Wide gamut monitors

[kaiser]

Ok so this is really doing my head in (to the point where it feels like it just might explode). The more article and research I try and do to self educate myself, the more confused I become.

Wide gamut monitors - are they really that much better for photo editing? I know more and more programs and operating systems are becoming colour managed, but sRGB still seems to be the most common language on the web, and for games/TV/movies.

I can see the benefit of editing stuff in Adobe RGB or Pro Photo RGB with a wider colour gamut monitor, but given that most of the time its converted back down to sRGb anyway - is it worth the trouble?

Basically what I want to know is will a standard gamut monitor, using sRGB workspace be sufficient for the majority of tasks?

Or should I be working in aRGB..and if so..do I then need a wide gamut monitor to see all the colours of aRGB properly?

Sorry if this is confusing but I really cant get my head around it and dont know how else to word it. I feel so stoooooopid:o

[clm738]

I would like to hear the answers to these questions too.

[djvkool]

as far as I know, they are useful only if you are printing your work 100% of the time.

if you only do editing and occasional printing, then standard calibrated monitor will do just fine.

please correct me if i am wrong..??

[ricktas]

For most prints, a good monitor is quite sufficient. A wide gamut monitor does just that, it will display the full or a high percentage of the colourspace. So you may see a monitor that is 98% AdobeRGB colour gamut. If you shoot in adobeRGB then you will see 98% of what is in your photo data.

Most printers at present can only hit the sRGB colourspace, finding a full adobeRGB colourspace printer can be a challenge.

What does all this mean. I would say stick with your present monitor for now. We have only just started seeing the full gamut monitors come on the market at reasonable prices, but give it a year or two and they will come down in price, improve and you will get a good buy.

I think right now, you would only get one if super accurate colour rendition, for printing etc, was a true necessity.

[Lani]

I agree that if you aren't printing much, then just a calibrated monitor is fine.
Tthe difference is that often-times an image may be processed differently because it appears to have lost detail, because the monitor can't display it, not that it isn't there. I have noticed that particularly in images where the sky is very close to being blown, according to what is displayed on screen, but when it is printed there is heaps more colour than I thought. So if you process to get it look right on screen, the print is not going to look as good. Whether that is worth the extra cost is something I am presently weighing up too. The other benefit of high end monitors such as the Eizos is that they are hardware calibrated, not through your video card, which is far more accurate, and also they have a much better uniformity of viewing across the screen.
Whether that is worth the extra cost is something I am presently weighing up too.

[kaiser]

Thanks Rick and Lani. At the moment I do not think my workflow would be classed as absolute colour critical work. I would like to be able to edit in a wider range of colours, but don't know if I will run into any problems- for example I don't know if the whole Mac OSX environment is colour managed or just Cs4. So if I viewed an sRGB or untagged image in a non coloured managed program on a monitor set to Adobe Rgb, then the image would be oversaturated as the sRgb information is 'stretched' to fit the Adobe Rgb gamut. Is this correct? As long as I stayed in colour managed programs I would not encounter this problem??

[kaiser]

For further info I am basically trying to decide between a Dell 2209wa or a 2408wfp monitor. The former being around $310, standard gamut, eIPS panel (better viewing angles) 22" vs the 2408- wide gamut, PVA panel ( some colour shift at different angles), lots of cnnection optins and extras, $599.