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LCD Screen for Image Editing
An anonymous reader writes "Most image editors will tell you that the colour accuracy on an LCD monitor is still nowhere near as good as a high quality CRT. Although this is generally true, this new screen from NEC is definitely a big step forward for the LCD cause."
LCDs are ok, but pretty much useless for graphics apps due to low contrast and washed out color
Yeah and CRTs tend to have over-saturated color that drifts over time. I'm a prepress tech, and I have to do a lot of color correcting for my job and the general rule is that the screen is wrong. period.
A CRT or LCD will never be able to represent colors in RGB that exists in CMYK, or even some of the wildly bright color in the Pantone system. How can a monitor reproduce fluorescent orange or silver metallic ink? It can't. Once your good, you can mentally map what a color should look like compared to what it looks like on screen. Most of the people in my field who complain about how LCD aren't color accurate are just looking for an excuse when they can't remap their own color perception lookup table in their head.
And, if you complain about how a LCD has crappy contrast or under-saturated colors and a poor refresh rate, maybe you should buy a nice LCD instead of a cheap piece of crap from Walmart.
-tschak
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Hmm, the screen reviewed is quite reasonably priced, IMO. Below is a edited and amended copy of a posting i wrote elsewhere.
CRTs require lots more calibration. Geometry just complicates things. Guns get out of alignment quickly. They lack luminance, which means that even a *poor* LCD _can appear_ to out-perform a top CRT. Apple wag on about this for their "cinema" displays, which honestly aren't in the same ballpark as a Eizo CG21. So _any_ LCD will *appear* to show a wider gamut than a CRT. But you *just don't* get to replicate that luminance on a print.
CRT is EOL everywhere (save for the Mitsubishi WG CRT), so over a few years, expect problems with support, parts and gun alignment. Yeah, sure, serious CRTs allow you to align the guns and all sorts through firmware, but they're comparably priced to the CG21 I currently use.
The article references Wide Gamut LCD's
OK, I have been in contact with all the relevant product managers over the past six months regards ordering these for my company.
Some pretty solid facts I have learned
1. Expect NO availability of WG monitors until H2/05. Both Eizo with the CG210 and Mitsu' are sorting out pre- production and *will not* release a half- assed product to beat time - to - market.
2. Forget the WG Mitsu' CRT. Same price almost as LCDs in pre-production now, and is supported in Asia - Pacific only. Correct that, Mitsu' will support you, but it won't be convenient.
3. WG LCDs almost require 10bpp DVI-D input. I am not aware of a graphics card which supports this right now. I sense that Matrox will support this with a new PCI-E Parhelia next year.
4. Cost. Cost. Cost. You need a real justification for the Wide Gamut monitors. Intro prices will be quite a bit >5K$.
5. Barco appear to have chickened out on this market. So says the grapevine anyway.
6. Mitsu' appear to me at least to have some better technology for WG monitors. Possibly also for normal calibrated LCDs, but I am very happy meanwhile using a Eizo CG21 .
7. You probably don't need one of these unless you are planning to One Time Only scan - to - archive - digital of loads of Kodachromes,, or need to soft proof for Aniva or 4+ ink presses.
8. LaCie is not IMO in the same game. LaCie filled the Radius gap in Mac pre-press environments. They DO NOT manufacture their own components, as do Eizo, Mitsu'. I've not been impressed at all by any of their products. For that matter, for my uses, I wasn't impressed by Apple's cinema displays .
9. Whatever you do, if you're editing photos or critical color ; Get a monitor hood. Think like lens shades. Control flare. It's much worse on a LCD, IME.
10. Viewing a CRT properly requires a darkened environment. See above.
Component burnout is a fact of life. All the new calibrated Mitsu' / Eizo LCDs are very thouroughly tested and heavily guaranteed / supported. But they will likely wear out in a few years or so. To combat this both Mitsu' and Eizo run luminance below max levels.
Also, if I get my facts right, the only reason Mistu' released the WG CRT is because Japanese printers actually do use the current abilities of their presses properly. Just like DOF scales, SWOP and EuroScale are so outdated people just waste the capabilities of their output media.
Some annoyances with the article
"as a rule, a DeltaE value of one is considered a perfect calibration i.e. there is no difference between the CIE L*a*b* colour space and the colours reproduced by the monitor."
No, not a perfect calibration, just delta 1.0 is about the threshold of your capacity to distinguish tones.
There will definitely be a variation between what you see and the L*A*B co-ordinates, notwithstanding the delta value as the L*A*B space is theoretical.
"In addition, it's worth noting th
Apple Cinema Displays have great contrast, wide viewing angles, and [when properly calibrated with professional hardware/software] great color accuracy. I worked in prepress for 6 years and we had no problem moving to ACD's for all of our color critical work.
And Apple [unfortunately] still makes a CRT- the eMac, not that you would catch a color professional using one...
Cursing in the French language is like wiping your ass with silk.
The have a great viewing angle AND they are SWOP certified, so no need to doubt the color accuracy
"Certified systems are capable of producing proofs visually identical to the SWOP Certified Press Proof as defined in ANSI CGATS TR 001,"
So the (calibrated) screen is good enough; no need to do a special color print to know what it looks like.
http://www.apple.com/displays/technology.html