U3014 + 3007WFP, Titan SLI, Windows ICC profiles?

(Some background: I didn't make a wrong choice re the video cards, as they are what I wanted for gaming.  It's just that I am slowly getting into the world of colour management, and my single PC is temporarily serving both gaming and colour-managed-workflow.  That's why I have both a new U3014 for colour work, and the 3007 left over for gaming - even if that's not an ideal gaming monitor!  At some stage I will either install an additional/better video card for the U3014 as you suggest, or build a second PC with such a card just for colour work.)

Thanks for your reply to my other question; your explanation that the CAL1 profile (for example) has a LUT with input=output suddenly made that part of the mystery much clearer for me.  It makes perfect sense, but I wasn't sure if that was what was actually happening :-)  

Thanks for the tip re the 0-255 unlock.  I'll do some searching for that, although I am using DP on the U3014 so I'll also check whether that issue also applies to DP.

As mentioned in my reply to the other post you replied to, for the colour-managed PC I have disconnected the 3007, set Dell Display Manager to Manual Mode / CAL1 (AdobeRGB profile), and ensured that my CAL1 profile is the "default" (and only) profile in Windows' Colour Management for the U3014.  That is just to make sure that everything is using the AdobeRGB profile I created, at least until I get a better handle on all of this.  In the meantime, I don't mind if non-colour-managed apps will therefore have washed-out colours.

One question: if I start to get a handle on this, and use the Dell Display Manager in Auto mode to automatically swap between say CAL1 (AdobeRGB) and CAL2 (sRGB) as I swap from colour-managed to non-colour-managed apps, do I still need to manually choose the relevant profile in Windows' Colour Management before opening the relevant apps?  For example, if I am in IE/Office/etc with Colour Management was set to CAL2 (sRGB) and Dell Display Manager is using CAL2, before I open Photoshop I should manually select CAL1 (AdobeRGB) in Colour Management before opening Photoshop, and DDM will also chooose CAL1 and everything will be correct?  I wasn't sure if DDM was somehow sorting that out in the background, even though I never saw a change in the selected profile in Windows' Colour Management.

If so, I couldn't find reference to this anywhere; do you know of a manual or site that covers it? I'm grateful for your time here, and hope that these questions and answers may later help some other newcomers to colour management, but it would be good if we can sit down with some documentation relevant to the Dell hardware LUT monitors and try to work through it ourselves.

Again, thanks so much for your detailed reply.

Roger

While working with CAL1/CAL2 and CAL2 working always with non color maneged apps the easy way is to set CAL1.icm as active profile and do not change it. When you want to use color managed apps just switch to CAL1 with DDM without configure control panel color management.
Remember that if you use Photoshop or Firefox (for example) while in CAL2 with this setup colors will be wrong (desaturated).

There is no official documentation of how Dell's LUT3D work (nor Eizo nor NEC, at least not without some kind of NDA to software developers like Basiccolor).
What I've explained abobe about LUT input=output is for GPU LUT (LUT1D in nvidia, amd, intel GPUs), it applies for "usual" monitor calibration. For more deatiled explanations of GPU calibration and profiles (at free cost) look for DispcalGUI/ArgyllCMS documentation or search in DispcalGUI support forum:
http://sourceforge.net/p/dispcalgui/discussion/

A final note, there is nothing wrong with using a nvidia gamer with LUT3D calibration, it does not use GPU LUT calibration. The issues may appear with GPU calibration (the usual one) when calibrating "custom mode" OSD (or calibrating sRGB, AdobeRGB OSD factory presets) for your displays.
If banding corruption appears in U3014 Custom or 3007 after GPU calibration (and I think it will happen with 99% certain) and you DO REALLY NEED to calibrate these OSD modes for let's say... D50 L* gamma as a softproofing example there are alternatives. A cheap professional "computing powerless" GPU very good for color critical work can be bought for 170 euro or less (AMD Firepro v4990, NV Quadro K600). Not much computing power (relyng on CPU computation power) but full 10bit/channel workflow with Windows +  Photoshop and they do have high bitdepth LUT (12bit or more like gammer AMD).

If you do not need gradient acurate GPU calibrations stay with your GTX Titan and forget this issue.

Thanks again!  Your help is much appreciated.  One day my workflow might become sophisticated enough for me to worry about custom modes, I'll come back to refer to this :-)

Is it true to say that since the Windows profiles are input=output for CAL1 and CAL2, it doesn't matter which of those are in use when DDM is swapping between CAL1 and CAL2?

No, it is not correct.

A ICM profile contains a certain OSD display behaviour description (or a printer, or phone). I mean gamut, white point gamma... and such things. This is what a profie is
But It could store additional info like LUT GPU calibrations. DCCS profiles contains a 1=1 LUT in orden to clean previous calibrations stored in GPU (so no GPU calibration is applied)

All color managed applications NEED to read display behavior in order to color manage, for explample to remap RGB values from a sRGB JPG to your CAL1 AdobeRGB gamut in Photoshop. That's the reason to change default profile in Control Panel.

If you set all time CAL1.icm as active all color managed apps will think that you have some kind of nerar AdobeRGB gamut and gamma, and remap colors with this in mind.
But non color maneged apps don not read this. They think that they have a sRGB profile active all times (not really but this is equivalent).

So if you have CAL1.icm active and work with CAL2 OSD (sRGB) with Office you dont mind, Office render all properly. If you change to CAL1 OSD to work with photoshop you dont mind because you already have CAL1 active.
But you must set active CAL2.icm if you wish to work with Photoshop while in CAL2 OSD mode.

In color managed apps active profile gamut and gamma MUST match actual gamut and gamma of your current  OSD mode.

Thanks.  So is this true?

1. with CAL2.icm and CAL2 OSD (profiled as sRGB) active:

1a. non-colour-managed apps will render everything properly using the sRGB gamut

1b. colour-managed apps will render AdobeRGB images mapped down to sRGB using the rendering intent specified in Windows Colour Management / Advanced tab?

2. with CAL1.icm and CAL1 OSD (profiled as AdobeRGB) active:

2a. non-colour-managed apps will show... over-saturated images?

2b. colour-managed apps will show things correctly using AdobeRGB gamut, and

3. with CAL1.icm and CAL2 OSD (profiled as sRGB) active:

3a. I think you're saying that non-colour-managed apps will render properly, even though the CAL1.icm is profiled as AdobeRGB and CAL2 OSD is profiled as sRGB?

3b. don't even think about such combinations for colour-managed apps!

It seems a shame that the DDM can't manage the Windows Colour Management settings as well as the Dell OSD selection.  I'll try not to pester you any more :-)

2b should be
"2b. colour-managed apps will show things correctly", period.

Regarding DDM:

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/peripherals/f/3529/t/19565490.aspx

presure Dell to make this done (I think they do not care... I hope that I'm wrong but only 1/3 requested features in DCCS have been done)