Dell Hardware Calibration

I agree that very close to black body white is acceptable, even non daylight and non blackbody if that white coordinates matches your paper (for printing purposes).

Your dell's native white (out of the box) is not green-white (as Argyllcms reported in your screenshot) but non 4k GB-LED have that white, so DCCS' "native" should not aim to that green white but "close" to your native.
For techncal specification about what "native" means for Xrite team, ask them, but it seems to be "native" (FACTORY) monitor's white-grey but grey-ramp neutralized. "Native" preset gamma for non 4k GB-LEDs seems to be sRGB-like, but its native gamma seems to have that "shape" (gamma value vs input graph shows a growing gamma around 2.2x).

Regading optimal gamut, if you work on or send to lab works tagged with AdobeRGB or sRGB profile, AdobeRGB gamut limitation seems a sensible choice because you have more visible gradient levels at your disposal (if you do not have a 10bit workflow).
If you send your work in ProPhoto (but gamma 1.8 seems to me a total nonsense, and I mean just "prophoto" nor "prophoto linear") or eciRGBv2 or even your lab's custom profile, native gamut offers more advantages than drawbacks.

I would avoid DCCS matrix profile if "ab range" (check it on profile validation in DispcalGUI, RGB + grey balance) is not neraly perfect (<0.5) since it gives you an idealized profile that does not reflect little, observable, BUT correctable deviatiosn from grey neutrality.
DCCS' tables profile or DIspcalGUI curves+matrix or XYZLUT+matrix will store on ICM profile RGB independent gamma ramps, so it's easy for PS, LR or other color managed apps to colro manage and ensure neutral grey (better on 16bit images).
Eizo's Color navigation profiles just work wih a simple gamma +matrix, but grey neutrality is almost perfect.

The less close your calibration is to your desired target, the more accurate profile needs to be in order to store "deviations" from what you wanted to do. With that info color managed apps will do their work.

Thanks, based on this, since I use the monitor mainly for Lightroom, Silver Efex Pro (use PS just to launch SEP) and Firefox, then my best bet seems to be a curves+matrix in Dispcal, correct? With or without blackpoint compesantion?

Will check grey neutrality of the dispCal profile.

I rarely print and when I do I understand printers like Blurb convert automatically to SRGB. Also my website is powered by smugmug, I upload directly from lightroom and i think this is also srgb, so probably makes more sense to use Native and enjoy the full gamut on screen since AdobeRGB will not be used for output anyway. Correct me if i am wrong?

It's the fastest. 100 patches profile only less than ... 20min?
Best to use bpc, I do not trust so much DCCS black, let's use an "ideal" black, and AFAIK you did not report anything "visually" weird in black outside color management.

Pro printers have gamut bigger than AdobeRGB in CMY. Consumer inkjets with photo paper have gamuts bigger than sRGB, that's the point of cheap widegamuts for photo hobbysts.
Check some photo paper manufacturers web site, Illford for example or other manufarturer of your choice. They should have printer profilers for serveal printer models. Download a profile for an Epson or canon and some fancy paper, then run command line dispcalGUI-profile-info . Then compare gamut with relative colorimetric intent to sRGB/AdobeRGB/eciRGBv2 (CIE a*b*)
I've a domestic photographic inkjet printer and its profiles (to use with affordable 13x18cm printer manufacturer photo paper) do not cover my native magenta-pink gamut.
Ask your lab for their profiles or check your printer profiles. It's easy to "see" what do you need.

Maybe I am one of those who do not need a wide gamut as I only print single pics when I want to hang a new picture to my walls, very rarely, or I print Blurb  books. Other than that I share my pics via my website powered by smugmug and Lightroom. At some point I thought about buying a printer but economics do no stuck up. At some point would like to do high quality prints of my best pictures as Blurb is not that great (if you know a high quality printer in the UK it would be great to know). So long story short I bought this monitor mainly for the 4k resolution, the wide gamut came as an added benefit. Nevertheless I am happy to have it, I just did some experiments that I will show you:

This is a crop from a colorful pic

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/48027482/Pic.jpg

Here in red are the parts that exceed srgb (using LR soft proofing to show this), quite a bit! So like you say if I start printing AdobeRGB this is helpful. And I can enjoy real color at least on my monitor for now.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/48027482/Pic%20vs%20srgb.jpg

I also tested the two profiles of the monitor (all DCCS Native vs Native + DispCal Profile), and with DispCal I seem to have much better coverage and less clipping (I am ignorant in color management and did not know the profiling could change the size of the gamut, is that the case?)

This one is the DCCS profile

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/48027482/Dell%20profile.jpg

and this is the DispCal profile, look at the green veil

dl.dropboxusercontent.com/.../DispCal%20profile.jpg

What I noticed in many pictures is that when I benchmark the pic gamut vs the monitor, I get clipping in the deep blacks, monitor does not seem to be able to reproduce that. Has this to do with blackpoint compensation?

hi yumichan, here is the report from the DCCS Native calibration + Dispcal curves+matrix profile.

Grey neutrality seems perfect, right? Much better than the profile I got from DCCS.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/48027482/Measurement%20Report%202.6.0.0%20%E2%80%94%20DELL%20UP2414Q%20%40%200%2C%200%2C%202560x1440%20%E2%80%94%202015-02-11%2000-16.html

This is neutrality againsts profile (and cause DosclaGUI mede a 3curves accurate one, they are good), try to verify agianst a perfect neutral profile, just a synthetic one with your white and RGB primaries or if you are in CAL1/2 emulating AdobeRGB/sRGB against "standard profile".
There is a verify_grayscale.ti1 to handle and test these issues.

As an aproximation, without further testing, click in "evaluate gray balance from calibration only", you'll se it. It is pretty good for a Dell in native gamut (usually seen closer to 2.0 than to 1.5), but not perfect. A black to white gradient in a NON color managed enviroment should have a subtle color cast in some greys.
Anyway, with a profile with independent RGB TRC like the one you made, it is perfectly usable.


Your image for out of gamut testing has no profile embebed so I cannot see it properly without "guessing" what profile should be.
Anyway here you can see where are "printable" colors out of sRGB: cyan, oranges (mostly).
Please do the test I suggested before: to compare gamuts of a pro printer or an affordable one (from paper manufacturer profiles). Here you'll se if extra orange (very little) and magenta that native gamut has over AdobeRGB are printable for your devices or not.

"This is neutrality againsts profile (and cause DosclaGUI mede a 3curves accurate one, they are good), try to verify agianst a perfect neutral profile, just a synthetic one with your white and RGB primaries or if you are in CAL1/2 emulating AdobeRGB/sRGB against "standard profile".
There is a verify_grayscale.ti1 to handle and test these issues.

As an aproximation, without further testing, click in "evaluate gray balance from calibration only", you'll se it. It is pretty good for a Dell in native gamut (usually seen closer to 2.0 than to 1.5), but not perfect. A black to white gradient in a NON color managed enviroment should have a subtle color cast in some greys.
Anyway, with a profile with independent RGB TRC like the one you made, it is perfectly usable."

1. Not sure I follow the first part. Regarding the second I did click on "evaluate gray blalance..." and average delta is half of the other profile. In the end do you agree that the DispCal profile did a better job with greys and gamut coverage? 
2. Do you think that by playing with BPC on/off I can solve the "issue" of the monitor not covering those very dark tones?
3. Here is the comparison of gamut vs printer profile (Proam Imaging in the UK, any good?)

dl.dropboxusercontent.com/.../Pic%20vs%20Printer.jpg

1) I think that you did not get the point. Once you slecet a true neutral grey as yarget for comparison, error is not half, but twice (and on individual grey erros 6 times more error). You go from grey range ab ("RGB gray balance (>= 1% luminance) combined Δa*00 and Δb*00 range") 0.7 to past 1.5. Neutrality Error is two times bigger when you compare it to a true neutral calibration, and some individual errors are 6 times bigger.
That kind of neutrality error are spotted by sight, a gradient on non color manged enviroment will show it.

I mean your HW calibration is not neutral by any means, but usable with a profile that stores individual gamma ramps, like 3curves+matrix.
DCCS at its current state (even 1.5.7) cannot give you such neutral accuracy. Monitor would do that, but this "******" that is DCCS cannot do that and Xrite does not care. It won't be solved.

Just make sure you use a profile with indiviyual gamma ramps: 3curves+matrix, DCCS table or XYZLUT+matrix. The one you like most: accuracy, speed...

2 & 3) your images do not contain embeed profiles, I cannot see them as they should be, just guess. I said it to you on previous post

1) I'm saying that:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/48027482/Measurement%20Report%202.6.0.0%20%E2%80%94%20DELL%20UP2414Q%20%40%200%2C%200%2C%202560x1440%20%E2%80%94%202015-02-11%2000-16.html
reports that when you compare measurements against profile, it has a neutrality error agisnts tthat of 0.7.
When you compare against a TRULY neutral profile of the same gamma, error goes to 1.5.
Error is twice. Error is greater than 1 so "calibration" is not neutral, and DCCS is the culprit, not the monitor.
Also individual errors un deltaC grows 6 times bigger when checking against a true neutralprofile.

That means that your profile (3xcurves) is needed in order to compensate that kind of errors in PS or LR. PS or LR with that profile will account your monitror's "inaccuracies" and will color manage properly.
If you use a single curve or gamam or DCCS matrox profile, They will ot know that issue, so tehy won't correct it.

Thats all. Your calibration is not neutral, so a very accurate profile is needed.

2 &3) PS asks you. You should not work with untagged images. When saving jpg or ssve for web thera are options to convert to sRGB, do not convert, embed profile...

The relevance is that I do not know what you are seeing, hence cannot help you with that particular image. Most printable wige gamut colors outside sRGB are cian and oranges and some magentas. How much printer profile gets close to AdobeRGB primaries (like the woman in green that you said) depends on ikn and paper (that info is what printer profile stores).

Images you posted:

-do not have original profile (AdoberGB, eciRGBv2.. I do not know what were original profile since it was erased)

-I do not have printer profile to compare.

So without that info you are on your own

1) I am sure I did not get the point bacause I did not fully understand your earlier post. Regarding your last post, I am confused, maybe I am looking at the wrong numbers but what I see is:

- under summary Average ΔE*00 goes from 0.71 to 0.35

- "RGB gray balance (>= 1% luminance) combined Δa*00 and Δb*00 range" goes from 1.56 to 1.53

where do I see that the error is bigger?

"I mean your HW calibration is not neutral by any means, but usable with a profile that stores individual gamma ramps, like 3curves+matrix. DCCS at its current state (even 1.5.7) cannot give you such neutral accuracy."

Are you saying that even if the DispCal profile is twice to 6 times less accurate (I assume when you say error it means less accuracy) it is still better than the DCCS one? Not sure I understand.

2) & 3) Correct, they are just screen grabs. But what is the relevance of the embedded profile? Can't u see the the areas that LR has highlighted (in blue, red or orange, depending on which image) to show which parts are out of gamut? Wasn't that the test?

thanks

PS I use LR, does it embed color profiles by default when I export? Not sure I ever seen an option to embed or not embed, I can just pick a color space for export

1) Ok, now I understand, I was comparing the two profiles, while you are looking just at the DispCal profile in the two cases. Anyway it seems DispCal profile is definitely the way to go if I understand correctly.

2) & 3) I think the confusion comes from the fact that I did not mention that I work exclusively in RAW in LR (which should use Prophoto). With the images I posted (screen grabs from the Develop module->Soft proofing) I just meant to show the parts of the raw file (highlighted by LR with either blue, red or orange, depending on the case) that are (i) outside the display gamut, (ii) outside SRGB, and (iii) outside the printer profile I downloaded. Just that. Makes sense?

1) "Anyway it seems DispCal profile is definitely the way to go if I understand correctly."
Yes it seems that stores monitors behaviour properly and in an accurate way.

2) You do not need to do that. Use comand line I told you and compare downloaded printer profile to AdobeRGB (dispcalGUI-profile-info program, relative colorimetric). Then you'll see what's outside, maybe you'll need native gamut, maybe it has more drawbacks than gains: you may loose too much grey-r-g-b levels for less than 2dE of printable volume, which IMHO is a no go and better stay with AdobeRGB gamut. See it by yourself, not in an image but in a 2D plot of gamut. This is the way you realize how much do you loose on AdobeRGB LUT3D gamut emulation. In an image you do not see "volume" in dE (visual distance)

Thanks, I wish I know how to do it...In DispCal--> Settings Current-> Profile Info I pull up the info of the monitor profile but then in the comparison profile drop down menu I cannot find the printer profile. Could not figure out how to add.

I also tried to load in DispCal the printer profile to compare it to Adobe RGB but it says "Unsupported profile type and or color space...".

It is done in comand line: console in Windows or OSX.

For example in windows and a canon pixma:

1) execute: "cmd"

2) "cd ", for example : "cd c:\bin\calibration\dispcalGUI-2.6.0.0"

3) Let's asume that printer profile is Canon Platinum for 5-ink Canon Pixma series : "c:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color\CNBATNA0.ICM" (platinum paper, highest dpi). In OSX they are stores in user $HOME or in a /library subfolder, I cannot check OSX location now. It should be on google.

then type in console:
"dispcalGUI-profile-info.exe c:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color\CNBATNA0.ICM"

A window with profile info opens, then select AdobeRGB as comparison profile (dashed lines). Compare gamuts in CIE a*b*

Thanks, I tried but cannot get past 2) Not sure what directory have to put there,  c:\bin\calibration\dispcalGUI-2.6.0.0 does not exist on my pc