


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## Johan Elzenga (Jan 23, 2020)

Perhaps we should add for clarity that 'calibration' is not the same as 'profiling'. Many people use the word for both calibrating and profiling, but that is not correct. Calibration is 'setting the monitor right'. Profiling means creating a color profile for your monitor. If you set the monitor to its native color space and only use it like that, then you only need one profile and that is made at the same time, that is why people often use the word calibration for both steps. But if you switch the hardware settings of the monitor, then you need a profile for each setting. I would recommend not to do this and simply use your monitor in its native color space only.


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## Linwood Ferguson (Jan 23, 2020)

Yeah, and Johan's comments get more muddy with the NEC's.  On many monitors you first go through a process of manually adjusting the monitor to specific settings, then the software fine tunes it in software.  On the NEC's the SpectraView software directly controls the monitor as well as the profile creation, and changing one profile for another.  So if you use SpectraView (I strongly advise it for the NEC's) the profile and calibration all happen more or less together.  Worse (or better) you can create a pile of different profiles/calibrations and switch them around.  Not terribly useful in my mind, though as an example if two different people used it and wanted different calibrations that might be handy.

Just to make all this more confusing; it sounds like "calibration" makes the monitor "right".  Kind of like calibrating a thermostat make it actually be 75 degrees when it says 75 degrees.  As though there was some objective, scientific "right".  Instead you will find there are a bunch of different approaches, e.g. how much contrast you want, what color temperature to use as a reference.  Two different people can calibrate the same monitor to Native and end up with vastly different looking results, both "calibrated". 

So if you feel confused, it just means you are paying attention.


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## Tinkerbell (Jan 24, 2020)

I want to thank the both of you so much again for all of your wonderful information.  I have read and reread this many times now and I am going to take a couple of days to digest all of this.  I am still looking over the internet for videos/info on how to calibrate the NEC PS243W with no luck so far.  If I may in a couple of days still have a question, hopeful you will be able to reply back.  Thanking the both of so much again on trying to education me which is greatly appreciated.  Sure wish I was as knowledgeable as the both of you.


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## Replytoken (Jan 24, 2020)

You need to make sure that you have, or purchase, a calibration "puck" that is compatible with Spectraview software.  IIRC, NEC was mostly working with DataColor and their their Spyder line.  I do not know if ColorMunki is compatible.  If you do go with NEC and Spectraview (and a compatible puck), it is very easy to do the necessary adjustments.

--Ken


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