Dell 2408 monitor and calibration with Huey Pro

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redeyeshev

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I recently purchased a Dell 2408 FPW upgrading from a 17" Dell monitor that I got with a Dimension package 4 years ago.

The added "real estate" is great, especially when flaging shots in Lightroom's survey mode. It's also great that you can view shots at A4 size on screen.

However, this screen is so bright and when I was first setting it up I actually had to wear sunglasses to stop my eyes hurting!

When I first calibrated it with Huey Pro I wasn't convinced by the results. I am currently running the monitor in Preset>Custom RGB mode with all sliders at 49 (this seems to be the only way I can actually get the brightness down to a comfortable level).

I'm finding that when doing high-key style white background shots - I am not quite seeing areas of the background that are off white - they look okay in Lightroom, but when uploaded to Deviant Art and viewed in Firefox (with FF colour management set to ON) the background looks where I have missed some of the off white bits.

Just wondering if anyone else out there is using this monitor for serious photo work and how they are getting on with it - any tricks or tips for better performance?

Thanks
 
Sounds like the monitor brightness is way to high. I don't know if you can check the screen brightness level, but the recommendations for most seem to be around 120-140 cd/m. You may need to turn the brightness down more.If you have to reset the brightness best to check the contrast and the aimed white point are the same.

I use an Eye_1 and seem to have no problems with monitor matching with firefox, or Safari. Might be worthwhile double checking the images in Safari as that comes colour managed as standard I found I had problems initially with FF getting the CM to activate.

Have you got the Huey set to monitor the lighting conditions and adjust the screen accordingly. May be an idea to disable that and see if that makes any difference.

I wonder if the your Web Server apps may be making some changes to the image before it publishes them. Can you upload to another site and see if you get the same result
 
Thanks for the reply. Yes, at factory settings the brightness is devestating (i could start a tanning salon with a dual monitor setup!).

It seems that adjusting the brightness control on the monitor gets compensated by the HueyPro, so my workaround is to reduce all three CustomRGB sliders to between 50-60 which seems to help.

I've turned off the room lighting compensation for now to see how that goes.

I've broached this subject on another forum and got quite a lot of response there - the plot thickens; some people say they have given up with their HP and Dell, others say they use Spyder2 and have no problems whilst others using Spyer have swapped back to thier older, smaller screens.

There has even been the revelation that a whole batch of Hueys are faulty and this is backed up by Pantone on their support site (the major problem being colour casts) - I have pretty good eyes when it comes to colour and have noticed that huey gives my screen a magenta cast.

I suppose the proof's in the pudding though and I should order some prints to see how they look in comparisson to what I see on screen.

I'll also check out some of my shots in Safari - good suggestion.
 
Quite a difference between Firefox with colour management enabled and Safari. To me Safari looks a tad over saturated.

colourdifference.jpg
 
Before running the Huey trying setting brightness and contrast using this guide:

http://epaperpress.com/monitorcal/index.html

That should get the black/white levels right and then the huey can sort the colour/gamma.

edit to add, just do the first bit with the black/white squares. Brightness adjusts the blacks and contrast adjusts the whites. The huey should change the brightness, it can only make things darker, not brighter. Also make sure you don't have any other apps such as AdobeGamma, etc. running.
 
Looks a bit odd to me. I've just had a look at a couple of web pages with images in both FF and Safari and they both look identical to me.

There is a little applet you can run in Firefox to enable the colour management. Here's a link to the Rob Galbraith page with the details

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-9311-9478

I couldn't get colour management to work until I ran it. Also a link to a test image to check out the CM is really working. Good news ( for me) all is OK on my system.
 
I have a Huey pro with a Dell 2407 wfp. Not sure about the 2408 but the 07 is fantastic. I have been really impressed. The colour management on a browser makes a real difference to me.
 
Chappers said:
Looks a bit odd to me. I've just had a look at a couple of web pages with images in both FF and Safari and they both look identical to me.

There is a little applet you can run in Firefox to enable the colour management. Here's a link to the Rob Galbraith page with the details

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-9311-9478

I couldn't get colour management to work until I ran it. Also a link to a test image to check out the CM is really working. Good news ( for me) all is OK on my system.
Click to expand...

Thanks. Yes it's a bit of a black art but, I have already done that. The screen capture shows FF with colour management turned on. It's so weird.

I run two versions of XP. One loaded with Lightroom, PS and other photo related software only and one with iTunes and every other bit of software that I dare not install on my photo editing OS.

The calibration I have on the non photo OS looks neutral, I calibrated it a while ago and adjusted it to make reading web pages easy on the eye. I suspect the shadows are slightly too bright but other than that it's fairly good. With this calibration the FF image on the screen cap looks washed out wheras Safari looks okay.

However, on my photo editing OS which I recablirated yesterday (manually adjusting Gamma by +6% using the page advised by Pxl8) it's a different story and the Safari image looks over cooked, though in LR and PS it looks okay. This OS also has a noticeable magenta tinge. I visted Pantone support and this appears to be a known issue so I have requested that they send me a new Huey. I'm hoping that if/when this arrives I may be able to straighten things out.
 
I too am having problems calibrating my dell 2408. From what I have been told, because it is a (relatively) new type of screen, some of the older calibration devices do not work with it. I have a spyder pro which has worked fine on my other monitors - could calibrate the screen, profile etc, everything looks good on screen, and print out would match what was on screen - exactly as it should be.

Auto or default settings on the 2408 both look OK on screen (maybe a little bright, but not excessive.) But if I try to calibrate it I cannot adjust it to how the spyder wants it! Plus prints do not match the screen, which for me is a major no-no as (being a bit on the old-fashioned side at the ripe old age of 45) I still do not consider my photos "finished" unless they are printed and mounted.
 
I have sent a request for a new HueyPro to Pantone though they do not have any estimates as to when they will arrive. :(

I'm the mean time, I'm running Lightroom 2 with two monitors so will use my old monitor for reference at the same time as the 2048 (which is great for survey and grid mode).
 
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