Thinkpads Forum

Whoa! I never knew what a full gamut display would look like. The W701ds has the huey pro pantone calibrator but I'm having difficulty accepting the colors. I bought this computer for an architectural design program that needed discrete graphics. I also wanted the 17" screen with the 1920 x1200 resolution. I don't play games, but I do watch some streaming video. The reds and greens on this thing are blinding! On my old laptop, a photo of a red shirt would show the detail of stitching, buttons, pockets, etc. A photo of the same thing on the W701ds just shows a bright (!) red blob. No shading or shadows on the red...just RED. Is this what full gamut will always look like or am I doing something wrong? When I watch streaming video, the faces sometimes look orangey. Not sure if it's the makeup or the calibration. Any suggestions?

Pqtex, see:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo- ... ost6717388

Thank you! I'd searched and read as much as I could find about the W701ds, but when I looked for something specific, didn't come up with that! I will try the suggestions about the calibration. Jill

Calibration and color spaces (what you're actually referring to) are really two different things. Calibration just tweaks the display to match known values, so colors match across different displays (as much as possible, anyway). Calibrating your display won't make the reds (or any other color) match sRGB standards we're all used to. That's a color space issue. You can color manage in some browsers and some applications (like Photoshop, where you can soft-proof files with different color spaces), but in the end, the RGB-LED display is too much trouble for general use. The new Dell M6500 and the HP 8740W both have optional displays that can assign different color spaces on the fly. I have the 8740w and the technology works really well. I imagine the M6500 is great as well. Unless you know what you're getting, I do not recommend any display that permanently displays only the Adobe RGB color space (like the FHD diplays on the W510 and W701).

I sure wish I'd known that before buying the w701ds. I did so much research, and wanted the size/resolution of this display, but I didn't understand (or know enough to question) what the wide-gamut meant. I bought this computer for architectural design software, some photo editing, but I also watch streaming video on the computer instead of having a television. It's driving me crazy, and I've tried so many things to "fix" the color.

There is nothing you can do to "fix" the color in applications that aren't color managed. However, watch streaming video through Firefox, because you can color manage that browser.

Another solution, though not much of one, is to use a regular gamut external monitor. The color will be fine on the external display.

Oliver26n...THANK YOU!

I just downloaded Firefox (which I intended to do anyway) and began comparing some photos between IE and Firefox. These photos had been posted on facebook and were the most annoying to view, specifically due to the horrible oversaturation of red (toxic blobs of color, no definition, shadows, normal wrinkles, etc.). Firefox definitely made a positive difference.

In watching some youtube (television episodes), I don't understand why the skin tones on some people look normal, but when the camera cuts to another person in the same video, that person looks almost orange. I don't know if it's related to how the individual's makeup is applied, or if it's the wide gamut thing in action. How can one person look normal and the other look like an alien in the same video?

I found a website at http://www.gballard.net/windows_srgb/ that provides a lot of information about color management, monitor profiles, wide gamut displays, etc. Unfortunately most of it is over my head, but it did help me understand a bit better how your suggestion to use Firefox as my browser would help. I will spend a little more time with the technical information and see if that will help me a little more.

I was so frustrated and unhappy with my brand-new w701ds(one of the last ones shipped, I think) that i was just about ready to sell it and start over. Which I couldn't afford to do...

Thanks again.

Jill

I'm confused what's stopping you from tweaking the colors to look right in the nVidia driver?

I would like to try to tweak the colors using nvidia, but the nvidia control panel won't open. I thought maybe it was disabled because the w701ds comes with the built-in huey pro calibrator? I have verified I have the latest driver.