Monitor for editing???

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sarahkaye

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Name
sarah kaye
Edit My Images
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I'm looking for a monitor which can be calibrated easily. It must be very acurate so I can simply colour manage my images by eye and take my files straight to the pro lab for prints. Any ideas? I'm not looking to pay the earth.....maybe an ebay bargain?

Sarah K:)
 
How will you be calibrating the monitor? With a device or by eye?
 
sarahkaye said:
I'm looking for a monitor which can be calibrated easily. It must be very acurate so I can simply colour manage my images by eye and take my files straight to the pro lab for prints. Any ideas? I'm not looking to pay the earth.....maybe an ebay bargain?

Sarah K:)
Click to expand...


But what if the lab have not colour managed using your eye's - the prints will look different ?, i think you'll need a monitor calibrator
 
IPS monitors are the most colour accurate, but as the previous posters have mentionned a hardware calibrator will be needed and probably a better investment than a new monitor...
 
iv been looking at monitors latley and found a couple that look good..



Dell 2707WFP 27" UltraSharp

Dell 2707W 27" UltraSharp

im not sure what the differences are, on ebay a guy said the WFP was the more expencive but Dell dont seem to sell them anymore so it could have been more expencive but not as good as the new model..

My friend has a Hanns G 28" that looks great but im not sure how it is for editing. its cheap though..

Id prefer the Dell as its a proven brand but i need help too!! lol..
 
The LCD market at the moment seems to be flooded with wide gamut monitors which is great for gamers, watching movies, etc. but rubbish for calibration. Only the latest calibration devices will handle the extra saturation and once calibrated your desktop looks like it's in cartoon land, generally everything grey will have a strong red/pink cast because the OS doesn't deal with colour spaces. Images in a colour managed app will look correct but the strong cast to everything else is really off putting. The cheaper TN monitors don't have this "feature". My "cheap" Samsung 205bw is a TN panel but calibrates perfectly and looks great, it's bizarre that I can't find a high end panel to compete with it :nuts:

The only monitor I could find that had a decent panel tech and wasn't wide gamut was the BenQ FP214W - a 24" M-PVA panel that first appeared in 2006 and has had good reviews, it's about £370 at the moment. Hopefully I'll be picking one up next week...
 
Arnt they S-PVA?? or is it S-IPS for the Dell's? :thinking:

All i know is there are a lot of monitors out now that look great but the price REALLY varies!! Im happy to pay for a good monitor, but im not bothered too much about name.. so if theres a monitor make in Korea thats as good as say, the Dell. then id like to know about it.. but i think the cheaper panels can be a little hit and miss.. this monitor here was over £400 3-4 years ago.. but its really crap!! it has a 25ms refresh and im missing a lot of fine detail in my pictures!! so i need t replace it asap..
 
The Dell 2408 is S-PVA, the 30" model is S-IPS. Both panels have better viewing angles than the cheaper TN but as I said they also have the wider gamut which is, for me at least, far worse than the viewing angle.

The colour cast you get after calibration in anything that isn't colour managed is really noticable, editing an image photoshop surrounded with a red/pink interface is hard to work with. That the panel has the extra colour space is great, it's the OS that needs to adapt but that will take time which is a real shame :(
 
This one

Its a bit more than £370!

So, any idea if the Dell is a good option then? i should imagine its a VAST improvement for me but in the general scheme of things?
 
Iv just found it at Dabs.. here thats a better price..
 
same spec as the Dell buy way more expensive..
 
I should add that another issue with the wide gamut monitors is banding. Bear with me as it gets a little complicated...

Because the monitor can show more saturation than is available in sRGB when you calibrate the profile is in effect throwing away some of the rgb values the monitor can display, let's say you profile and the red value of 220 is the at the saturation limit for sRGB. That means the reds from 221-255 won't be used by any colour managed s/w so with an 8 bit image you're now trying to represent 256 shades in 220 steps which means some steps will be doubled up because no shade is available.

Any s/w that isn't colour managed will use all the red values but of course it's not how the print would look. 255 red on a wide gamut monitor is VERY saturated, way beyond what you could get on a print from most labs, even the high end places because they all use sRGB.

I know I'm coming down heavy on these monitors but this is a real problem for colour management - wide gamut is good only if your destination device supports it too and unfortunately we're not there yet so these monitors will only lead to more headaches for people trying to get their around colour calibration and screen to print matching :(
 
so not all s-ips and m-pva monitors are good then? how do you know which ones to go for?? im now lost with this all!! i thought the Dell ultra sharp ones would be great!!

All i need is a 26-28" monitor good enough to give me a good chance to edit properly..
 
:popcorn:
 
fraggle101 said:
so not all s-ips and m-pva monitors are good then? how do you know which ones to go for?? im now lost with this all!! i thought the Dell ultra sharp ones would be great!!

All i need is a 26-28" monitor good enough to give me a good chance to edit properly..
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You and me both.

The S-IPS and PVA montiors are good in terms of viewing angle and general image quality. The problem is only with the extra saturation bandwagon that the manufacturers seemed to have all jumped on to. Even Apple's LED screen have the same problem.

For years sRGB was a standard that worked well. It suited both monitors and printers alike. Now the monitors suddenly reproduce far more saturated colours and it's all gone very wrong.

Yes you can calibrate the new monitors but the banding is an issue and the user interface and anything else not being colour managed looks ghastly as a result and there's no way around that until colour management is done at an OS level for rendering everything not just images tagged with a profile.

The BenQ is a good monitor, 24" is plenty big enough I found and there are probably others around. Basically avoid anything that says Wide Colour Gamut or 92% Colour Gamut - the panels for sRGB work are around 76% Colour Gamut if the spec lists it.

TN panels are another option but on a large screen the viewing angle does become more of an issue - the tech has improved but you still have to consider your position in front of the monitor for colour critical work. My current monitor is a TN panel but it does calibrate to within a hair's width of perfect and prints match very well.

The Samsung SM-245T is another good 24" monitor (S-PVA) but not widely available and pretty pricey too when compared with similar spec models.

edit to add:

Putting this in context (assuming my maths aren't wrong). A wide gamut monitor is 92% colour gamut and sRGB is around 76% which is 82% of the wider model. 256 * 0.82 = 211 so when calibrated the wide gamut monitor only uses rgb values from 0 - 210 which equates to around 9.2m colours instead of 16.7m. Of course this is a rough estimate but does highlight the problem :(
 
Isn't there an NEC monitor specifically for photogs? Well they are called photo edition WE link, maybe they would be worth a go...
 
have a look at pc pro website and A list - very detailed reviews, i have the samsunf BW226 VERY happy with it
 
Dogfish_magnet said:
But what if the lab have not colour managed using your eye's - the prints will look different ?, i think you'll need a monitor calibrator
Click to expand...

I set my display up by eye to suit myself and leave the final adjustment for print to the lab. If the job is colour critical they will usually do a proof strip for approval.
 
The NEC Photo Edition monitors are very good but very expensive too, if you're looking at that route Lacie are also worth considering...
 
Best bet is to weigh off the extra cost of a pro spec display vs trusting your job to a lab which uses pro spec displays and calibrates them and their printers and their chemicals and their operators etc on a commercially regular basis. I took delivery of a 26" display recently, generic brand, quality panel, £250+ del. It's as good (visually to me) as the best of show at my local Calumet. Further reading + some interesting calibration device reviews.
 
Digimate 26" with DVI & VGA + HDMI for the same price, including dead pixel check and next day. (no, that's not my 'photographer' review)

The HDMI in is useful and rare at this price point. The screen is matte, not glossy.

The panel is (apparently) by Sharp and I have no complaints about it. Slight adjustment to the gamma in Catalyst Control and that's it. I'll calibrate it sometime, maybe.

I was going to go for the smaller benQ at £350+ P&P but I'm glad I didn't.
 
that looks like good value, but is it a good panel? having a fast refresh and nice colours is just not enough, im prepared to spend more cash but i dont HAVE to!! so if this is a good 26" monitor then id get it..

I think i'll wait for some of the more knowledgable guys to have their say.. ;)
 
Going by the viewing angles and price I would say it's a TN panel.
 
Folks, on this very subject can anyone recommend a laptop screen that is good for photo editing? I prefer a lightweight laptop around 13-14.1in screen, lightweight and powerful...any particular series of laptops have a suitable screen e.g. Sony X-Black, Dell XPS etc.?
 
The Sony X-Black monitors (like most monitors these days) are glossy finish, not really the best for editing on. Neither are 13in screens tbh, I've got a Macbook with a 13.3" screen but do 90% of my editing on an external monitor as you just can't get enough of the image on such a small screen along with all the controls etc.
 
Most laptop screens have very poor viewing angles, the colour temp is set very blue (and can't be changed) so they really aren't ideal for editing. There are a few around designed for photographers but you're probably looking at nearly 2k for one and I thing the screens are 17" on those.

Laptop's are ideal for a quick review, client slideshow, on site backup, etc. but for serious editing I think they're far from ideal :(
 
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