Dell U2410

I just received my Dell U2410. It is amazing monitor and the colors look great. How many of you still calibrate the monitor?

Most people see over-bright and over-saturated colors and say "that looks great", even though its not accurate. I would calibrate any monitor.

I've never calibrated my monitor, and I just received a Dell UltraSharp U2412M a few days ago.

When I asked others around here about the Samsung 940BX I just replaced it with,
more than a full year ago,
I was pretty well assured that I didn't need to make any calibrations as it applied
to the pictures of mine they were viewing. I was assured that colors and everything
else were just fine.

After putting the UltraSharp U2412M into service a few days ago, I immediately
realized the reviews were correct: Brightness was insanely high, and the blue cast
was stupidly jacked-up, right out of the box.
A few brief minutes of fiddling with the controls,
and I've got a damn fine monitor, for less than what I paid for the Samsung
a few years back.

Read some reviews and adjustment guides about your new monitor, adjust it
accordingly, and you can then dismiss mike_d's knee-jerk elitist comments,
most likely.

mike_d wrote in post #14966293

Uh-huh.

SkedAddled wrote in post #14966304
Uh-huh.

So I'm an elitist for saying that monitors should be calibrated for color accuracy?

OK.

If you really care about color and tones you need to calibrate any monitor.

mike_d wrote in post #14964237
Most people see over-bright and over-saturated colors and say "that looks great", even though its not accurate. I would calibrate any monitor.

mike_d wrote in post #14966311
So I'm an elitist for saying that monitors should be calibrated for color accuracy?

OK.

Nope.
You're an elitist for suggesting that no monitor could ever be accurate without calibration.

Plenty of monitors have pro color calibration performed at the factory, but none of them are anywhere near the price of a Dell 2410.
It's a good monitor.

I prefer U2412 for my office workers, bought quite a few in fact.
It's good enough, and better value, than the 2410.

I personally still prefer using my HP zr2740, calibrated, of course.

SkedAddled wrote in post #14966336
Nope.
You're an elitist for suggesting that no monitor could ever be accurate without calibration.

And how would you know it were accurate without calibrating it? Even a factory-calibrated monitor isn't going to stay calibrated forever.

mike_d wrote in post #14966503
And how would you know it were accurate without calibrating it? Even a factory-calibrated monitor isn't going to stay calibrated forever.

If you don't print your photo's you don't need to calibrate your monitor. They look off color on other monitors but maybe that's not important to him.
I print my pictures and want them to be as I see them on my monitor. So I calibrate my monitor every 14 day's.

Even if you don't print them, what about the colors other people see when sharing photos online, etc? What if your brightness was set too high without realizing it and your photos are losing detail when viewed by others? What if your colors are shifted? There's no way to know.

I don't think there's anything wrong with saying that some monitors have reasonably accurate color without calibrating, but it's a far reach to claim that your monitor doesn't need calibration at all. And it's a little bizarre to think that each monitor off the assembly line is similar enough that you can read an adjustment guide online and get good results by copying someone else's settings.

I can see how many can be satisfied with just factory calibration settings or simply adjusting the monitor by eye. Not everyone has the same demands. Yet at the same time, there's no way to have correctly calibrated monitor without actually using a calibrator. Even very high end monitors need to be custom calibrated to be accurate and then re-calibrated periodically. Spending even $100 for a cheap HW calibrator can make a big difference. Regarding U2410, I would be especially concerned about its factory sRGB emulation - I would certainly recommend a HW calibrator that can handle wide gamut monitors - e.g. the excellent I1 Display Pro. I believe the regular Spyder calibrators have problems with wide gamut monitors.

To calibrate or not to calibrate – obviously your choice. I definitely recalibrate periodically as I want consistency in all my images be it for: monitor viewing, communicating via email or internet, or printing from my own printers or outsourced subcontracted printer organizations (all of which I have found has slightly different results without calibration).
CONSISTENCY– the mark of a professional in any occupation or activity, including photography.


Mary

(P.S. The DELL U2410 is a great monitor)

hihohito wrote in post #14966645
If you don't print your photo's you don't need to calibrate your monitor. They look off color on other monitors but maybe that's not important to him.
I print my pictures and want them to be as I see them on my monitor. So I calibrate my monitor every 14 day's.

I don't happen to agree with this. Yes, it's true that a very small minority of the people in the world have calibrated their monitors and probably a smaller group have a monitor that even when calibrated will do a decent job of displaying a meticulously prepared image.

That being said, whether you print or not, or if you ever want to print an image or not, using an uncalibrated monitor basically leaves the final result of your image as an unknown quantity. Calibrating and working with the image on a calibrated system means that, all else failing, you've gotten your image 'right' in the way you want it right in as close to an absolute sense as possible.

If you don't calibrate now, and you buy another monitor in the future and don't calibrate it, you can't expect to see anything remotely similar.