How to assess Black Level

[shewhorn]

I would honestly leave black level at minimum and edit in a darkish room at maybe 90cd/m^2 and you might get down to 0.12-0.16 black depending.

While the blackest blacks make us all warm and fuzzy emotionally, it is not necessarily the most accurate way to calibrate and profile your monitor. All monitors I have profiled (including the PA241w) suffer from a little bit of color cast when blacks are set to their absolute minimum. Raising the black level a bit in my experience makes for a significant improvement in removing color casts in the darkest shadows and also improves the distinction from one level to another. What I mean by that is... I've seen many monitors that when set to their relative minimum will not have good distinction between the first 5 black levels. Raise the black level just a little bit and the differences are much more apparent. My 2690 is set to a luminance of 110 cd/m^2 with a black level of 0.28 cd/m^2. Images don't look quite as impressive as when the screen is at the relative minimum for black point, but it sure does a better job with actually being able to see shadow detail.

Cheers, Joe

[Nino Loss]

While the blackest blacks make us all warm and fuzzy emotionally, it is not necessarily the most accurate way to calibrate and profile your monitor. All monitors I have profiled (including the PA241w) suffer from a little bit of color cast when blacks are set to their absolute minimum. Raising the black level a bit in my experience makes for a significant improvement in removing color casts in the darkest shadows and also improves the distinction from one level to another. What I mean by that is... I've seen many monitors that when set to their relative minimum will not have good distinction between the first 5 black levels. Raise the black level just a little bit and the differences are much more apparent. My 2690 is set to a luminance of 110 cd/m^2 with a black level of 0.28 cd/m^2. Images don't look quite as impressive as when the screen is at the relative minimum for black point, but it sure does a better job with actually being able to see shadow detail.

Cheers, Joe

Thank you for reminding us of that problem with the neutrality of minimum black. You are right, there are two minimum black levels

But would you leave the black level at that setting when it comes to soft-proofing, and just turn on the PS soft-proof?

How would you judge the black level setting, if you were to adapt for the paper during the soft-proof stage? What was suggested till now is a visual method.

[tho_mas]

But would you leave the black level at that setting when it comes to soft-proofing, and just turn on the PS soft-proof?

I would.
If the white point of the monitor is adjusted to visually match paper white (both color and brightness) under appropriate viewing conditions then IMO the most consistent workflow is to softproof relative colormetric (with BPC, of course) and to just select "simulate black ink" for the monitor view. The latter will push the blacks to the level of the respective paper.

[Nino Loss]

I would.
If the white point of the monitor is adjusted to visually match paper white (both color and brightness) under appropriate viewing conditions then IMO the most consistent workflow is to softproof relative colormetric (with BPC, of course) and to just select "simulate black ink" for the monitor view. The latter will push the blacks to the level of the respective paper.

Yes, I went back to that today, while working on a couple of prints. And there is one big advantage to that procedure. You can have the image you are working on, open on the same monitor proofed and unproofed, and therefore judge a lot better the effects you want to obtain.

Just how could we take advantage of the new 3D LUT capabilities to simulate paper? Do we really don't need this gadget?!

nino

[tho_mas]

Just how could we take advantage of the new 3D LUT capabilities to simulate paper? Do we really don't need this gadget?!

One application that comes to my mind is video editing. Being able to emulate sRGB resp. REC709 on a wide gamut monitor is very helpful here.
As to papers I think it highly depends on the papers/profiles and I guess it won't work out of the box. Further tweaking will be needed especially if the papers contain optical brighteners (which not only affect the white point but also the differentiation in highlights and deep blacks). Have not yet tried to emulate a paper profile on my monitor, though. Simply as my setup works very good with softproofing. So, again, I'm just guessing.
Maybe the emulation of paper profiles are more interessting when working with a dual monitor setup ... ?

[Nino Loss]

Maybe the emulation of paper profiles are more interessting when working with a dual monitor setup ... ?

I came to that conclusion as well. And the best part of it is, that I do not think that you need two identical monitors, as they will anyways be very far apart due to the applied profile on one of them. One I used, with the paper profile uploaded to the LUT, the other monitor was set to regular image editing but with the same white point and minimal neutral black point.

I tried to start a separate thread on the 3D LUT, but without success ( http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=45664.0 ). I think this technologie is still to recent.

[tho_mas]

I came to that conclusion as well. And the best part of it is, that I do not think that you need two identical monitors, as they will anyways be very far apart due to the applied profile on one of them. One I used, with the paper profile uploaded to the LUT, the other monitor was set to regular image editing but with the same white point and minimal neutral black point.

I tried to start a separate thread on the 3D LUT, but without success ( http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=45664.0 ). I think this technologie is still to recent.

One issue to consider, IMO, is that the gamut of the profile you are trying to emualte has to fit into the gamut of the monitors capabilities. Assumed your paper can be fully displayed on your monitor in all colors except of, say, cyan (or yellow or whatever)... then the whole thing won't work. You have to edit the primaries (of the emulated color space) to a value your monitor is able to display... but the question remains if this really works without flaws.
In this regard softproofing with color warning is at least a well established workflow...

[Nino Loss]

One issue to consider, IMO, is that the gamut of the profile you are trying to emualte has to fit into the gamut of the monitors capabilities. Assumed your paper can be fully displayed on your monitor in all colors except of, say, cyan (or yellow or whatever)... then the whole thing won't work. You have to edit the primaries (of the emulated color space) to a value your monitor is able to display... but the question remains if this really works without flaws.
In this regard softproofing with color warning is at least a well established workflow...

SO what about the gamut capabilities of the PA241?

[tho_mas]

SO what about the gamut capabilities of the PA241?

Don't know that particular monitor. It also depends on your calibration. Just compare your monitor profile with a paper profile in question in an appropriate grapher (Chromix Color Think or so).

[Nino Loss]

Don't know that particular monitor. It also depends on your calibration. Just compare your monitor profile with a paper profile in question in an appropriate grapher (Chromix Color Think or so).

Well it looks like the few papers I compared do fit into this NEC monitor.