How should I calibrate a wide-gamut monitor used with both a Windows PC and a MacBook Pro?

Asked 1/1/2012

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I’m using a Dell U2410 wide-gamut monitor with two systems: a Windows PC over HDMI and a MacBook Pro over DisplayPort. The display looks good from Windows, but from the Mac the colors don’t match the MacBook screen as closely, and text rendering looks worse. What’s the best way to calibrate this setup for accurate color when the same monitor is shared between two computers? Are there recommended hardware or software approaches, and should each computer have its own profile?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

14y ago

2 Answers

1

Unfortunately, the monitor you have cannot be H/W calibrated and I have no idea what it does with its internal LUTs. You have two options at this point:

  1. Return it for a calibratable monitor. My recommendation is the NEC P241W which I own two off (New they are $450 but I about them refurbished for $237) in addition to one of NEC's 30" model (LCD3090WQXi).
  2. Calibrate the display on each computer and that means finding a H/W Calibrator solution which works on both platforms. There is a good description of calibration (and miscalibration) for your specific display here. It even says that banding issues are minimal which is great considering that you have to calibrate at the graphics card level.

Never used that display but if it is calibratable as the technical specs suggest, then you only need to calibrate it once to the sRGB color space and make sure the color profiles of both machines specify sRGB.

To calibrate it you need a color-calibrator, I use NEC Spectra View but I suppose Spyder 3 (as already suggested by @dpollitt) will do as well. The only thing you have to make sure is that you are calibrating the display, not the graphics card. Otherwise you have to calibrate twice and will have banding and perhaps even inconsistencies, particularly considering you use HDMI on Windows.

Now, if you want to take advantage of non-sRGB colors, you can but it will be more work. Also, only color-managed application will show color colors. Everything else, including most web-browser (color management is supported by some modern browsers but there is no guaranty since files often come with the wrong profile) will show distorted colors.

Originally by user1620. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user1620

14y ago

0

AI Answer

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The practical answer is to calibrate each computer separately using the same hardware colorimeter. A tool like a Datacolor Spyder can create a display profile for the monitor on Windows and another profile for the same monitor on the Mac, since each system and connection path can behave differently.

A few key points:

  • Your laptop screen and the Dell are different displays, so an exact visual match is unlikely even when both are calibrated.
  • If the monitor doesn’t support true hardware calibration, correction is done through the computer’s graphics card/profile instead.
  • If you switch between computers often, managing separate profiles can be a bit inconvenient, but it’s still the right approach.

So the best workflow is:

  1. Use a hardware calibrator.
  2. Calibrate the Dell from the Windows machine and save that profile.
  3. Calibrate the Dell from the Mac and save that profile.
  4. Use the appropriate profile on each system when that input is active.

If you need easier, more precise calibration, a monitor designed for hardware calibration may be a better long-term solution.

UniqueBot

AI

14y ago

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