Wide Gamut Displays & Colorimeters

## Wide Gamut Displays and Colorimeters

With the introduction of more wide color gamut displays, many people are finding that their Colorimeter instruments don't work so well on them. Why is this, and what can be done about it ?

### What's the difference between a Colorimeter and a Spectrometer ?

Colorimeters and Spectrometers both have the same aim: to measure tri-stimulus color values, but they go about this in two quite different ways.
A spectrometer breaks the captured light up into a narrow series of wavelengths, measures the response at each of the wavelengths, and then weights and sums each wavelength response by the Standard Observer weighting curves, to arrive at the CIE XYZ tri-stimulus values. Because a Spectrometer computes the Standard Observer weightings in software, the accuracy of the curves is nearly perfect, the primary errors being due to wavelength calibration errors, spectrum calibration errors, and the quantised nature of the discrete wavelength bands.
A Colorimeter uses physical filters that approximate the Standard Observer weighting curves to filter the captured light onto three sensors, the sensor values then
being measured, and then multiplied by a 3x3 calibration matrix to arrive at the CIE XYZ tri-stimulus values. The main advantage of a Colorimeter is its simplicity, which results in a lower cost instrument. In theory it is also possible to make a Colorimeter that cheaply captures more light by using larger sensors, but this possibility is rarely exploited by low cost instruments. Also due to cost constraints, the physical filters used in these instruments may not be a very good match to the CIE Standard Observer weightings, and if nothing were done about it, this would result in large measurement errors. Because such Display Colorimeters are typically used with additive, 3 colorant displays, it is possible to calibrate these errors out for any particular display, and this is the purpose of the 3x3 calibration matrix that is used by the instrument and/or instrument drivers. Since the calibration depends on the spectral characteristics of the display primaries, no single calibration matrix will be perfect for all display technologies, and typically the instruments will come with two matrices, one for "typical" CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) type displays, and one for "typical" LCD (Liquid Crystal) type displays. Each individual Colorimeter may have slightly different filters to others of the same model, due to batch variations in the filter material. If each Colorimeter is calibrated against a reference instrument, then this source of error can also be minimised.

### Why don't Colorimeters work so well on Wide Gamut displays ?

As explained above, due to the imperfect match between the Colorimeter filters and CIE Standard Observer weighting curves, Colorimeters have calibration matrices that are created for "typical" CRT or LCD displays. A Wide Gamut display by its very nature has primaries that have narrower spectral characteristics than typical displays, and this spectral difference exacerbates the approximations and errors in the Colorimeter filters.
Since Spectrometers have mathematically computed weighting curves, they are less sensitive to the spectral characteristics of the display primary colors, and generally work better on Wide Gamut displays.

### What can be done about this ?

There are three approaches to addressing this problem:
One is to use a Spectrometer to measure Wide Gamut displays. Since lower cost Spectrometers are now available (e.g. Color Munki Design/Photo), this may be the best general solution, since a Spectrometer offers a good deal more flexibility and display technology independence than a Colorimeter. Spectrometers are more expensive than colorimeters though, and typical low cost instruments are not well compensated for temperature changes (making reliable black measurement somewhat tricky), and may take longer, or be less accurate at measuring low light levels than the best colorimeters.
The second approach is to correct the Colorimeter for the specific type of Wide Gamut Display. Often this is what has been done when a Colorimeter ("Puck") is supplied with a Wide Gamut display :- the 3x3 calibration matrix inside the Colorimeter will have been "tuned" to match the display, or the Colorimeter driver or color management software will include an additional 3x3 correction matrix for that Colorimeter/Display combination.
The third approach is to make a colorimeter that has filters that are closer to the standard observer curves, reducing the calibration needed for the instrument, and making it less dependent on the exact type of display technology. The X-Rite i1 DisplayPro, Pantone ColorMunki Display and possibly the Spyder 4 may have such an improvement.
Argyll V1.3.0 has a facility to create and apply a correct matrix to Colorimeter measurements. To create the correction matrix, the display, the Colorimeter and a reference Spectrometer are needed. (see ccxxmake). The correction matrix can then be used with the usual display measurement utilities (see dispcal, dispread and spotread -X option).
Some recent colorimeters take a slightly different approach to calibration, and rather than using pre-defined 3x3 calibration matricies, they instead contain the spectral sensitivity curves for each particular colorimeter (e.g. i1 DisplayPro and ColorMunki Display, Spyder 4). It's then possible to create 3x3 calibration matricies automatically for any display for which the spectral characteristics are known. This makes it easy to tailor the colorimeters measurements to a particular type of display without having to cater for each colorimeter & display combination. ccxxmake also allows creation of these Colorimeter Calibration Spectral Sample files.