Confused About Color Management with Hardware Calibrated Monitors

[Ab S]

I am always find posts about color management a bit 'scary', in the sense that I am afraid doing things wrong. So, I do nothing (I am not a professional user).

I have a factory calibrated BenQ PD3200U 4k 32" monitor and Windows notices the monitor and my Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060. These monitor calibration devices used in the factory are (mostly) a factor 10 more expensive than typical home calibration devices. Only disadvantage is that degradation of the monitor is not corrected. But when it looks good to my eyes, it is good for me.

So I leave it like it is. For processing and editing I use DxO Photolab (PL8) Wide Gamut. PL allows to notice when their colors are out of the monitor color space and that is only rarely the case.

I too have a BenQ monitor, older than yours, and I regular generate a new ICC profile using an i1Display Pro and the calibrite PROFILER application (replaces the old X-Rite i1Profiler application). I might agree with your comment "...when it looks good to my eyes, it is good for me.." however my interest in color management is to have a higher degree of color fidelity from my screen through Photoshop to my Canon printer, such that when I spend time and effort preparing an image for printing I am (hopefully) making edits that produce a better (if not best) print. That is, while "looks good enough" may look ok to my eyes, it may not yield a very good print. At least that's my understand.

I am following this thread's discussion with interest as I may eventually replace my BenQ monitor - which does not support hardware calibration - and so I'd like to better understand how the h/w calibration (profiling?) works compared to the X-Rite/calibrite way.

Peter

PS, my BenQ is the SW2700PT

Peter, printing is of course another case. I don't do any printing, but I understand that most processing s/w have a so-called Soft Proofing where the print perception can be adapted to the monitor perception.

 

[PMB]

...

Peter, printing is of course another case. I don't do any printing, but I understand that most processing s/w have a so-called Soft Proofing where the print perception can be adapted to the monitor perception.

Yes, of course. If you are only ever going to output on a single device - in your case your BenQ monitor - then color management should not be a concern. Whatever looks good enough to you should do. Soft proofing might lead you astray if your monitor is badly profiled,

I think of color management as a kind of device independence; each device - the camera, the monitor, the printer has it's own color space with every color represented internally as a number (or numbers). Color management handles all the nitty gritty details of mapping the internal number between the different color space as the image is put through it's workflow such that a particular color looks about the same (as it can) on each device. So, to get that mapping correct, at least for the monitor, there needs to be some calibration (?) profiling. Just my thoughts and opinions.

Peter