Color Management: Calibrating a Dell 2408WFP Ultrasharp 24" Display
UPDATE (November 2011): Although the information here is still useful, I wrote this a while ago. I stopped using this monitor for several months an only recently pulled it out of storage to give it new life. I wrote a new post on how to calibrate a Dell 2408WFT monitor with new information. I suggest you read both.
I have to start by saying that calibrating this monitor was really hard, but doable. I’m quite happy with it now after using it for a bit over a week, and having printed several photographs I can testify that this monitor does calibrate well and it’s really nice for photography.
However, out of the box it is absolutely horrible.
It’s so bright that it hurts just looking at it up close. If you’re like me (and I would think most photographers are in this regard) you like looking at your screen very closely when you’re editing, and having a ridiculously bright screen is no fun.
The colors are also super saturated, especially the reds, so skin tones look terrible. I searched all over the web for tips on how to get this monitor to calibrate and found a lot of conflicting information. As with everything on the web, everybody has an opinion but it seems many of them come from people that don’t even own the monitor. So, I decided to write this with the hopes of helping anyone that gets this monitor.
I spent several hours going through every possible option until I got what I wanted. If you bought this display I recommend you do a few searches to see why it’s so hard to calibrate (ie. wide gamut) just so you understand what’s happening. Also, note that I did my calibration with an eyeone Display2 (i1Display2) color calibrator.
Here’s what I did:
- I lowered the RGB colors to 50 to bring the saturation and brightness down. Do this from the monitors menu by going to Preset Modes > Custom (R, G, B)
- In the same Preset Modes menu, I selected Gamma - Mac (I’m obviously using a Mac) and Color Setting Mode - Graphics.
- Lowered Brightness to 50 from the Brightness & Contrast menu.
- Then ran the i1Display2 in Advanced mode with the following settings:
- White Point: 6500k
- Gamma: 2.2
- Luminance: 120
By doing this, I ended up:
- Increasing Contrast to 100
- Decreasing Brightness to 50
- Increasing Red to 51
- Lowering Green to 47
- Lowering Blue to 49
The result was as close to my prints as I’ve ever gotten, so I’m very happy!
If you're struggling with calibrating this screen, have a go at doing what I did and maybe it'll work for you. But remember to calibrate YOUR own screen with a calibrator, don't just copy my settings as every monitor is different.
UPDATE (May 2010): I've been resisting posting this update since Snow Leopard came out, but it's been long enough and I don't think things will change.
Unfortunately, X-rite's i1Display2 doesn't support Mac OS X and requires you to install Rosetta to run it. Which in itself is just disgraceful is you ask me. It's been 9 years since Mac OS X was launched and today I don't use any applications that require Rosetta except for iMatch, the software required to calibrate your monitor using the i1Display2. Rosetta is there only to run obsolete software that's no longer supported.
Anyway, Snow Leopard is the first Mac OS that doesn't install Rosetta by default. I see this as a clear sign that, after 9 years, it's time to move on. Sadly, I couldn't because of the i1Display2. After complaining way too many times about this and being told by X-rite customer service that they won't release a version of their software that runs natively in Mac OS X, I gave in and installed Rosetta.
Haven't been able to calibrate my Dell since.
I've been using it as a secondary monitor, but it's time to get it back into production. I'm now on the market for a new calibration solution and I sure won't buy from X-rite ever again.
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Reader Comments (9)
I've been struggling with this for a week. Thanks for posting this, I'll try your approach tonight.
I bought this monitor a over a week ago and am trying to get the color profile correctly with my new mac pro, but just not there yet. I'm very surprised to see you increased the contrast to 100... I have a huey pro as my calibrator, do you think that should be good enough or should I go for a more advanced calibrator? I've been hearing a lot of problems with the huey and the back lighting on the 2408.
Mike, I've never used a Huey before, so I really couldn't help you with that. I used an i1Display2 and it eventually worked, but it did take me many tries using many different settings. About increasing the contrast to 100, I also thought that was strange, but it was actually suggested in the i1Display2 instructions! About the brightness, I tried lowering the brightness all the way down and calibrating, but it was still way too bright and the colours were off. The way I solved the excessive brightness was by lowering the RGB channels to 50 and the overall brightness to 50 to start with and then calibrate from there. Have you tried doing that?
Well last weekend I got myself the LaCie blue eye pro calibrator and somewhat satisfied with it right now. I ended up with a brightness of 20, contrast of 50, and red, green, and blues all in the 90s range. I think I'll need to redo it as it's not as bright as I would like and probably will try your settings this time around. I'll let ya know how it goes!
Hi Mike, if it's working well for you with those settings then great! I'd suggest printing a few photographs and viewing them in daylight to see if there are any color casts. The only thing with your settings is that I think lowering the brightness by so much can reduce the amount of color shades the monitor can reproduce. I'm not 100% sure about that, but if it doesn't feel bright enough it may be worth trying with my start settings and running the calibrator from there.
I just re-calibrated today and the only change was that I reduced the Blue to 48. It's been pretty much spot on since then.
Thanks for this post...I think setting the initials that you had suggested before running Eyeone Display 2 really helps. My color dont look over saturated now and the white point was righ on (6500) aswell. I had to tweak the RED, BLUE, GREEN just a tad bit from your setting, but this is normal. Thanks again.
Thanks for the comment... Glad it helped!
Have you thought about buying different calibration software to use with your i1D2 hardware? Your hardware is compatible with many other color management software suites, such as Coloreyes DIsplay Pro, which is Snow Leopard compatible, and also enjoys a good reputation as an excellent piece of software. If you Google the topic you'll likely find other software that is also compatible with it.
Hi Sean, thanks for the tip. I'll do some research on that. I didn't know the i1Display2 was compatible with third party software, but it might be a good idea.