Color Space, Gamma, and Monitor Calibration

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Chris Allsberry

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Color Space, Gamma, and Monitor Calibration

PostFri Mar 26, 2021 10:28 pm

Hi, I'm a novice and I'm new to post production, color grading, and monitor calibration; I've read a bunch of stuff and I'm totally confused. I'm on Windows in Resolve 17 Beta and I have a Decklink Mini Monitor 4k. I'm trying to calibrate my "reference monitor" which is a Benq PD2700U.

Question#1: What Color Space should I be outputting to?

I know that you are supposed to monitor the video in the color space that you will be outputting. Right now my work will be seen mostly on Vimeo and they on the Help Center / Video Compression Guidelines page that they recommend Rec. 709. So does that mean that I should monitor in Rec. 709 with the standard 2.4 gamma correction? Or since it will be viewed on the web should it be REC.709 color space with a 2.2 gamma correction?

Question #2: How to I properly setup Display Cal to calibrate my monitor for the correct color space?

I have an i1 Display Pro and I've done a few calibrations already but I really don't know what I'm doing. Today I did a calibration and you can see the settings in the attached screenshots. At the end of the calibration said "Profile self check ▲E*76: average 0.30, maximum 2.42, RMS 0.43.

I've read that a ▲E*76 value of less than 1 is not distinguishable by the human eye so do I need to load a calibration lut if this is my result?


I loaded the lut that Display Cal created and it just seemed to make my screen brighter and desaturated the colors a bit. I had the monitor set to the User setting with a gamma of 2.4 to match my Resolve settings.

I've attached screenshots of the settings I used and also the results (I took these after the calibration was done). I have this feeling that all my issues could be resolved (no pun intended) in about 30 mins if I had someone to sit with me and break it down, so I've come here. I'd appreciate any help you can offer!!
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Uli Plank

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Re: Color Space, Gamma, and Monitor Calibration

PostSat Mar 27, 2021 2:32 am

Up to a value of 3 for ▲E*76 should be good enough and your probe is good one.

If you carefully followed these instructions, you should be fine:
https://hub.displaycal.net/wiki/3d-lut- ... r-resolve/

Take care to only generate the LUT for the Decklink and not include any corrections for MacOS (as explained on that page).
My disaster protection: export a .drp file to a physically separated storage regularly.
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