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Colors are oversaturated on my Windows 7 Dell laptop XPS Studio 1640 RGBLED LCD display.

Anonymous
2010-01-03T08:04:39+00:00

Hi, I'm an aspiring photographer and I just replaced my Dell inspiron with the above.  With simple calibration from my editing software the colors on my old display pretty much matched all printed photos (that I send to an online photo lab), some minor differences but nothing major and I could live with that.  Viewing those same photos on this new machine, all the colors seem oversaturated.  I have tried to use both my software calibration and the Windows 7 monitor calibration and it does nothing for the too vivid colors.. which would be lovely if that's what the potos actually looked like. There is no way I can edit anything because of the oversaturated colors.

Is there a way to make the colors less vivid? and where would I find that on the computer?  I am still using my old computer to edit etc. my pics, but that's a pain in the butt.

Thanks for any help I can get.

Jessie

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Windows update

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  1. Anonymous
    2010-01-05T04:34:59+00:00

    I have no idea why Azeez Nadeem has responded with advice about setting resolution - or (worse!) suggesting you adjust the actual images (using brightness or contrast - in Windows Photo Gallery of all things, but ignore his post.

    What may have happened is one of two things.

    1 - I think this is somewhat unlikely - but it is remotely possible that the images always were very saturated and your old display - and your old printer - simply printed them in a flattened manner, and while that worked for you, it may be that you over corrected to compensate for the flatness and now, with this new computer, you are actually seeing what the images really look like - as I said, that is probably unlikely - if you print these on some other printer (or a JPEG or two on an SD card to WalMart or Costco for printing - well, you can see whats what...

    1. You new monitor has some very saturated hi gamma default system settings or is using some wide gamut color management profile, and it is displaying your normal images incorrectly, and they appear very contrastly and or saturated...

    so, you need to adjust them...

    http://www.ithinkdiff.com/new-color-calibration-settings-in-windows-7/

    I think this should help - if it does not help, feel free to email me at *** Email address is removed for privacy ***

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  1. Anonymous
    2010-12-07T02:32:43+00:00

    nio4d, your 1640 HD display IS a wide-gamut display.  And it's rated as one of the best quality screens for laptops.  The reason things look fine on your 19" LCD is because it's probably NOT wide-gamut.  I do agree that most laptop monitors are not good for reliability for graphics because most of them are so low in quality that the colors look simply faded.  You will still have better luck with a wide-gamut standalone display so I wish you luck.  Dell monitors come pre-calibrated and even have their own drivers to use and once I installed them the U2410 looked much better.

    I'm interested to hear what solution you come up with.  There are so many forums that have this oversaturation being discussed and it has to do with a lack of color profiles available out of the box for the operating system that the displays are attached to.  It's a perfect example of one technology being too far ahead of everything else.

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  2. Anonymous
    2010-12-07T01:40:39+00:00

    Unfortunately, it's well known that laptop monitors are not the greatest, hard to calibrate etc.  but for those of us who opt to own laptops only, because of travel etc. we have to suffer for their inadequacies. 

    did you try what Tyler and I suggested above?

    Some new problems I am having are with reds (and the blues and purples) in my editing software.  what should be red looks brown...  very frustrating..

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  3. Anonymous
    2010-12-06T15:09:21+00:00

    Hi Tyler, thanks for your response. Actually, the datacolor people are saying that it might actually be the opposite to what you say and they suggest not to use laptops monitors as 100% reliable, for that they suggested me to actually upgrade to wider gamut ones. Here's a the bit of their response after I told them that my main problem is that now all BW's look sepia by default:

    ...." To me it really seems like a gamut issue with that display, since a laptop got a much smaller gamut compared to high end desktop displays (e.g. Quato, Eizo, LaCie, NEC...)

    and pixels on such a kind of display looking more or less bright/luminant depending on the viewing angle "......

    I tend to trust these guys. They seem to know very well what they talk about and even though these Dell's XPS studio monitor is very good, Dell's are not that famous for being top quality either. I'll borrow a mac book pro from a friend this week, I'll calibrate it and check the results. If they are good then it's definitely something about Dell... we'll see..

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  4. Anonymous
    2010-12-06T15:09:01+00:00

    Hi Tyler, thanks for your response. Actually, the datacolor people are saying that it might actually be the opposite to what you say and they suggest not to use laptops monitors as 100% reliable, for that they suggested me to actually upgrade to wider gamut ones. Here's a the bit of their response after I told them that my main problem is that now all BW's look sepia by default:

    ...." To me it really seems like a gamut issue with that display, since a laptop got a much smaller gamut compared to high end desktop displays (e.g. Quato, Eizo, LaCie, NEC...)

    and pixels on such a kind of display looking more or less bright/luminant depending on the viewing angle "......

    I tend to trust these guys. They seem to know very well what they talk about and even though these Dell's XPS studio monitor is very good, Dell's are not that famous for being top quality either. I'll borrow a mac book pro from a friend this week, I'll calibrate it and check the results. If they are good then it's definitely something about Dell... we'll se..

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