I thought of creating this second part of a question and answer template, I believe it would be easier for everyone. So lets move on with questions and answers!
Are all TN panels lousy? And why?Not all TN panels are lousy, color wise TN has made great steps the last few years and there are quite a lot TN panels out there that perform really well color wise. The problem with TN panels is mostly the viewing angle. The technology used inside them does not allow multiple viewing angles (compared to PVA panels for example), this means that there is significant color and contrast shift when viewing from a different angle. Additionally 6bit technology is inferior compared to 8bit panel. Note though that there are 8bit TN panels available on the market!
If my monitor gamut is smaller than sRGB what can I do?Well the first thing is hardware calibrate your monitor, so that you make sure there are no strong casts that affect your color managed workflow. After calibrating you can still work on it, but your color critical work will be compromised by the monitor inferior quality. This is mostly for laptop displays, since TN panels found on LCD screens usually match the Srgb color space. But yet again they need a good hardware calibration for them to be able to closely match the correct colors. Most LCD panels are way off out of the box with only a very small percentage of them being close to good color reproduction.
How can I evaluate a monitor?Well if you are planning on buying a monitor you should be searching for gamut, and calibration validation. There are plenty of sites offering such information. Generally most monitor oriented review sites (avoid the plain all hardware sites). A good review should be able to provide a gamut plot of the color space of the monitor and additionally some validation reports before and after the calibration.
Validation reports represent the color accuracy before and after calibration and its measured in deltaE. There is no need to get in space science, just remember that deltaE should be under 1 for excellent color rendering, around 2 for good color rendering and if it matches or is greater than 3 then things are quite different on your monitor.
Most LCD panels after calibration can reach around 1.8 deltaE which means that color reproduction is very good, PVA panels (and some TN panels as well!) can reach around 0.6 ~ 0.8 which means they have excellent color reproduction!
You can evaluate your monitor calibration if you download a evaluation of basiCColor software, it has a evaluation section where you monitor is metered and evaluated.
Evaluation is not total, and its performed for every single color, so you can have a pretty much detailed information of the results of each color among midpoints, grays, blacks and whites!
Can you recommend any sites?There are a few:
[link][link]Face to face offers you direct comparison with plenty of details! It provides also gamut plots and monitor evaluation results before and after calibration.
So you mean I have to spend a lot to get colors nicely rendered?
No! I believe you dont, most people upload their final work in sRGB color space, even TN panels can quite nicely achieve this. Viewing angles as mentioned before are crucial to the correct color accuracy but still it doesnt mean that if you cant spend 2000 euros on a good monitor that you are doomed.
On the other hand if you are a color freak, then a 2000 euro monitor is the only way.
Wide gamut monitors, what are they?Wide gamut monitors are the latest trend of displays. They are called so because they do actually cover a greater gamut color space than sRGB. This allows you to work with colors even better since you are not restricted to a small color space. But it has its own problems, a wide gamut display means that you are able to reproduce more colors than an average monitor can, this leads to loss of color reproduction when transforming for a color space or a monitor that does not support it. This is also the reason that many times you can see oversaturated or hue shift colors in final images of people working with such monitors.
If I hardware calibrate does it mean that what I see is what I get?No! Calibration is the process of correcting your monitors colors, and then during development of a picture you are just sure that the blue you are seeing on screen is blue. What you see is what you get will happen only when you soft proof for the output device.
Soft proof is achieved through your image editor and with the use of the correct ICC profiles.
Why this happens? It happens because every device is different and covers a different color space, say if your monitor can handle 16 colors and your printer only 12 then your printer will print 12! You need to soft proof for your printer and transform the image specifically for that device if you want to be precise!
What about the Internet?This is the troublesome part of color management. The internet is a beast full of users with different O/S, different monitors, different capabilities and finally different browsers.
The standards mention that untagged images should be rendered as sRGB without any color management. But this is not the case for the Apple users; Apple renders untagged images using the monitor color profile, on most monitors we are talking about a color space close to the Srgb gamut, but not the case with laptop displays (even Macbook pro owners) or wide gamut displays.
On the other hand windows users do actually enjoy this feature; untagged images are rendered as sRGB without any color management.
So here the questions arise, how should you treat images? Well the first and most obvious is that you need to develop them for the sRGB color space, since this is the standard of non color managed systems. Secondly you should consider your target audience, does it use color management? What kind of O/S are they working on, and mostly which browsers do they use? If IE is the answer with windows then you only need to consider color management inside the sRGB color space and what you see on your monitor when you soft proof for windows RGB.
The best way is to work on the working color space (proPhoto or AdobeRGB) make your adjustments and then convert to the sRGB color space, finally save for the web, I believe by adding the ICC profile (there should be an option inside your image editor) things are more clear for color managed applications (since we have differenced between Apple and Windows users).
Applying the color space tag on the image instructs the browser to render the specific color space with your monitor profile and so everyone is happy! Not assigning a tag in your image is a total different beast, windows will translate to sRGB NON color managed, but Apple will translate this to your monitor profile. In the case of LCD screens it will be close to sRGB hence no much difference! But in the case of laptop users, we speak of a total different image!
I am little lost with all the previous things, color spaces, monitor gamuts, deltaE?Simple words, your monitor has a predefined color space, it means that its able to reproduce a certain amount of colors! This differs from monitor to monitor, some monitors are very limited in color reproduction (Laptops) and some are very wide (wide gamut), the gamut of the monitor is always predefined when the monitor is manufactured.
Hardware calibration is the process of metering the colors the screen reproduces and discovering flaws, so you may be viewing a blue color but due to casts (which are introduced in a combination of monitor luminance, room lightning, and your video cards signals) you may be looking to a slight different version of colors.
What is actually happening and you need monitor calibration? You need it because you have based your workflow on what you see on the screen, if your screen is on the cool side (bluer cast) you will tend to develop over-warmed pictures! This is strongly found on portrait photographs, for example I saw all my portrait pictures look yellowish! Why? Because before calibration I believed the pictures looked cool with colors and I tended to add more yellow in the color palette, off course I could not actually see this on my monitor because I was presented with a well rendered image on my un-calibrated monitor, after viewing them under a calibrated monitor I was able to distinguish this flow!
Another example has to do with your monitors luminance level, what you believe is a bright image it might actually be a normal image or even worse it might be a under-exposed image, you develop and you are pleased only to find out later on a different monitor that your image looks totally different from what you where working on!
Some other monitors tend on the warm side, so you will be producing more cool pictures than you imagine. This is all the hardware calibration process! Making your screen respond correctly with colors, and fixing any possible casts there are there.
Gamut is just the area of color space a specific device or predefined color space can reproduce.
deltaE is the measurement and evaluation of colors and luminance, it provides information if your monitor is reproducing correctly the colors:
DeltaE > 3 -> What you see on your monitor is far away from the real color.
2 < DeltaE < 3 -> Color is not the closest match, but still you can work on it, it will need a very experienced viewer to detect color anomalies in your picture.
DeltaE < 2 Good color reproduction, monitor color is nearly spot on to the true color of the image!
DeltaeE < 1 excellent color reproduction! Your monitor is achieving a close to perfect color, this means that colors you see on the image are actually colors you expect to see on a different calibrated device!
Now some recent favorites as well:
