Calibrating the Dell U2711 Wide Gamut LCD with a Spyder 4 Pro

If you have just bought a Dell wide gamut U2711 LCD and have tried calibrating it over and over with a Spyder4Pro but you’re just not getting the results you had hoped — white doesn’t look quite white — try the method that works for me. I have found the factory tuned sRGB to be slightly cool (a tinge of blue). I have read through a dozen web sites  to get a better understanding of what Gamma, White Point and the rest of the jargon mean.

Update July 26, 2014 Absolutely thrilled to have prints from the Canon MG6370 match the screen in every detail possible without the need to independently calibrate the printer.

Update March 8, 2004 I had the monitor re-calibrated from scratch but this time I had both White Point and Brightness set to “Native” and that produced a consistently accurate result. I checked this against the grayscale chart below and was able to better discern the last two shades of gray. I’m happy with the new setting. 

Straight to the point, if you have a Spyder4Pro and you’re not seeing proper white, try setting White Point to Native and do a Full Cal. I leave the monitor in AdobeRGB mode and Brightness at 20, Contrast at 50 (factory default). Using Datacolor’s recommended White Point of 6500K just doesn’t turn out right for me, and because white isn’t right, grays appeared with a very slight greenish tinge.

I’m overwhelmed by the wealth of information available on colour management and in particularly, calibrating with the  Sypder3 hardware. I’m particularly interested to hear from owners of Spyder4Pro who have successfully calibrated their U2711 in a Microsoft Windows 7 environment, and the settings used.