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Photog Rob Galbraith Rates MacBook Pro Display "Not Acceptable"
An anonymous reader writes "Professional digital photographer and website publisher Rob Galbraith has performed both objective and subjective tests on laptop displays, finding that the late-2008 Macbook Pro glossy displays are 'deep into the not acceptable category' when used in ambient light environments. The Apple notebook came in dead last for color accuracy, and second to last in viewing angles (besting only the Dell Mini 9). He concludes: 'Macs are no longer at the top of the laptop display heap in our minds.'"
I wonder if they will test the macbook pro 17" which has a $50 matte option?
Is this one of those words that has surreptitiously entered our language like "blog" or was the title just cut-off?
Are you calling the matte option "pay-to-play?" You know, all Mac users aren't photographers or graphics professionals.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Apple is running away from the niche markets (like imaging) that sustained them through their dark days as fast as they can. The new unibody Macbooks (and the 24" ADC^H^H^HMini-DisplayPort external LCD) are slightly faster but in many ways less functional than the models they replaced. Glossy is a bug, not a feature.
Meanwhile, HP and Dell are shipping laptops with RGB LED-backlit displays with 105% NTSC color gamut. Apple is slipping, badly, from this user's perspective.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Why make it a feature when it can be a "special bonus" or an "extra"?
Plus... haven't you heard of "downgrading to XP" costs for Vista laptops and desktops?
"Downgrading" is the new "works out of the box".
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
"Photog" is as much of a real word describing "A person who takes photographs" as "sandw" is a word used to describe "Two or more slices of bread with a filling such as meat or cheese placed between them".
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Just when wide gamut LCDs are approaching the range of colors once possible on CRTs, Apple has taken yet another step backwards with their new LED backlight displays.
My LED MacBook has a spectacularly bad display, so I went to visit the local Apple store to see if this was typical. Sadly it is, and what's more, it looks like all of Apple's LED displays are vastly inferior to that of my old iMac G5. (which has an S-IPS panel and conventional fluorescent backlight)
Color wise, the LED MacBook Pro and Cinema Display are better than the MacBook, but they are all shamefully bad, and definitely worthy of a "worst in the industry" rating. (at least color-wise)
Sounds to me like they deliberately choose an option with hope of failure. The matte display has been an option since the previous macbook introduction.
Yes, because someone who concluded 18 months ago that "Apple was making one of the finest laptop screens we'd seen for use in a pro digital photography workflow." is bound to be setting Apple up for failure.
Thank you for reaffirming my belief in self-delusional fanboi nature.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Mod parent up (and the article down...)
ALL laptop displays are "unacceptable" for serious graphics work, because they are all TN-type (TN is the thinnest).
TFA even admits that the only recent laptop that had an IPS-type panel, a Lenovo, is discontinued.
Rob should know by now that laptops are not for color critical work. This has been blindingly obvious for years.
I'm just wondering where the "unacceptable" and "not acceptable" from the blurb came from. The article repeatedly says the Macbook's display is acceptable. I think 'timothy' needs to read articles before accepting stories.
Uh.. it's only a $50 pricing difference if you were already going to buy a $2800 laptop.
If you only need a regular macbook, it's a $1550 option.
(and the more expensive laptop is only 30% faster, so really it doesn't seem like that great of a deal to me.)
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
No, the difference is that I travel a lot, and a 17" laptop is bigger than I want. The 17" is also the only model that now has the matte option.
I do like OSX as my primary computing platform, but I have no trouble switching to Linux/BSD.
I also do frequently order refurbed equipment too, though the savings are generally not huge.
There are these things called syllables.
They are the reason why we say "a photo" instead of "a photogr" or "a phot".
Also, note that (for all means and purposes) photo-G is actually a case of ADDING a letter to an existing short word (photo) - not shortening a complex one (Photo-grapher).
While you are pondering on that, take this one home with you as well.
Aeroplanes, from aeras and plane are called planes for short - not aerops or airops.
Humans generally don't like words crashing in the middle of the syllable, you know?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Regarding the usability of GIMP, I would say that yes, they are geeks living in their parent's basements.
The biggest problem with GIMP is that its developers aren't the intended users. I don't think they "get it."
Right now I'm in a market for a 15" MBP to replace a PPC Powerbook but the glossy screen is preventing me from purchasing it.
Why don't you buy the Lenovo recommended in the story & install (a retail copy of) OS X on it? That way you'll have the best of both worlds. Decent hardware & a unixy OS that runs your workflow tools.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Rob Galbraith is the frequent butt of jokes about his ego and mouth- the man considers himself an expert on absolutely everything, loves to declare things horrible/worthless (he declared the Canon Mk3 autofocus to be "useless" as well, and that hasn't stopped news agencies the world-over from making the camera their standard equipment.)
His premise is that the laptop is worthless because of the glossy screen. Well, guess what? It's literally a $30 problem, and there will no doubt be at least a couple companies that produce lightweight fancy hoods that weigh next to nothing and shield the screen from glare for photographers who MUST do image adjustment in the field (which nobody does.)
He speaks as if he's an expert- but check out the qualifications of him and his team. He's a former photographer for a no-name Canadian paper....eight years ago. His partner shoots horsies for work. A third dude doesn't seem to have any qualifications except for being industrious in writing about photography and a former Nikon lackey. None of them have had showings of note. None of them are retained by any wire services that matter. None of them currently work in the field.
Ever heard about "splitting", where people tend to consider something all good or all bad? Galbraith is an almost pathological splitter, and he's completely ignorant of some solutions to the problem, if you otherwise like working with, or are required to work with macs/mac software by your company/agency/wire service. It's also a problem solved with about $10 of cardboard or plastic to make a viewing hood, which used to be extremely common back when (GASP!) everyone had "glossy" CRTs.
It also demonstrates how ignorant he is of how "real" professional photographers these days work. The big boys are told to send everything, touch nothing- they're in the business of shooting photos, not editing or adjusting them. Anyone who is anyone has a team of people sitting back at "HQ", with fast machines, professionally calibrated displays in controlled lighting, etc. Nobody (at least nobody doing it for money) does anything beyond rate/categorize images on laptops...which is what he claims the MBP "is only good for."
Please help metamoderate.
This guy sounds amazing! Why didn't he opt for the matte display if he knows so much?
Mod Parent up.
This "story" is a pretty egregious example of the slashdot submitter posting something that's utterly out of sync with the linked article (who I otherwise tend to assume is actually the blog author himself trawling for traffic).
Now, I've been around here long enough not to get all worked up and grumpy: "Jeez, slashdot editors, how about RTFA before you post these things?" Because I know it has always been this way and always Shall Be.
But nowadays, the difference is, there are other places I can go for online news and some of them actually do try to maintain some kind of quality control on submissions.
I'm not gonna disappear. I stopped taking slashdot seriously a long time ago. Now I just come for the women.
But continued relevance is at stake. Jeez, slashdot editors!
These types of "forced conformance" cause me to vote with my wallet. People think people are insane for switching brands because of what they call "minor problems". I fully understand that my refusal to give them my dollars combined with a quick, but professional letter explaining my purchase history and what I am purchasing now and why is the only language large corporations understand besides legalese.
/rant.
It is because people refuse to stand up for themselves and feel "forced" to comply that you get these crazies that go off about Microsoft forcing people to upgrade to vista over XP etc. You simply aren't forced to do anything, you force yourself to comply. You are allowing them to shape the market through supply rather than through consumer demand.
This is an example of the overall pusification of America. People want the government and corporations to think for them, provide for them, bail them out when they fail.
Anyway
windows can, in fact, *select* from pre-made or locally made profiles.
big fat note, though! I once installed the MS windows dual-head (dual LUT) color 'power toy' and that damned thing phoned home each time I booted! I deinstalled it and stopped recommending it.
anyway, you don't *create* profiles in that control panel tab and you don't even need it to select profiles on single display (head) cards.
as to the comment about 'only the fussiest' - that's simply not true anymore. when the pucks came down to the $200 range and less, they became cheap as the cameras themselves and ALL serious amateurs (not to mention pros) use the pucks, now. there's no reason not to - and since lcd's NEED actual local custom measured calibrations more than crt's did - its VERY important you get a local puck-computed data profile. taking one from a manuf just is not even close to getting good true whites and skin tones won't ever look exact if you don't have an 'electric eye' (puck) do the color tweaking on the LUT for you.
trust me, the pucks do a damned good job and they give you a clean output you can trust. everyone who does anything even slightly more advanced than 'A' mode on the camera should consider the puck, even a cheap one. just for the gamma setting, alone, its worth it.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
It's industry jargon.
Photographers use the term and understand it.
That would make it a real word, wouldn't it?
-- My Weblog.
Yes, it is flamebait. NOT the linked article but the summary. I challenge you: find the word "unacceptable" ANYWHERE in Galbraith's article. And when you're not able to maybe you'll realize putting "unacceptable" (in quotes) in the summary is pure unadulterated flamebait because it's a baldface lie. Before you get on your high horse you need to differentiate between modding the summary flamebait and modding the source article same. I think I speak for most moderators when I say my flamebait mods are for the text I read here on /., not on other sites.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
Because Apple has decided to escape their niche-market image and go for the big money? Somebody at Apple must have decided they'd sell more Macs this way. And somewhere in the decision process somebody mentioned their cadre of graphic artists would be pissed off, but they said, "eh, fuck em" anyway.
Either that or their "green" initiative took precedence, but that's just a guess. I've never understood glossy screens and I'm not even an artist.
Rob should know by now that laptops are not for color critical work. This has been blindingly obvious for years.
That's not really the point.
The point is a digital photographer has to take something with him/her on the road. So what do you take with you?
Just throwing up your hands and saying "all these panels suck! don't accept any of them!" is not really helpful. Because that's equivalent to saying "you can't work outside the office". And clearly that is not at all true - you can work outside the office, with any laptop. The question is just which laptop works best for this kind of thing?
Ever since I first started reading this site several years ago, there is always a certain group of people that take an absolute all or nothing kind of attitude, which just ends up being defeatist. Because it's not realistic. Nothing is perfect, and if you're going to expect it to be, then you're just not going to be able to work. That's reality.
But people do work, including photographers, and they work just fine even with imperfect equipment. That doesn't mean they don't want the best equipment available, but it does mean most people in the real world are (surprise) realists, and they will use whatever they have to to get their work done.
So yes, we should all be pressing manufacturers for better laptop displays. That doesn't mean displays that currently exist are "unacceptable" for photographic use. The vast majority of digital photos you've ever seen in any professional capacity, be it in a magazine, a newspaper, a book or a web site, were taken by a photographer walking around with both a camera and a laptop. Some of these were probably even viewed on laptops with (gasp) glossy screens. Most of them were no doubt viewed on laptops with TN screens.
So to make this blanket statement that laptops are "not for color critical work" is just not a statement you can make. They may not be ideal, but then nothing ever is. Hell, the cameras photographers use aren't perfect either, they're always a series of compromises. Does that mean every camera in the world is "unacceptable" for taking photographs?
Human languages, living ones at any rate, are constantly changing and acquiring new vocabulary. It's a fact.
Bitching about it is about as effective as you waving your fist at those kids who won't get the hell off your lawn.
It's true, and it's absolutely necessary. Computer screens are absolutely godawful at reproducing colors. The only thing that saves us is that printers are generally worse.
Adobe RGB can represent about 50% of visible colors, and most monitors have a gamut significantly smaller than ARGB. With printing things can get complicated, depending on whether you're talking about CMYK, Hexachrome, CcMmYK, and/or spot color, but it's a feat of technology any time we can get something printed that looks like the image on the monitor.
While at the same time, the slashdot headline says simply:
If you read the whole quote (not to mention the article), then surely you perceive my issue here.
You've expressed *your* opinion: that the MacBook Pro is not an acceptable choice for a professional photographer. Fine - go write a blog post and get timothy to link it.
But this article - the one slashdot actually liked to - says it *IS* acceptable.
Which is why I think the headline is... well, to put it kindly, a bit off the mark.
The GIMP works quite well for it's developers. It's people who expect it to be a Photoshop clone that are disappointed. Especially when you start working with multiple monitors, you'll appreciate the way the GIMP treats windows and toolbars and such as compared to Photoshop.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Why wouldn't I run an Internet-facing reverse proxy that performs a few other net-related tasks on OS X? Yeah, I'd typically use Debian or FreeBSD for such a task, but I honestly can't think of any good reason for avoiding Apple's OS in this case.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Also if he's so smart why is he trying to do his colour correction in ANY ambient light, instead of under a hood like the real professional photographers do.
That explains BOTH sights (on matte and glossy screen)
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
Perhaps because he wants to work, as opposed to fuck around with computers in crassly unsupported configurations that might not work?
Are you adequate?
Because it's a laptop screen, and not a regular monitor? When was the last time you've seen someone use a hood on a laptop? (yes, I know they exist, but they aren't common)