Why do Monitors Display Colors Differently?

It seems like it shouldn't be too hard for monitors to just all look the same - so why don't they?
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Thanks to Tyler from SpectraCal for giving us an assist with this episode.
License for image used in this video: creativecommon...

[@disco.jellyfish]

2:18 "255 shades of ..." and "1023 shades of..." - This is a huge misconception. "0" is also a value. And in this case we start counting at 0, not 1.

[@k.cooper8816]

The correct numbers should be 256 and 1024 - which are respectively 2^8 and 2^10. That's how "8bits" and "10bits" are named.

[@xodius80]

Why does luke look Green?

[@daniellee6912]

he *is* green

[@Henrix1998]

He's from Mars

[@kolonmelon8173]

he's shrek

[@Dan-mj4ux]

Somthing to do with the green screen and lighting.

[@mokahless]

He's a Vulcan.

[@5urg3x]

I would love an update to this video that explains how hdr and rec2020 ties into all this, with an explanation of how modern displays handle both SDR and hdr content etc

[@Balomis]

It's important to note that though sRGB is the web-standard colour space, the number of monitors that can accurately match 100% of that is surprisingly few and limited to the more expensive variety. Also, 10-bit panels require video cards capable of 10-bit output, so for 100% Adobe RGB coverage you're looking at a Quadro or a Firestrike, sadly no GeForce support...

[@JackLe1127]

uhhhhh i thought 8 bit provides 2^8 = 256 (0 to 255) different levels. 10 bit gives 2^10 = 1024 different levels. even though they cap at one bellow the number of levels, you have to count 0 too.

[@The8BitRobot]

That is indeed the case.

[@factsverse9957]

So what he means by 8-bit is a 32-bit display (8 per channel, with 256 levels of transparency or RGBA) or sometimes 24-bit display. 10-bit ones are 40-bit displays.

[@JackLe1127]

Kenji Gunawan I don't think we need the alpha channel for displays...

[@kaseyklynstra2210]

Technically, the value that corresponds to black/no light transmission is not a shade of any color, so 256 - 1 = 255.

[@4RT1LL3RY]

On the hardware side Alpha doesn't have its own channel, that only matters on the software side. So a display with 16.7 million colors is is 2^24, 8 bits per channel with 3 different channels for RGB. 10-bit color displays are 30bit so they can display 2^30 colors which is slightly more than a billion.

[@Duder5000]

Wait, wait, wait, computer can do more than watch I Love Lucy reruns?

[@SimonSalmon]

No it is just a joke man, wake up! That would never happen!

[@10goni]

256 values. zero is also a value...

[@caseythimm5522]

Preach!

[@10goni]

computer amatures!

[@srshooturface]

yeah, isn't 0-255 thus being 256 values?

[@kittyrules]

zerolivesmatter

[@Aughl]

Also 1024 values for 10 bit (0-1023)

[@ElNeroDiablo]

"There are FOUR lights!" I mean circles. XD

[@Jenairaslebol27merde]

xDD

[@FlameRat_YehLon]

I have a color guide I bought at a relatively low price (almost only a quarter of it's original price, still not cheap though), and I kinda only use that when I'm designing print media stuffs, which I rarely do because it's neither my job nor my major in school. Just in case. Because the color on a monitor is a lot different from how it looks on a piece of paper. I learned that the hard way, seriously. For example, sky-blue seems to blend in with white on a typical monitor, but the same color can contrast with white quite well when printed on paper. Without such knowledge I won't be able to use such color properly, since I have no ink-jet aside for printing out demos.

[@user4241]

The cyan in your monitor seems to blend in with white because it's fake; it's a mixture of blue and green light, while the printer's cyan is the real color, with its own wavelength.

[@AureliusR]

You mean 256 and 1024.... zero is also a possible value in a colour mapping.

[@TaufikAkbar7]

but 0 is not shade of red in real world

[@AureliusR]

Taufik Akbar Yes it is. It's black.

[@forrotamas]

"Technically, the value that corresponds to black/no light transmission is not a shade of any color, so 256 - 1 = 255." - from a comment above

[@AureliusR]

forrotamas That makes no sense. Black is a shade of every colour.

[@forrotamas]

i guess the comment was about OLED displays. it seems like it differs from other typs of screen technology. but i am no expert in this field at all!!

[@SimskeD]

Good overview over the topic! But I think you have on mistake in there: RGB is a additive color space, which mean that an individual channel varies from black to full saturated color, white is all channels on the highest level.

[@user4241]

Yes.

[@cashy57]

Speaking of color... Your video needs to be color balanced more to the magenta side. I might be hallucinating, but it does seem to have a slight greenish cast. p.s. I attended school in digital imaging.

[@PsychonautTV]

It's obvious, Idk if they used luts, but their color correction is horrid lol

[@SCRedstone]

1:33 "Thee-a-ter" wat

[@vaderlander7122]

Is it just me or has Luke been sunbathing with UV-resistant glasses or something?

[@slawor4]

More like ski glasses

[@faylow6416]

He's turning yellow... well fuck simpson are real xD

[@lpgsk]

Actually I would suggest a liver examination, because that really is not a healthy color, no matter what monitor you look at. (Confirmed with dual monitor setup and also analog just to be sure)

[@Jomczx]

+1. Even if its most probably nothing. better safe than sorry

[@Smithy318i]

It might just be your monitor !

[@purpaturta1645]

3:13 I can see the first circle on my primary monitor but not on my second, this is pretty neato

[@Shalomrutere]

3:14 I literally saw the darkest circle at full brightness.

[@Catishcat]

2:23 - WHERE IS 50 SHADES OF GRAY JOKE :c

[@ExtremePotato]

Of course its more of a problem now then it was before, they didnt have colour back then! It was all black and white!

[@pyruvatepersonage]

I'm colorblind, so I honestly could not care less about color discrepancies between monitors. Despite my lack of interest in the "problematic" nature of monitor color reproduction, I find this video to be very informative. Thanks for the insight, Techquikie!

[@Hewitt_himself]

but better gradients of colour must be useful for you. More shades of whatever colour/s you see

[@pyruvatepersonage]

good point!

[@tonyhong20]

My AMOLED display on my OP3 could only display the first circle at max brightness while my IPS display on my 2013 N7 could display all of them perfectly.

[@AtikBayraktar]

Aside from panel technologies which I really like IPS types, I want to know these things; 1) For 10-bit color support, do the games and movies also have to support it? 2) For adobergb profile, do the games and movies also have to support it? 3) If you have a monitor that has 99% adoberbg space do you have to set it in windows color profile settings for general? Because like I said aside from panel techs whether you choose TN, IPS or OLED you will definitely spot the difference of brightness, contrast and color reproduction... But if you go and buy a 10 or 12-bit display with 100% AdobeRBG space I suspect you will also need a source material (games, photos or movies) that also support these. Am I right? Please answer. :).

[@nuclearreactor7058]

still waiting on oled monitors

[@nuclearreactor7058]

*****​ guess I'm not getting one for a while

[@corydidit2879]

You might be able to get around a 32 inch oled TV. Just make sure it has monitor like specs, in terms of delay

[@lucastalbert1087]

+Cory Hatcher A tv doesn't have as good of a refresh rate or response time...

[@corydidit2879]

+Lucas Talbert 60 hz is good enough. You can get better as well in Oled tvs. There are 5m and lower tvs as well, for oled

[@nuclearreactor7058]

Lucas Talbert to bad I can't afford oled tvs

[@jannikmalter8049]

the images at 2:18 are misleading. RGB is an additive color space and white is a mix of all three colors, so the scale should be from BLACK to saturated red, green or blue.

[@leahsutter3929]

Most ~$100 1080p monitors are 6bpp (6-bit per pixel), so they can not display SRGB and use color profiles and dithering. FYI: I am a generational-natural American United States citizen who spell "colour".

[@ganaraminukshuk0]

I got two TN and one IPS monitors. The difference is like night and day. Before that, it was the same two TN monitors and a smaller TN monitor, all from the same manufacturer. Before that, it was that same smaller monitor and a different monitor from a different manufacturer but with a defect with the screen. Before THAT, it was that defective monitor and yet a smaller monitor from yet another manufacturer. Before THAT, it was that yet smaller monitor and an identical monitor but with its own defects, including dead pixels. Imagine colour calibrating those mismashed monitors. On the other hand, I'm so used to TN screens that an IPS screen is like, whoa, what just happened?

[@troyBORG]

Yes I see all 4 circles, on my top TN monitor its really hard to see the 1st one. But on my Bottom IPS monitor it is clearly visible.

[@brycemw]

"Watch I love Lucy reruns" Luke from Linus Media Group 2016. Already done sir.

[@xAKIMBOCURLYx]

0:19 that's a funny way of drawing the union jack -_-

[@ged4]

Only professional monitors are 100% sRGB wide, usually monitors are like 80% of sRGB spectrum or something like that because is rarely in the specs.

[@Akkerbouwer]

My two identical monitors display colors a bit different aswell, even all setting are the same. Only difference being the connector used (HDMI & HDMI-dvi converted). So I was surprised you didnt mention the different kinds of connectors having an effect on the display colors

[@TalesOfWar]

HDMI and DVI should have no difference in output given the video signal in HDMI is literally DVI. It's electronically identical. You start seeing a more drastic difference when you use things like VGA or DisplayPort.

[@World_Theory]

Opponent color theory is an interesting topic, that may go well with this video. Opponent color is used in the CIE Lab colorspace. Also… Using colorspaces other than sRGB can hurt your image quality, if you don't know enough about how they work, and make mistakes as a result. If your image editing software supports 16bits per color channel (or higher), you should switch your image to that before you convert your image to a different colorspace, keep it in that mode while editing, and convert it back to 8bits per channel only after you have converted your image to its final colorspace (sRGB usually); this will reduce the size/depth/severity of rounding errors (or whatever the errors are called in this case) that would be caused by making the same number of values represent a larger range of colors. Kinda like using only two digits of Pi to calculate something really sensitive, instead of twice as many, or more digits of Pi. If you have many more digits of Pi than you need though: waste.

[@honey4xi]

How can you justified the color accuracy for various screens products such as: LED screen OLED screen Retina screen Plasma screen is dead When I print a photo from my MacBook Pro LCD screen to the Epson printer that prints the image more color accuracy than that of the HP, Canon, or some other printers.

[@Ryzza5]

Makes you wonder why Apple go to so much trouble with their displays when they could just say "You're seeing it wrong" to all their customers. =)

[@Luredreier]

Nice video, but you should have included the Rec. 2020 color space when you where displaying the color spaces so more people could become aware of it.

[@ExplodoPantsuit]

No mention at all of the fact that most monitors and televisions don't come pre-calibrated, and are going to have wonky settings from the get-go. I spent 5 hours trying to get my most recent monitor calibrated properly from the factory settings.

[@pingpong1138]

You just gave me an idea to try and use my computer in only black and white for a week

[@Mat2095]

Everybody is pointing out that it should be 256 values, not 255. Bot did nobody notice that when going from pure white to pure blue, it is the blue channel that stays the same, while the other channels change? (It should be from pure black to pure blue)

[@SethPentolope]

Hmm I believe 8 bits provide 256 different values, as 8^2=256, this seems to be getting mixed up with the highest value being 255, because 0 is a valid value too. Also, wouldn't it be black to fully saturated color? Because a value of 0 for all colors would be black and a value of 255 for all would be white (also for example a value with only red being on would be a range between black to dark red to bright red).

[@yaseen157]

The source images at 0:51 and 0:52. I would like to see Dennis and Linus recreate those.

[@georgef551]

CORRECTION: The shades of colors from an 8-bit system goes from BLACK, to full intensity of whichever RGB channel (or all three).

[@reecer2910]

Is this the one filmed during the WAN show?

[@trulygg]

I set my monitors to "warm" and change it up a little to have them match, then I constantly have flux active. Needless to say my colors are super off and I love it.

[@hoofed]

Even if you buy an expensive monitor you will still need to calibrate it with a tri-stimulus colorimeter if you want an accurate profile. This cannot be done by eye. If you’re on a budget and can’t afford a new colorimeter you can check the list of supported models on the DisplayCAL website and then pick one up from eBay. Pros will sell their old colorimeters for cheap because they are no longer supported, without realising that they can still be used even with the latest operating systems, including Linux.

[@da_pikmin_coder8367]

There's probably already a video about this but I'm wondering why a laptop's monitor's screen colors look different at certain angles while my desktop's monitor's screen colors look just about the same at most angles.

[@TalesOfWar]

Your laptop display is most likely a TN panel and your desktop is likely an IPS.

[@da_pikmin_coder8367]

TalesOfWar Ah, thanks.

[@bobthecannibal1]

Get a calibration spider. Even the cheapest (spyder2, for example) ones will get all the screens of a multihead setup to "close as makes no difference" Even my six year old screen can see the four circles.

[@edweagle]

Wow... knew there was a difference between my ancient dell 2407wfp ips display and my generic 19" tn panel... but never really seen it til the contrast circles... like night and day

[@jjfitz10]

"The-eh-ter mode"... You know you're Canadian when...

[@levoGAMES]

What are you talking aboot?

[@WellBeSerious12]

I had a cheap 4K 8-bit monitor that failed. Now I have a 1080p 12-bit TV. The colors stand out SOOO MUUUCH MOOOAR.

[@Arunscape]

I've always wondered if people percieve colour differently. LIke what if we both see a colour that we call 'green' but in reality I (or you, it doesn't matter) see the colour purple instead, but we just learned to call that colour by what everyone else calls it. What if you see trees as being blue and the sky green, but you learned to call those colours green and blue, respectively

[@motoryzen]

" like" what if people stop saying " like" before and/or after each sentence ( or their piss poor excuses for sentences)? "Like" what if people took a break from trashbook.com to stop the " like like, slike slike, and Just saying " conversational disease spreading? Oh, you forgot to bobble your head sharply to the side to look " LIKE" the typical idiot teenie bopper who " likes" all day.

[@RyanMartinez]

2:18 Isn't it 256 shades of color ranging from 0 to 255 (rather than 1 to 256, though you could express it that way, but it's still 256 shades)?

[@calllen]

I have 2 identical monitors, one connected with HDMI, and one connected with DVI, they have exactly the same settings, and are both connected to the same graphics card. They display colours slightly differently. Why.

[@srinivasbogineni4616]

Can u tell me technology behind how colours are changed in displays in microseconds

[@lwfeagan]

Perhaps a future video should cover how to stage an intervention when a friend is obsessed with spray-on-tans (Luke).

[@niklasxl]

256 values. 255 is the largest value but you start from zero and it also counts as a value.

[@karlmartin617]

underwater radars what fisherman use as fast as possible

[@Sjwatts]

so sonar detection as fast as possible

[@karlmartin617]

+Sjwatts yeah my bad

[@Sjwatts]

Karl Martin Its all good man :)

[@Bouche4Dag]

MIssed opportunity, should've mentioned OLED to make it a bit more "futureproof". Good video though, explains it every well.

[@iKn-ft2bc]

3:14 watching this on an oled i instantly saw the 1st circle left thats darkest

[@newRockHall]

The legend says if you are early, @Techquickie will reply to you. Is the legend true?

[@dennisplayinglacrosse]

No.

[@eminsarabsky6368]

it's not. Piss off.

[@Mr2ndAmmendment]

+Emin Sarabsky or fuck off if you're found from the US

[@eminsarabsky6368]

Mr.2ndAmmendment​ What are you saying? You're sentence doesn't make any sense.

[@dennisplayinglacrosse]

+Emin Sarabsky Your*

[@xnamkcor]

I love that for some reason, we are forced to use KZbin comments to discuss these videos. There's a perfectly good LTT forum, but somebody decided that Tech Quickie videos don't get official discussion topics. Who're the forum wizards who came up with that one?

[@feynstein1004]

Probably someone who knew that more people would comment on KZbin than on the forum.

[@xnamkcor]

Feynstein 100 More, yes, but the reason the forum exists in the fist place is to have a moderatable place with an actual forum structure to the comments and to have a meaningful discussion.

[@xnamkcor]

Feynstein 100 And that doesn't account for all other Linus videos getting official topics on the LTT forum.

[@feynstein1004]

xnamkcor X Well, the average YT user, such as myself, wouldn't bother to go on the forum. But I guess you do have a point. If LTT has a forum then Techquickie should, too. No sense in denying the people who'd want to go there.

[@Extra_Mental]

You spelled colour wrong in the title.

[@SuperClawMachine3756]

different countries equals different spelling in the US it is spelledm correctly

[@Extra_Mental]

Who cares about the US? Also they are a Canadian media company, even in the video they show how they spell it. Btw, nice spelling of "spelled".

[@CrackedDylMil]

+Extra Mental you should if you have a computer, AMD, NVIDIA, Intel, Samsung, Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Google, Sony, etc are all based in America.

[@mokahless]

+bigmama15 lol did you do that on purpose? incase your there Us

[@nallid7357]

+Extra Mental A lot of people care about it, as the US is the only reason why their economy is running and the trade value is still high and the GPD and market sales are worth anything. Also, for making English a universal language along side with French and creating the internet in which you can bitch on like a child, like you currently are. Yep, but who cares, right?

[@swsephy]

I use two Samsung monitors but they are different models and I tried for a long time to get them to look the same. Ended up getting them close enough and stopped. Luckily it doesn't bother me like I thought it would.

[@neilmoulang90]

Hey! I didn't know Canada spelt colour like Britain, good on you Canada!

[@Vladek16]

i was waiting for this video :) thanks you for the content awesome !

[@K3V0M]

I really hate that every monitor looks different... I recently took family photos for my neighbors. On my (Dell IPS) display it looked fine with a light orange tone (it was in the evening so the sun was pretty low already) and on their (shitty) laptop it looked horribly green. Of course that's just really bad calibration by the manufacturer but it's soooooo annoying. I was asked if I could fix that but I told them that it looked fine on my, definitely better, display and if I add magenta to the photo it will look fine on their screen but probably even worse on others.

[@Debrugger]

I just noticed a few days ago how different my two 150€ BenQ Panels look. One is complete garbage, with terrible blacks and washed out color, even after many hours of calibration and messing around with the settingd.

[@TalesOfWar]

Someone at work has two identical LG IPS displays (around the £150 mark each so not exactly amazing, but still decent). One is far, far brighter than the other and also quite a bit more accurate. They were both bought at the same time and are from the same batch so it shows just how much variance you can get. This is one reason they charge so much for the higher end models. They're way more consistent. I use two Dell U2410's at work and both are damn near perfectly the same when calibrated. They were like £600 displays when they were new and you can see why. I used to rock one of those at home too but I replaced it with a UP2716D to sit by my iMac. Such a nice upgrade, but mostly for the far more even backlight (it's LED rather than florescent).

[@letsgoBrandon204]

What's the difference between 10bit panels and 8+2bit panels? Also, why are people so concerned about viewing angles? Who looks at their monitor at any angle other than practically perpendicular to the screen?

[@juanmunoz7729]

For 10 bit color, doesn't that make it go from 444 to 420?

[@monsterGLL]

Dear Luke RGB is additve Color mixing 0 is Black NOT White.

[@jimitSoni]

1:59 prophoto RGB displays colours not visible to eye?

[@CocoaNutTF2]

Weren't the later seasons of I Love Lucy in color?

[@maxheadrom3088]

To be honest, I would love to have a large super sharp/fast display.

[@nevinzavell4207]

Is just me or do some of the recent LTT videos have a bit of blue shift?

[@yimingmao]

For monitors, it should be pure black to fully saturated colour(RGB).

[@user-yb9bm9me3h]

0:51 You said bedroom twice?

[@danielgysi5729]

This was filmed during a WAN Show. Linus promised internet points to anyone who mention's it in the comments

[@ollpu]

Actually, it's 256 different values (in 8 bits). Zero is also a thing...

[@user-dx8nj7qj2g]

i dont understand i have 2 monitors their the same brand and are using the same branded hdmi cord but one looks slightly darker then the other

[@KolinMc]

So I have a GTX670 and 3x xl2411t monitors. Two are connected via dvi and one connected via display port. Why would the display port one have different colour reproduction? The display port one looks more washed out.

[@CheahMichael]

Hey Techquickie team, do you mind doing a difference between RGB and CYMK colour mode?

[@computer5272]

Where's the standard for colors? Who decides when a color is correct and when it is not quite right? This sounds like a bunch of semantics and BS to me.

[@jannikheidemann3805]

You can measure the wavelength.

[@filipivan5125]

Not sure if that awful white balance job was intentional in the video about monitor colours or u just cant keep it consistent ever :/

[@28TheJasc]

2:29 and the 50 shades of gray?

[@SKRlTY]

AMD GCN techquickie please!

[@VeteaTOOMARU]

this host is getting better ! linus ll have to reinvent himself to keep up soon ! good job guys !

[@palpabhairabfotonvideohous438]

linus's ad?? i didn't skipped ..

[@ParadoxdesignsOrg]

Thanks Luke!

[@hoangtran4736]

so that's why i hate using a hdmi cable to connect my laptop to my tv to watch movies. i just feel horrible no matter how much i adjust.

[@azaryavids]

how many shades of gray?

[@bryaotic]

I gave two Asus PB278Q IPS monitors but they have different colors. Why would that happen if they are the same model?

[@ATTESAHICAS]

Anybody know the monitors at the start of the video?

[@rishimarwaha5601]

But my question is how colors appear on our screen. I mean how we can able to write in different colours?

[@kwett5529]

Is poorly color calibrated IPS panel still reproduce more accurate colors and better viewing angles than average TN panel?

[@TalesOfWar]

Potentially. They tend to have the capacity for it, though how accurate they are out of the box is debatable. It also doesn't really matter because you should always calibrate them in the situation they'll be used. When they calibrate them at the factory they're calibrated for the factory. Your lighting conditions are extremely unlikely to be the same.

[@kwett5529]

+TalesOfWar Thanks for the explanation. I am looking at the Dell inspiron 7559 notebook, which some reviewers say its IPS display is not well calibrated, the color is somewhat inaccurate. How do I recalibrate notebook's display?

[@TalesOfWar]

Andri Herawan The same way as a desktop display. Use a colorimeter. You can pick them up for a reasonable amount though unless you're planning to calibrate a bunch of displays or rely heavily on your display being as accurate as possible it may be best to just borrow or rent one. A lot of photography stores tend to rent them out. Try independent places rather than any big brand places. Look up the Spyder range by Datacolor. They have 3 or 4 tiers of pricing and features. There's also the ColourMunki stuff too.

[@dacelooper]

This video looks weird. The background is brighter than the foreground lighting. Also the edge around Luke is much sharper than the focus on his actual face... What's going on guys?

[@andrewstanley]

I have two Asus PB238Q's and when I set them to the same settings, they display colors differently.

[@alfredzianini9217]

Was that linus in the hacker den?

[@TitanOne1337]

Next Episode: How a Ethernet Switch works as fast as possible

[@YVZSTUDIOS]

lol. I thought this video was goingt to be about the difference between PC Monitors, Laptop monitors, SuperAMOLED displays, Smartphone displays with accurate color reproduction, TVs, RGB Full > RGB Limited, 6500K VS. 9,500 K

[@Roxor128]

Only the Canadian flag for spelling colour with a U? Should have included the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa as well.

[@bharathg8072]

0:20 Luke says Canada uses the u in color, but Luke and the whole LMG is Canadian and the title spells color without the u. Hmmm....

[@MrTurbo_]

i have 3 of the same monitors, bought them all with about 3 months between them and they all look diffrent in color =/