What Is a Color Accurate Monitor and How Can You Check?
If you’ve ever done color-sensitive work on a computer, you know that color accuracy can make or break the deal. Outside of just making everything on your display look good, a color-accurate monitor can do wonders if you’re a creative professional.
That said, there are many different things you need to keep in mind when assessing the color accuracy of your monitor. Things like color spaces, gamut, panel technology, and Delta E values come in handy.
So, what is monitor color accuracy, and how can you check it’s correct?
What Is Color Accuracy in Monitors?
Simply put, color accuracy defines how capable your monitor is when it comes to reproducing colors and their respective shades as intended by the source. As a result, a color-accurate monitor will be able to reproduce more life-like pictures with more vibrant colors and a wider overall palette.
You could have the highest resolution, fastest refresh rate, or lowest response time, but if your display isn’t color accurate, you’ll be unable to get the most out of the content you’re watching on the screen.
This is true for any display you interact with every day, including your smartphone and TV. Although color accuracy in TVs is measured slightly differently.
How Is Color Accuracy Measured?
Several different factors affect the color accuracy of a monitor. Regardless of your end goal, you’ll want to focus on the following major factors.
Of course, other things affect a monitor’s color accuracy, such as dimming zones, HDR support, panel bit depth, and the maximum number of colors the display can show. However, the aforementioned factors play the biggest roles.
We recommend paying extra attention to the color space your monitor can use. If you’re a photographer or video editor or work with digital media where color accuracy is important, it’s best to stick to your industry’s norm.
Ideally, a color-accurate monitor would support multiple color spaces, including sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3, with over 90% color gamut coverage for these spaces. As for the dE value, most high-end color-accurate monitors tend to hover around the one to two range. Finally, your choice of panel, whether IPS or OLED, brings the entire package together.
A monitor’s color accuracy can also change over time, so being on the lookout forsigns when your monitor needs calibrationis essential to ensure you’re getting the most out of your display. Thankfully, checking for color accuracy is a rather simple process for most monitors.
How to Check for Color Accuracy on Your Existing Monitor
You can get a fairly decent idea of color accuracy for most monitors by looking at the specifications. For example, I’m currently using an MSI Optix G24 series monitor, which is capable of 100% sRGB and 88% DCI-P3. In its default settings with the factory calibration, the monitor has a dE value slightly higher than two.
Custom calibration on the monitor can bring the dE down to around one, making it a rather good choice for color-accurate work, considering it’s a gaming monitor. That said, this particular model uses a VA panel, which means it’d be less color accurate if looking at the monitor outside the recommended viewing angles.
If you can’t find the color gamut and dE values for your particular monitor, there are a number of tools available for you to test them out for yourself. If you want more detailed information, you can opt for an online test using the following:
If you’re using Windows or macOS, there are built-in monitor calibration utilities that you can use. Before you get started with testing, though, here are a few things you should be wary of
Additionally, familiarize yourself with yourmonitor’s settings, including brightness, color, gamma, and contrast. These are usually found in your monitor’s on-screen display menu.
Remember that you’ll be using these tools based on how you perceive your display, meaning the calibration can be a bit off. We recommend leaving the color calibration settings the way they were from the factory or using a colorimeter for accurate results.
Get the Most Out of Your Monitor
While modern-day panels are fairly color accurate for most consumer applications, a little tweaking in the settings can improve the visual quality of your monitor. If you’re stuck with a monitor and can’t upgrade to one that’s more color accurate out of the box, knowing the supported color spaces, color gamut coverage, and dE value is a good place to start messing around with the settings.
There are plenty of ways you can make your monitor more color accurate, including but not limited to built-in and third-party tools, free websites, and even hardware devices for pinpoint accuracy.
If you’re a graphic designer or digital artist, calibrating your monitor’s colors is a must.
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