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I recently acquired the ASUS PA248Q screen for photo processing (and everyday use and gaming: I have just that one display). This display offers a "sRGB" mode.
Right now the screen is configured to use the "standard mode", should I use the "sRGB mode" instead?
I see that the colors are not exactly the same between the 2 modes, but which one is the best? If that's sRGB, why isn't it enabled by default?
Am I supposed to use it only for specific situations?
Normally you would use sRGB mode. It is the most common denominator. Keep in mind that this mode is not calibrated, so your sRGB colors will be different from other sRGB colors. They should be closer.
Once in sRGB mode your monitor may not be able to show colors which are outside of sRGB color-space which is why sRGB is not the default mode. The truly odd thing is that those particular colors are kind of random until you calibrate your display!
If you do calibrate your display, you can revert back to the default mode (called Native on some monitors) and then all color-management-aware application will be able to:
However, non color-managed applications will still show colors wrong and they will be MORE wrong in default mode than in sRGB mode. So which one to use in the end will depend on what non color-managed applications you use to look at images. This may include your web-browser depending on which one and version you use.
sRGB looks very good, I would recommend if for everyday use or viewing photos since it shows the true colors (w/ my sRGB)
HOWEVER, if you are also a gamer as you state, you should consider changing to Game/gaming mode while gaming. This is very crucial for gaming monitors.
My monitor is 144Hz and w/ gaming mode it's really unbelievable how you can notice input lag w/ other modes. Give out a try game mode when you play your next game.
Due to me being picky to my sensitivity I always have game mode ON so my muscle memory stays in tact w/ the fastest input speed.
Remember, if you want speed game/gaming mode is the way to go. If you want good picture sRGB all the way. Remember that gaming mode might not look at crisp for pictures...but takes away that crispness in order to respond faster.
This comment doesn't address your question directly but may help add to your thinking about other modes for using the monitor for future applications. I have the PA248Q too, and really like it = have found it to be an excellent monitor.
The PA248Q is supposed to be colour calibrated by Asus before shipping it out. Mine arrived with a printed form that showed all the results of that calibration; hopefully yours did too.
I use it primarily for photography and have set two custom "User Modes", which are the two I use all the time (rather than any of the defaults it came with): one is for when I'm working on images for web or screen use only (which is the one I use most of the time), and the other for images I'm going to print. The two modes look quite different: the Web one looks very much brighter than the print one - this is important for photo printing as otherwise I will be fooled by an over-bright monitor into thinking that my image is brighter than it really is, and it will print out too dark.
For the Web one, I have the colour temperature set to 6500 K, gamma at 2.2, and brightness at 25 (could probably go higher on latter but it seems easier on my eyes to keep it fairly low).
For the print mode I have the colour temp at 5000K, gamma at 1.8, brightness at 12.
Hue, saturation & contrast are also settable; mine are about the middle and I can't recall whether I set those myself or it showed them as default when I set up the user modes.
These seem to work well for my purposes. Not sure what the ideal colour temmp, gamma, & other settings might be for gaming, but some web searching would probably turn up some useful info on this. Good luck, and enjoy the monitor!
