Colour Management Buyers Guide

In everyday life, colour management isn’t an issue that touches most people. We switch on our tablet, laptop or desktop computers and, thanks to the hard work of colour scientists and engineers, accept that what appears on the screen in front of us is an acceptable representation of the real world. But for imaging professionals (video editors, digital prepress, photographers, colourists and VFX/Graphic Artists) engaged in colour critical work, the potential world of workflow woe appears at every turn. Not all monitors are created equally. With standard computer monitors, subtle colour casts can multiply across space and time with unwanted surprises. Out in the field or in post, working alone or as part of a globally dispersed team, everyone needs to see exactly the same image characteristics every time.

Don’t panic! Help is here. We’ll talk you through the various tech on offer and discuss features such as bit depth, colour accuracy and HDR to demystify what’s best suited to various production/post activities. Choosing the correct type of display will have a major impact on your work.

Colour Space & Bit Depth Precision

sRGB (Standard Red Green Blue) is a colour space commonly used in display technology, but is only one example of a standardised use of the RGB colour model.

By defining the three Red, Green and Blue primary colour xy coordinates on the reference space CIE chromaticity diagram (see below), a triangular “footprint” within the spectral locus is generated. The space contained within the triangle represents a 2D slice of the three dimensional digital palette of available or realisable colour combinations, including black and white points. Referred to as the panel’s gamut, this is the range of colours a display is capable of reproducing which may, or may not, include all the colours defined by a specific colour space. Colours that can’t be displayed are said to be “out of gamut”. A percentage of the colour space(s) covered is usually included in the display specification and is a useful marker of their colour accuracy.

Yxy-CIE Chromacity Diagram above shows the values for the gamuts most often associated with post-production. The horse shoe shape is called the spectral locus and represents the entire range of perceptible colour. © Eizo 2015



Bit depth relates to the total number of discrete grey scale tones a display is capable of reproducing. Each pixel (picture element) contains 3 sub-pixels assigned to the primary colours - Red, Green and Blue. Bit precision therefore has a direct correlation to the digital palette of colours available and the ability to render smooth gradients without ugly tone jumps. Most professional monitors use an 8-bit panel, which equals 256 (28) steps between the deepest achievable black level and the highest white point, producing, when multiplied by each RGB sub-pixel, an array of Approx.16.77 million colours (256 x 256 x 256 = 16,777,216). Because the three sub-pixels are used to calculate bit precision, 24-bit is the technically correct term to use when discussing 8-bit technology. With a baseline of 100% sRGB and true 8-bit colour depth, the target audiences of professional general-purpose IPS panels are consumers, enthusiasts and business users who are more appreciative of the improved overall image quality, colour accuracy and wider viewing angles.

For professional users engaging in colour critical projects however, an even higher standard of colour accuracy from a reference monitor is required, and high-end wide gamut 10-bit displays (210) with support for colour spaces such as Adobe RGB, P3 and Rec. 2020 are employed in photography, prepress and post-production. It may not sound like much, but 10-bit precision makes a vast difference to image quality, achieving 1024 grey scale increments for a total of 1.07 billion colours, 64 times as many colours as you get with 8-bit display, resulting in even smoother colour gradations on screen.

Unfortunately you can't just plug a deep colour 10-bit display in to your system and ta-dah! expect ugly colour banding to vanish. Your operating system, GPU (or Video I/O Device), GPU drivers and application software need to support 10-bit output. The connection between monitor and PC is also important. If you have a DVI connection you are limited to 8-bit. DisplayPort and HDMI 1.3 support 10-bit colour, and Windows 7 and later operating systems offer 10-bit support. Apple recently included limited support for 10-bit output on some of its own displays (e.g. Retina 4K & 5K iMac) on OSX El Capitan. For GPUs, both NVIDIA Quadro and AMD FirePro graphics cards support 10-bit (30-bit) output.

Post-production editorial is changing. With more and more editors and producers performing colour correction and grading on high resolution, HDR, log or RAW media, the requirement for high-end 10-bit monitors is growing beyond the needs of dedicated grading facilities.

Controlling the viewing environment

Last but by no means least, don’t ignore your viewing environment. It is probably the weakest link in the colour management ecosystem. If you don’t have access to grading suite conditions, the next best thing is to minimize all strong light sources and position any remaining ambient light out of your line of sight. Turn off all main overhead lighting. If the space has windows, close blinds and curtains and don’t allow any reflections or glares from ambient lighting to fall on the screen. A monitor hood is a useful tool in this respect, as it masks the screen from stray ambient light. Light sources that give out an uneven light can pollute the colours you are viewing. Lights with a high CRI rating are recommended as they should produce a more even light helping to avoid alter your visual perception of your content.

Whilst it may seem like we are being fussy alternative light sources can affect your perception of an image. As a very basic example, if there is a light source that is warmer polluting your perception of the image, you may lean towards a cooler colour temperature during the grade. If you were then to view this back in a room with a cooler light source, your image may appear too blue.

For professional viewing environments, even the paint or wall coverings can affect how you perceive an image. In high end facilities it is common place to paint the walls a neutral 18% grey. In the same way that shooting a grey card during production helps when balancing your image, the same mindset can help you achieve the best quality output.

Before you make any colour decisions, allow your monitor to warm up for at least 30 minutes and give your eyes time to adjust to the controlled environmental conditions.

The best colour managed monitors

There you have it, everything you need to know when choosing a colour managed monitor. We hope you've found this buyers guide helpful. Don't hesitate to contact one of our friendly advisors for more advice if you still have questions on how to select the perfect colour managed monitor. If you’re all set to go we recommend checking out the colour managed monitors from these top brands.