U2410 adobeRGB and sRGB ICMs

The U2410 has a hardware look up table (LUT). The settings for sRGB and Adobe mode are actually stored in the U2410's internal memory. Unfortunately, when Dell hardware calibrate the U2410 in the factory, they do not keep the settings that are generated in the form of ICM files which could then be used by Photoshop. So they give you the end settings and a report, but not any files.

Since the supplied calibration report from Dell is generated using only 1 point (the centre) of your screen, it also tells you very little about the real accuracy of your screen or its suitabillity for tasks like editing images, as the corners of the U2410 screen may have values far from those found in the centre of the screen. This effectively makes the supplied report utterly useless since it will not tell you whether the screen suffers from things like pink / green gradation issues, which is where one side of your screen may have a visibly different tint (particularly on white and grey backgrounds) from the other. So the report is (in my opinion) a marketing gimmick and any files, which may be of value, are discarded.

Whilst supplying specific ICM files (rather than the wonky generic one on the U2410 CD) might be of value, it'd also only be of value for a limited time. The backlight on your U2410 will lose brightness over its lifetime, particularly in the first few hundred hours of usage, and so the settings you have at the start of the U2410's life might not be appropriate 6 months down the line. So the real solution is to use your own hardware calibration to generate the right profiles.

Keep in mind the current U2410 monitors also have noticeable static dithering type issues on very dark shades under Adobe/sRGB mode (Other modes are not subject to this), and this will require a firmware fix from Dell. Since Dell are refusing to exchange screens for gradation issues I'd advise people wait until this issue is fixed before buying a U2410, since Dell may swap your perfectly good monitor for one with severe gradation issues when it comes time to trade the screen to get it flashed. It would be nice if Dell gave sufficiently advanced users a way to flash their own U2410, without having to exchange the whole panel just to get a firmware fix.

To answer your last question - Just using Adobe mode or sRGB mode would be enough if you load in those standard profiles with Photoshop. However if you want to use another mode and use the full gamut of the screen most effectively, it would require you supply a screen profile so Photoshop and other colour managed applications understand the gamut of your screen and will auto-correct for that without having to select different modes on your U2410! This, again, will require you to use your own calibration device. Also keep in mind that, even if you had the files (which it would be nice if Dell could supply) the screens are only calibrated to a dE value of <5, which is actually quite poor by modern standards. You'd really want to calibrate your screen to a dE of less than 2 for things like image editing purposes.

Thank you for the length and informative reply ... I agree that calibrating my device is the best option.

The one detail I left out is that I run linux as much as I run windows. In Linux, gimp, digikam, f-spot and firefox all support user defined color profiles. Do you know what I would use for that role, since the factory derived ones made during calibration were tossed out?

Should I use the AdobeICCProfilesCS4Win_end-user files available from adobe?

I suppose I should just try this and see what I get... will follow up shortly with results...

Thanks

Peter

so the results are ..  so so.  Digikam already had a default adobeRGB profile, so that was easy.  However, in adobeRGB mode on the monitor, the colorspace corrected colors looked yellow and dull. Uncorrected sRGB images actually did not look all that bad, although a little too saturated. I'll probably leave it like this for now and save up for a colorimeter to do it right...

Peter

these sites have profiles you can try:

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/icc_profiles.htm

http://www.focus-numerique.com/test-42/telecharger-un-profil-calibre-pour-son-ecran-dell-24.html