Either One >>> to find out what kind of monitor you use and/or recommend for photo editing.
Or Two >>> to see if the monitor I got for Christmas is worth keeping.
Here's what I have:
Samsung LED HDTV Monitor
Series 3 T22A350
Sync Master 21.5"
Any suggestions? advice? tips? anything?
My dad really doesn't' want me to settle. Wants me to be 100% happy with a monitor. And I have a week to decide whether or not to keep it so he can take it back if he needs to.
MY MAIN CONCERN: That the monitor's colors are accurate (although what determines accurate colors?! ...)
I'll probably post a second discussion sometime about print colors/labs because I am really curious and out of the know about that sort of thing as well.
I'm also taking price into consideration. Wish I could afford a huge mac monitor :P but.... I'm a college student. I'm poor. No tengo mucho dinero ;)
Thank you so much in advance for your advice. This discussion is probably more directed towards those of you who have Photoshop or edit frequently or have a photography business. But I'm sure there are many out there who just know this type of thing. So please! Share your amazing knowledge.. for me... and others :)
do not forget the monitor (or printer) calibrator..
i'm using hueyPRO (pantone), it really help to standardize color (much more accurate). esp. if you working on multiple monitors.
This is a fantastic issue but also has a much simpler solution than you might have thought at first. The issue actually isn't the monitor, but rather what color management software you use.
I have two Samsung 24" LED widescreen monitors. However, I also use Spider 3 Pro color calibration on my monitors.
When it comes to monitors, every single different monitor, brand, and type will show colors slightly different. It also depends on the age of the monitor and even the lights in the room bouncing off it. I have two make-shift hoods over my monitors to keep the lights from my ceiling fan from affecting the colors. Believe it or not, it does make a difference.
Since all these monitors are different, you need a color management system to properly calibrate your monitors. Monitors use something called a color profile to determine how to display whites and blacks and then fills in everything in between. A color management system has two components: software and a piece of hardware scanner. This scanner attaches to the front of your monitor during calibration and scans the colors sent to it by the software. The software then creates a profile for your monitor so it properly displays all the colors.
When you edit a photo and send it off to a print lab, they will use the embedded color profile to determine how to print your photo. Have you ever seen one of your photos on an old CRT monitor? Or taken it to Walmart or Target to get printed? And then noticed a huge color difference? This is why. Color calibration is an important issue with photography.
So...when it comes down to it, if you invest about $100 for a color management system, you will be 100% satisfied with ANY monitor you choose. Otherwise, every monitor you own will show those colors slightly different.
You should check out either Color Munki, Spider, or X-Rite. They are the leaders for color management.
LED monitors are backlit like a Mac any way so why spend more 'dinero' when they are effectively the same.
In terms of colour your best bet is to get some prints off then compare them with your screen to see if they match. I've met a few photograhers who have ditched their calibration tools and settled on matching it themselves, but is really down to individuals (I guess others here will have an opinion?).
I'm no MAC boy so I cant really say much about them, only that I use PCs and have never had a bad day on one, it's really down to your own preference. I work faster and accurately on a PC so why do I need to change and spend more money???
personally I'll get an LED screen one day for sharpness and colour (or maybe two;))
@jasonbarnette dont want to hijack the thread, but this is about the same issue. And I thought you would probably know the answer Jason....(you know seeing as youre so awesome n evertin lol - )
Is it true that Mac's are properly calibrated before sending out? Not that I have a Mac, but I do at work, and my photos look awfully dark on it. Makes me wonder about my own monitor.....
@looseimages LMAO! I'm laughing at both the reference to my Awesomeness (that's a capital A you slacker!) and the issue about Mac's.
First of all, backlit monitors are notoriously horrible at treating the blacks. For example...back in October I posted a nude self-portrait. On my shiny MacBook Pro monitor the area around my who-who was completely black. I uploaded it. People started commenting on how brave I was. A week later I pulled up the photo on my color-calibrated Samsung monitor. Ohshit I was naked! I don't regret the photo or anything cause I mean I was trying to express myself anyway, but the point is that backlit monitors like LED's and Mac's don't show blacks and shadows all that well.
And a Mac monitor is *not* calibrated right off the shelf. I have found my MacBook Pro showed reds and blues very nicely, but the greens were way off. On my monitor they looked more yellow but in print were a dark green. No monitor is 100% accurate right off the shelf, but they can be very close to begin with. It's hit or miss.
@jasonbarnette of course I know about THAT photo....lets leave it there LOL....altohugh it explains perfectly how your mistake was made. My photos are SO dark on the mac its untrue!
and actually, I feel a lot better now...about the Mac thing I mean. It also means I can unmercifully take the p*ss out of my mac loving boss who swears his monitor is perfectly calibrated. awesome. (no capital).
Thanks for that.
still means I have to buy some epxnsive sw to calibrate my monitor though? It has a calibration prgram built in......
@jasonbarnette exactly the response I was looking for. I have heard of these color management systems but never understood them and had no idea it would fix problems with any monitor. awesome . thanks!!!
@looseimages If your computer or monitor has some color calibration software built-in, you'll be fine! You really only need the more expensive professional stuff if you plan to sell your photos.
Here...I'll tell you a little story. You KNOW how I love stories! A few years ago a friend of mine called me up in tears. She had shot her first wedding for $150. 800+ photos all shot with her Nikon D70 and two lenses, one of which she borrowed from me. Well she spent a good 20 hours editing the photos after the wedding, put them on a CD, and mailed them off the newly-weds' mom. The wife's mom, I think. Well a week later she got this really nasty phone call from the mom. She had taken the CD out to get prints made, spent about $300 on all sorts of items, and they all looked horrible. You see, on Julia's (my friend) monitor the skin tones were very light. She didn't like that. So she had been tweaking the saturation on all the photos and doing all these special techniques on the skin to make them really pop. Especially the bride in her spiffy white dress. Well, the problem wasn't the way she'd shot the photos, it was her monitor. She over-saturated the photos. So when the mom went out to get prints made, the skin tones were very yellowish and orange and harsh looking. In the end, Julia spent nearly 60 hours editing photos because she had to redo them all, the spend about $30 in delivery fees for the CD both times, refunded the $150 to make the mom happy cause she wanted reimbursed for the $300 she lost on the bad photos.
Moral of the story: you only need a calibration system if you plan to print or sell your photography. Let's face it: there are about as many types of monitors that are used to view this site as there are bugs on a humid night. All you can do with a calibrated monitor is make sure your photos look good ON YOUR monitor. That will only hold true if another user has an equally-well calibrated monitor.
So for the most part, don't worry about the expensive calibration software. Use whatever your computer or monitor came with. Oh...and yeah I'm sorta sorry about the long story, but really I'm not :P
@jamiehomewood Good point. Definitely can live without a mac monitor! for some reason I thought they were better? I am definitely happy with my macbook pro, but editing on this tiny screen has become sort of an issue.
@lauren211 Yep...the color calibration software works on any monitor. I think we may have the same ones. LED HD monitors? I love these things! I got two. They were a pair. I'm gonna shut up now.
@looseimages Well...for commercial websites, they probably do a few tweaks to your photos anyways. They'll make sure it's color balanced and resharpen for use online. Magazines will do this, too. I should have said if you sell directly to people for prints or albums then you must have the software. Oh...ask me another question! I like this thing where I talk a lot :P
@jasonbarnette brilliant. You have solved my dilemma. Carry on like this and I might even put a capital a in awesome LMAO. Thanks muchly :) (no more questions currently, but I know where to come..gotta earn that 'A'!)
In general I agree with most of the comments already made. I use an Asus, it's large and easy on the eyes, and very adjustable. I would suggest getting the largest you can given the budget. It's well worth the ability to do detail work, not to mention having two text pages side by side in full size, when writing papers :-)
@lauren211 Hi Lauren, there are a few different issues here, which often get confused as has happened in this thread already. The best online guide to colour management that I know of is Jeremy Daalder's Image Science website, and in particular his (unfinished) Digital Fine Print Book
In a nutshell, as @jasonbarnette said, the most important part of the process is getting your monitor calibrated and profiled as accurately as possible. In practice, unless you have a VERY expensive monitor with controls for hardware calibration, this means creating a monitor profile using a device such as the ones Jason mentioned. What these do is ensure your monitor displays true colours (at least as far as the colours that it is trying to display are within the range of colours that it can display). This is very easy to do. For a basic LCD monitor it is pretty much a plug and play operation using the automated settings. The more advanced settings are intended for accurate hardware calibration, which is generally not possible with regular LCD monitors (including mac monitors).
The printing bit is completely separate to the monitor calibrating bit. If you're going to colour manage your printing you need to get a colour profile of the printer from the lab that is doing the printing. The idea is to load the colour profile onto your computer and then use it to give you a preview of how your image will look printed, once the printer has messed up all the lovely colours you have worked so hard to achieve. This is called soft proofing. The idea is to continue editing your image until the proofed version looks exactly right (since this is what your print will look like, more or less), and then send it to the printers.
Again, unless you get a VERY expensive monitor there will be differences between the bright and contrasty backlit image you see on your monitor and the final print, mostly that your print will be darker and less contrasty. In addition to soft proofing it is worth turning the brightness level on your monitor right down to reduce the extent of this effect. Whatever you do, don't buy a high contrast monitor if you can help it (e.g. if you see it boasting 10,000:1 luminance ratio run a mile!). Oh, and Mac monitors require profiling as much as all other monitors, even if they are beautiful to look at :)
I am currently running a (new) 27" iMac. The screen is great, but the LED backlighting makes it difficult to calibrate. Beside the iMac, I run a 27" Dell Ultrasharp. Same LCD panel as the iMac, but different backlighting. It is magic. It also shows 96% of the Adobe RGB colour space. It cost me around five or six hundred.
Now, if I had the money, I would instead get the 27" Eizo. Those things are simply the best damn monitors out there. I have used them extensively. But, they cost around $2.5k (or more), and they are only a breath better than the Dell. They have more even (corner-to-corner) consistency, and they show 97% of Adobe RGB. And they have in-built hardware calibration. But, bang for your buck, I've got to suggest the Dell. I'll be getting another one later this year, for a three-screen setup.
Hey Lauren! What did you decide to do, keep your monitor or get a new one?
I just wanted to let you know that you don't have to pay over $100 for the color calibration systems. You could borrow one from borrowlenses.com for a fraction of the price!
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i'm using hueyPRO (pantone), it really help to standardize color (much more accurate). esp. if you working on multiple monitors.
I have two Samsung 24" LED widescreen monitors. However, I also use Spider 3 Pro color calibration on my monitors.
When it comes to monitors, every single different monitor, brand, and type will show colors slightly different. It also depends on the age of the monitor and even the lights in the room bouncing off it. I have two make-shift hoods over my monitors to keep the lights from my ceiling fan from affecting the colors. Believe it or not, it does make a difference.
Since all these monitors are different, you need a color management system to properly calibrate your monitors. Monitors use something called a color profile to determine how to display whites and blacks and then fills in everything in between. A color management system has two components: software and a piece of hardware scanner. This scanner attaches to the front of your monitor during calibration and scans the colors sent to it by the software. The software then creates a profile for your monitor so it properly displays all the colors.
When you edit a photo and send it off to a print lab, they will use the embedded color profile to determine how to print your photo. Have you ever seen one of your photos on an old CRT monitor? Or taken it to Walmart or Target to get printed? And then noticed a huge color difference? This is why. Color calibration is an important issue with photography.
So...when it comes down to it, if you invest about $100 for a color management system, you will be 100% satisfied with ANY monitor you choose. Otherwise, every monitor you own will show those colors slightly different.
You should check out either Color Munki, Spider, or X-Rite. They are the leaders for color management.
LED monitors are backlit like a Mac any way so why spend more 'dinero' when they are effectively the same.
In terms of colour your best bet is to get some prints off then compare them with your screen to see if they match. I've met a few photograhers who have ditched their calibration tools and settled on matching it themselves, but is really down to individuals (I guess others here will have an opinion?).
I'm no MAC boy so I cant really say much about them, only that I use PCs and have never had a bad day on one, it's really down to your own preference. I work faster and accurately on a PC so why do I need to change and spend more money???
personally I'll get an LED screen one day for sharpness and colour (or maybe two;))
Hope that helps, have fun
J
Is it true that Mac's are properly calibrated before sending out? Not that I have a Mac, but I do at work, and my photos look awfully dark on it. Makes me wonder about my own monitor.....
First of all, backlit monitors are notoriously horrible at treating the blacks. For example...back in October I posted a nude self-portrait. On my shiny MacBook Pro monitor the area around my who-who was completely black. I uploaded it. People started commenting on how brave I was. A week later I pulled up the photo on my color-calibrated Samsung monitor. Ohshit I was naked! I don't regret the photo or anything cause I mean I was trying to express myself anyway, but the point is that backlit monitors like LED's and Mac's don't show blacks and shadows all that well.
And a Mac monitor is *not* calibrated right off the shelf. I have found my MacBook Pro showed reds and blues very nicely, but the greens were way off. On my monitor they looked more yellow but in print were a dark green. No monitor is 100% accurate right off the shelf, but they can be very close to begin with. It's hit or miss.
and actually, I feel a lot better now...about the Mac thing I mean. It also means I can unmercifully take the p*ss out of my mac loving boss who swears his monitor is perfectly calibrated. awesome. (no capital).
Thanks for that.
still means I have to buy some epxnsive sw to calibrate my monitor though? It has a calibration prgram built in......
Here...I'll tell you a little story. You KNOW how I love stories! A few years ago a friend of mine called me up in tears. She had shot her first wedding for $150. 800+ photos all shot with her Nikon D70 and two lenses, one of which she borrowed from me. Well she spent a good 20 hours editing the photos after the wedding, put them on a CD, and mailed them off the newly-weds' mom. The wife's mom, I think. Well a week later she got this really nasty phone call from the mom. She had taken the CD out to get prints made, spent about $300 on all sorts of items, and they all looked horrible. You see, on Julia's (my friend) monitor the skin tones were very light. She didn't like that. So she had been tweaking the saturation on all the photos and doing all these special techniques on the skin to make them really pop. Especially the bride in her spiffy white dress. Well, the problem wasn't the way she'd shot the photos, it was her monitor. She over-saturated the photos. So when the mom went out to get prints made, the skin tones were very yellowish and orange and harsh looking. In the end, Julia spent nearly 60 hours editing photos because she had to redo them all, the spend about $30 in delivery fees for the CD both times, refunded the $150 to make the mom happy cause she wanted reimbursed for the $300 she lost on the bad photos.
Moral of the story: you only need a calibration system if you plan to print or sell your photography. Let's face it: there are about as many types of monitors that are used to view this site as there are bugs on a humid night. All you can do with a calibrated monitor is make sure your photos look good ON YOUR monitor. That will only hold true if another user has an equally-well calibrated monitor.
So for the most part, don't worry about the expensive calibration software. Use whatever your computer or monitor came with. Oh...and yeah I'm sorta sorry about the long story, but really I'm not :P
@looseimages Well...for commercial websites, they probably do a few tweaks to your photos anyways. They'll make sure it's color balanced and resharpen for use online. Magazines will do this, too. I should have said if you sell directly to people for prints or albums then you must have the software. Oh...ask me another question! I like this thing where I talk a lot :P
@lauren211 Erm...well...at the same time, gluttony is a sin! Muahaha
http://reviews.cnet.com/best-lcd-monitors/
In general I agree with most of the comments already made. I use an Asus, it's large and easy on the eyes, and very adjustable. I would suggest getting the largest you can given the budget. It's well worth the ability to do detail work, not to mention having two text pages side by side in full size, when writing papers :-)
In a nutshell, as @jasonbarnette said, the most important part of the process is getting your monitor calibrated and profiled as accurately as possible. In practice, unless you have a VERY expensive monitor with controls for hardware calibration, this means creating a monitor profile using a device such as the ones Jason mentioned. What these do is ensure your monitor displays true colours (at least as far as the colours that it is trying to display are within the range of colours that it can display). This is very easy to do. For a basic LCD monitor it is pretty much a plug and play operation using the automated settings. The more advanced settings are intended for accurate hardware calibration, which is generally not possible with regular LCD monitors (including mac monitors).
The printing bit is completely separate to the monitor calibrating bit. If you're going to colour manage your printing you need to get a colour profile of the printer from the lab that is doing the printing. The idea is to load the colour profile onto your computer and then use it to give you a preview of how your image will look printed, once the printer has messed up all the lovely colours you have worked so hard to achieve. This is called soft proofing. The idea is to continue editing your image until the proofed version looks exactly right (since this is what your print will look like, more or less), and then send it to the printers.
(See the pdf document here for more info).
Again, unless you get a VERY expensive monitor there will be differences between the bright and contrasty backlit image you see on your monitor and the final print, mostly that your print will be darker and less contrasty. In addition to soft proofing it is worth turning the brightness level on your monitor right down to reduce the extent of this effect. Whatever you do, don't buy a high contrast monitor if you can help it (e.g. if you see it boasting 10,000:1 luminance ratio run a mile!). Oh, and Mac monitors require profiling as much as all other monitors, even if they are beautiful to look at :)
Asus ProArt246
The end.
P.S.:
Yes, I do get whiplash looking from one side of the screen to the next.
I am currently running a (new) 27" iMac. The screen is great, but the LED backlighting makes it difficult to calibrate. Beside the iMac, I run a 27" Dell Ultrasharp. Same LCD panel as the iMac, but different backlighting. It is magic. It also shows 96% of the Adobe RGB colour space. It cost me around five or six hundred.
Now, if I had the money, I would instead get the 27" Eizo. Those things are simply the best damn monitors out there. I have used them extensively. But, they cost around $2.5k (or more), and they are only a breath better than the Dell. They have more even (corner-to-corner) consistency, and they show 97% of Adobe RGB. And they have in-built hardware calibration. But, bang for your buck, I've got to suggest the Dell. I'll be getting another one later this year, for a three-screen setup.
I just wanted to let you know that you don't have to pay over $100 for the color calibration systems. You could borrow one from borrowlenses.com for a fraction of the price!