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."

Comments

Still looks a little pricy.

[Blapto]

You could probably get a much cheaper, nicer CRT. The market it is aimed at would probably not care about footprint anyway after all.

Re:Still looks a little pricy.

[badasscat]

One problem with all the 1280x1024 LCD monitors are that they don't have square pixels. The display itself is 4:3, but the pixels are squat, unlike 1600x1200, 1280x960, 1024x768, 800x600 et cetera.

This is completely, 100% false.

1280x1024 LCD screens have a 5:4 aspect ratio. This is why the resolution can be 1280x1024, and the pixels remain square. 1280x1024 screens are the only screens with a 5:4 ratio. Don't ask me why this is, but it is. You can easily verify this by looking at the specs on any LCD with this native resolution.

I would guess you're confusing what happens when you use 1280x1024 as a resolution on CRT's. This will give you non-square pixels, and you should not use 1280x1024 on a CRT for this reason (unless you have a 5:4 CRT, and I'd guess there are at least a few of them out there). You should use 1280x960 instead. But this does not apply to LCD's, all of which have one native resolution, and they're built specifically to support that native resolution.

Now, as to this assertion in the original article post that "most image editors" think LCD's are "nowhere near as good" as CRT's... I think this is at the very least overly dramatic, if not outright false. First of all, what's an "image editor" to begin with? A retoucher? A photographer? A designer (and print or web)? All of the above?

Up until a few months ago I worked in the web design department for a large corporation, and like most companies we worked pretty closely with the print designers as well. 95% of my company used LCD's because they wanted to use LCD's. If any designer wanted a CRT they could simply request it - very few did (maybe two or three at the entire company). I personally had an LCD as a primary monitor and a CRT as secondary, because when working for the web it's important to see how things are going to look on different setups (especially when working with compressed images).

I'm also a photographer, and I don't have a CRT in my house. I have three LCD screens, and while not all of them are created equally (the oldest one does have a pretty narrow gamut), they're all at least adequate for photo processing, and my laptop screen is perfectly fine. I know plenty of other photographers who also do retouching on their laptops and don't feel they're missing anything.

LCD's are different, but even with a narrower gamut they do some things better than CRT's. No CRT can approach an LCD's pixel-perfect sharpness, for example - it's impossible to judge a photograph's true sharpness when viewing it on a CRT. So there are tradeoffs in both directions.

I think there's a difference between intellectually knowing that one thing may be technically better in certain areas than another thing, and actually using those things in real life. "Image editors" are people too, and they like the convenience and space savings of LCD screens as much as anybody else. And there are things that LCD's do better than CRT's, just as there are things CRT's do better than LCD's.

games

[Anonymous Coward]

but are they good enough for gaming yet?

As for graphics, I wonder how LCD technology deals with logarithmic color spaces?

Nice, 2 comments and already slashdotted

[jmcmunn]

I will argue a point without seeing the article, since it is dead. This screen is still likely much more expensive than a CRT, so unless the desk space you save with the LCD is worth a couple hundred dollars, I am guessing this is not going to appeal to most people.

The people who buy LCD's now do it because they are small, sexy, and save on desk space. The very SMALL minority will be buying an LCD just because it has good colors and refresh rates. Those people do exist (ie gamers and graphic designers and such) but most people are just looking for the slim, sexy design of the LCD, myself included. Code looks just fine on an LCD, I use one at work 9 hours a day, with no trouble at all.

Re:Will this be the rage in 6 months?

[aardvarkjoe]

Size isn't the only advantage that LCDs have. Most people also find them to be easier on the eyes, and they are cooler and more energy efficient.

And anyway, I'll believe the stuff about thin CRTs in 2005 when I see them on the shelves.

Quality of LCD panels

[Anonymous Coward]

I think there is a much bigger problem with LCD than color accuracy - defective subpixels. In a recent month I had to return three over $1K LCDs (for those who are interetsted: two LaCie Phonot20Vision II and one NEC/Mitsubishi LCD2080UX+). And it doesn't seem even a single manufacturer (not even Apple) is trying to change this; all of them agreed (they even cooked up an ISO standard for this) that some small number of defects is acceptable. Until this nonsense stops LCD will be staying where they are now - consumer electronics.

Re:Quality of LCD panels

[t_allardyce]

We're not willing to accept some defects, let supply drop to a trickle..