Solve oversaturation problem on wide gamut screen

Hello everyone,

I would like to buy a Dell XPS 15 laptop with the 1920×1080 screen, which appears to be a wide gamut screen. I want the Windows desktop and all the programs, not just the color managed ones, to have normal, not oversaturated colors.

Is there any way to do this properly? - for example by changing a setting in the NVidia drivers?

 

You are going to have to profile the screen with the proper tool like a Spider, etc.

Spending the $$$ on a screen like that and not using a profiling tool is a waste of that same $$$.

 

Thank you for your response. I've never used a calibration tool, so correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know the calibration will just generate a file that has to be loaded by the into the Color Management part of the control panel in Windows. This however doesn't change anything about non-color managed applications. How can I make sure that non-color managed applications look fine as well?

 

Quick fix for this since you said it's a nvidia chip, right-click anywhere on desktop and go to "nvidia control panel". I've attached a couple of pics of what the settings are supposed to look like. Digital vibrance slider seems to affect saturation the most, normally this should be set to 0% , the color format should say RGB. Internal display and each external display are configured separately, so you need to re-open this menu and check settings for each and every one of them.

 

Thanks. However digital vibrance doesn't seem to take the specifications of the monitor into account, so I don't think that it's the most proper solution. Is there anything else that is known to work?

 

The 'problem' with wide gamut screens is that they will display every little bit of info you push to them, good and bad. This is why you need to get a proper ICC profile generated that the vid card driver can use to best effect.

Thus the profiling via a scan device like a Spyder.

It really isn't possible to reliably eyeball this.

 

Why would you possibly be expecting stock software to guess your LCD specifications??

We told you about the RIGHT way to do it. Someone is telling you about a ' quick fix'.

 

An EDID override will work which involves creating a new profile for your display using the existing profile. It's not exactly easy but it can be done.

 

No it's not. It's way better to have an uncalibrated super-wide-gamut screen with a high resolution than to have a terrible low-gamut screen with low contrast and a low resolution.

I never calibrated my RGBLED display, and that's because I don't need to. I got it because of the resolution and because I didn't want the CCFL-backlit 1920x1200 display. I like the saturation but it's more of a side bonus. I didn't want to have to deal with the dimming and color shift over time of CCFL bulbs.

EDIT: I'll calibrate it later if I have the chance to use someone's Spyder 3, but to me the screen is worth the money but the calibration isn't. If I calibrate it, it will have to be for free.

Whatever you do, don't get the 1366x768 display on the XPS 15.

 

Thank you guys.
Does calibration with a tool like Spyder solve the problem for all applications or only for color managed ones?

 

You know, I have the same question as the OP. The difference is that I *have* run a color calibration tool on a laptop, and as the OP said, it only affected color managed applications - didn't fix thumbnails, desktop colors, or colors in Internet Explorer browsing the web.

 

Look closer at the advanced tab in the color management applet (control panel).

There is plenty of on-line documentation for the settings there.

 

I have a Spyder2 Express, and using the supplied software it creates an ICC profile for windows colour management, and also it changes the colours for everything (desktop, icons, IE, etc.).
When I start my computer the spyder2 software loads and says "calibration succesfully loaded into video card" and I can see the colours change. (for everything).
So if you buy a spyder, just install the software (I went to datacolors website for the latest) and it'll launch on startup to load the ICC profile