Recommendations on good Monitor?

Garbz · Jul 13, 2008

iriairi that is fantastic. Spot on for every monitor I have in the house.

Easy Target, that is also a TN panel.

manaheim · Sep 2, 2008

So I'm revitalizing this search for a replacement monitor. Yay.

Probably going to pick one up in the next couple days.

I was eyeballing this NEC as it is an IPS-C panel and is rated well: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824002168

However... I'm also realizing that my color calibration tool is a very old Spyder... like one of the original ones apparently. I'm getting the *impression* that it will not really work on some of these newer displays, and that leads me to think that I also need to pickup a $269 Spyder2Elite... which is really going to blow the budget. :lol:

So, the question is... do any of these monitors have Color Calibration built in? I see some of the Eizo monitors do have something. Can I trust it? Is it at least enough to get by for a few months until I get a new Spyder?

Any thoughts?

Bifurcator · Sep 2, 2008

I can't tell you 1st hand (because I don't know!

) but from what I've read about monitors that can interface with the calibrator packages that can do such things, it's mostly a useful (time saving) feature but 10% or so of the users (less?) get wrong results. I think it's kewl if it's there but I wouldn't let the presence or absence of that feature sway my decision.

Mostly you just want to make sure it's 8-bit as I mentioned long ago. Additionally here's the pertinent information in relation to that:

Even if you regularly follow the LCD events and our tests, it is always a good idea to remind you of all the uses of some of the LCD bases.

There are hundreds of monitor manufacturers but only a few of them build the essential component: the panel. This element gathers electronic components and liquid crystals. This is the panel that will determine the monitor’s quality. Four manufacturers clearly dominate the market: Samsung, LG-Philips (in this area, these two are united), AU Optronics and CMO. Monitor manufacturers just buy a panel, design and build a bezel and combine the two of them. Now the most important part is the choice of the panel. Hundreds of products are available and are split in three families, three technologies with up and downsides.

TN panels: these are the fastest and cheapest ones. These panels are the most gifted for games but have a twinkling effect in videos and reduced viewing angles. All panel manufacturers have a TN products.

IPS: developed by Hitachi, IPS panels are ardently supported y LG-Philips and Nec. They are half-way between the TN and VA: good color quality, more or less good reaction time, very wide viewing angles…The only problem is: IPS tends to stagnate when other rival technologies progress quickly.

VA panels: launched by Fujitsu and available under the MVA denomination for AU Optronics, Sharp and CMO, PVA for Samsung, VA monitors have considerably improved LCD color quality. Until last March, however, these monitors were so slow that it was impossible to imagine them in a "gamer’s" home. Then, in April, came the release of AU Optronics the Premium MVA 8 ms in the VP191b…

http://www.behardware.com/articles/572-1/19-lcd-monitor-survey-4-8-ms-tn-ips-va.html

This is almost exactly 3 years old but I guess not all that much has changed. Others will know more.

Garbz · Sep 4, 2008

manaheim said:
However... I'm also realizing that my color calibration tool is a very old Spyder... like one of the original ones apparently. I'm getting the *impression* that it will not really work on some of these newer displays, and that leads me to think that I also need to pickup a $269 Spyder2Elite... which is really going to blow the budget.

No and NO!

Newers screens work just fine with the older calibrators. It's a question of gamut. The NEC you linked there is a Wide Gamut screen. This doesn't work with the old spyder, and it will NOT work with the Spyder2Elite either. The Spyder3 are the first calibrator from that company to handle these gamuts.

No screens have "built in" calibration as we understand it because it would mean a dirty big sensor in the middle of the screen. Many screens come with a sensor and while that one you linked to does not, the "SpectraView" model (desginated LCD2490WUXi-BK-SV) comes with an X-rite iOne Display 2 calibration unit (rebadged as NEC) and with NEC's SpectraView II software. I highly recommend this if you are getting that screen.

If you can't get it all right now don't panic. Get the screen, save or the iOne Display 2 ($245 from B&H), and then get the SpectraView software from NEC later. It's not cheap but I did try 3 separate programs with my NEC and this solution worked by far the best. (one solution even managed to hose my screen that I had to do a factory reset to get it working again!!).

/EDIT: Just noted the link with the other thread. the NEC is great for photos and colour but not to good for games. a) it's not very fast and gives me motion sickness, b) it's a wide gamut screen. Games have unnatural colours in them. which isn't much of an issue in world of warcraft and such but can be a pain at other times :lmao:. I may suggest look at one of the S-PVA panels from Dell? Perfect middle ground for gamers who want some colour accuracy too.

Bifurcator · Sep 4, 2008

I too have heard great things about Dell monitors from the CG community. Probably thee most recommended monitors and said to be on par with some of the better Eizo models.

manaheim · Sep 4, 2008

Awesome advice as always... sorry for the dual related threads, but I'm watching them both and using the advice from both to work out a plan.

I need to go look up gamut... :lol:

No matter how much I learn, I always have something else to wrangle with.

Garbz, I think your plan is going to be the one I follow... 'course the wife just told me the budget is on hold for a couple months so I expect things will change a little by the time I get to this... notably (and hopefully) the price will drop a little. :lol:

Bifurcator · Sep 4, 2008

You've heard the expression "run the gamut" or "ran the gamut"? Meaning exhausted, experienced, or completed the entire range of _____________ whatever. That's all it is with monitors too. It's just the complete range (of displayable colors) that the device is limited to. It's often used to denote that range as a "set" as in: that monitor's gamut or this printer's gamut - etc. It's more often used in describing a device dependent set as opposed to a device independent set such as a specific color-space or color profile.

Garbz · Sep 5, 2008

The problem with wide gamut screens is simply that 255,0,0 is a redder red than the normal red in the sRGB profile (most screens). Everything will need to be colourmanaged. People will look redish-pink if your image viewer doesn't adjust it to the monitors display profile. You need to use Firefox 3.x or Safari to browse the web, and definitely need to ensure photoshop is setup correctly. Other than that it's great.

Bifurcator · Sep 5, 2008

Hey (small hijack) I went ahead and installed FireFox 3.0.1 and I don't see any color management menu items or preference settings at all? Are there any or is it all just automatic?

Garbz · Sep 5, 2008

Hahahah and welcome to my anger!!!!! For something so awesome and useful they obfuscated the feature rather well and proceeded to disable it by default.

In the address bar type about:config and hit enter. Accept the warning about dragons. Search for gfx.color_management.enabled and change it from false to true. If you use any kind of hardware calibration I suggest you point gfx.color_management.display_profile to the full path of your display profile normally located in C:\WINDOWS\system32\spool\drivers\color\something.icm

Test it by going to this thread: http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1370362#post1370362 and if both of the Photos right under the heading "the source" look identical then colour management is working.

Just why this isn't enabled by default or isn't a checkbox in the preferences entirely eludes me.

manaheim · Sep 5, 2008

Garbz said:
The problem with wide gamut screens is simply that 255,0,0 is a redder red than the normal red in the sRGB profile (most screens). Everything will need to be colourmanaged. People will look redish-pink if your image viewer doesn't adjust it to the monitors display profile. You need to use Firefox 3.x or Safari to browse the web, and definitely need to ensure photoshop is setup correctly. Other than that it's great.

Oh god this sounds deeply unappealing.

Wouldn't this problem go away if you had a color corrected profile loaded from something like a Spyder?

Garbz · Sep 5, 2008

What's wrong with firefox

Yes it would cause the profile to go away. Now try and get windows to do that for you. Windows just passes the colour profiles around. It doesn't globally adjust the rendering of the screen for you, which in my opinion, in 2008, almost 8 years after the ICC profiles became a colour standard is a very very poor effort.

So load your colour profile from your colorimeter, and then find some output colour managed apps. I've listed Firefox above, Photoshop definitely does this automatically from the windows profile, for image viewing I use ACDSee Pro 2 as the most lightweight (laughable comment) photo viewer with output profile support. I just really wish I could find a video player that did this

manaheim · Sep 5, 2008

Garbz said:
What's wrong with firefox

Yes it would cause the profile to go away. Now try and get windows to do that for you. Windows just passes the colour profiles around. It doesn't globally adjust the rendering of the screen for you, which in my opinion, in 2008, almost 8 years after the ICC profiles became a colour standard is a very very poor effort.

So load your colour profile from your colorimeter, and then find some output colour managed apps. I've listed Firefox above, Photoshop definitely does this automatically from the windows profile, for image viewing I use ACDSee Pro 2 as the most lightweight (laughable comment) photo viewer with output profile support. I just really wish I could find a video player that did this

I must be losing it, because when I color correct with my Spyder, EVERYTHING on my machine changes color... the basic XP windows, the images, games, everything...

Garbz · Sep 6, 2008

Ok should split this up into it's complete separate details because I know I am confusing everyone. Sorry >_<

Colour correction is done on 3 fronts. The most ideal of which is adjusting a monitors internal colour lookup table to get the appropriate shades. All those nice NEC, and HP screens on this forum we were talking about the last few days do this. However all is not lost for those who don't have a $1000+ screen.

The second one is a software lookup table in the video card driver. Now windows for the life of me I don't know why since Mac has done this since OS8, does NOT automatically adjust this lookup table, even though all the information for it is stored in the colour profile. When you startup most likely your colour correction software quickly loads the profile and updates the lookup table in the video card. What comes out of this is a correction curve for gradients. It makes sure that the grey stays the same shade of grey from black to white, and at the specific white balance you set.

Enter step 3. The ICC profile itself contains this gradient information as well as information about the chromaticity of the screen. This is something that can not be changed by playing with gamma curves, but is very important. A colour managed application will now load the ICC profile and identify where the red green and blue points lie. It will then transform the images it displays so the red green and blue gets sent as the right value to the screen.

So if you have a wide gamut screen with no colour management applications you can still adjust the tone and the white balance, which is what the lookup tables do, but the resulting images will still look mega saturated mostly to the red and green direction because windows does not adjust the colours, and the lookup tables are incapable of these kind of adjustments.

I hope this made sense, I don't think it did :er:

/EDIT: A picture says a 1000 words.

Below is my screen on the left side is an image opened in ACDSee Pro 2 with colour management enabled. On the right just some random image viewer. On the left is my screen AFTER calibration to 6500k with the calibrators curve loaded, on the right is my screen using the colour profile downloaded from NEC's website, but all the correction curves turned off, and no adjustment in white balance.
The images appear to be more unnaturally saturated on the right, regardless of what I do with the calibration, because the software needs to be aware of the red green and blue points.

Just a note my screen has an "sRGB compatibility" mode but it disables the internal lookup table and locks the white balance. Also when it's set the deltaE calibrations errors go through the roof, the contrast ratio goes down to about 250:1 and the brightness reduces too. There's no non destructive way of simulating a different colour space directly on the output device other than software conversion.