Anyone use the 20" Apple Cinema monitor? If so, how is it as far as calibrating the monitor? Is it fairly easy to calibrate, what calibration hardware do you use with this monitor, and what are the results like with color accuracy in prints? I'm thinking of getting this monitor and an Epson printer. Thanks if you have any suggestions.
P.S. Or if you have other monitor alternatives in this size and price range ($599) or less that you recommend. I tried to do some research but cannot find any sites that review monitors specifically for photography. If you know of such, please provide a link. Thanks...Michael
I Have been using a 20" Apple Cinema Display for about 2 years now. It is an excellent display with a S-IPS panel and native resolution of 1680 x 1050. I use the DataColor Spyder3 Elite monitor calibration system with this monitor and my Cintiq 20WSX display. The ACD also has 2 USB 2.0 ports as well as 2 firewire 400 ports on the back of the monitor.
I would not expect an update any time soon. The next generation of technology is very close. Apple is working on high res monitors (more than 100 ppi). That can't be implemented until the 'resolution independance' is done and that will take an OS update (10.6...snow leopard). OLED and LED displays are also coming to the market now. These offere better color and are more eco friendly. Apple has stated they will go with LED backlights across the board.
So for them to release an incremental update is not in their MO. Sure eveyone else is going with wide gamut, but wide gamut is not really ready for prime time since the entire process...software to display is still not capable of using wide gamut effectively for pro color work.
Right now the Apple displays represent the best you can get at their price points IF you buy from the refurb store. The latest NEC models are better and you can probably find them for less. There are also several cheaper displays that are very good, though not as good. The Apple's just produce great color out of the box and profiling them is easy and produces very very good results. These cheaper displays (Dell, Samsung, HP) are good, but you'll have to do more tinkering with brightness and the final Delta E may not be as good. Good enough for what you do...probably.
I've read Apple "updates" in two ways - one, literal product updates, and two, simple price drops. Maybe we'll see them knock a few dollars off their displays sometime soon in lieu of real updates.
I really wanted to get another Apple ACD but I just can't get myself to buy technology that, while still very good, is 2 generations behind what is available now with other displays.
I'm close to buying a wide gamut NEC 90-series LCD (the 30" model - LCD3090WQXi). Since I use the monitor mostly for photo editing, a wide gamut monitor is perfect for me. Its color gamut is nearly 98 percent of Adobe-RGB space, it has internal hardware calibration (12-bit LUT) which is practically automated, unlimited scaling, completely adjustable stand - with swivel, tilt, and pivot to portrait format, multiple inputs, and a gazillion other features.
It's true that this would not be the ideal general office monitor. But if you use color-aware applications like Photoshop, Safari, and Firefox 3 you'll be all set, and able to edit A-RGB photos with accurate color rendition, and without the possible banding that would come from profiling through your graphics card vs. internal hardware calibration.
IMO the NEC 90 series monitors are the best bang for the buck for serious photo post-processing.
Sal Baker wrote:
But if you use color-aware applications like Photoshop, Safari, and Firefox 3 you'll be all set, and able to edit A-RGB photos with accurate color rendition, and without the possible banding that would come from profiling through your graphics card vs. internal hardware calibration.
Instead you can get banding from the lack of subtle tones and shades of colors. Wider range of color, same number of actual colors to use to fill that range equals banding or at least reduced tonality.
Wide gamut displays are not the photography wonder they are perceived to be.
CTYankee wrote:
Instead you can get banding from the lack of subtle tones and shades of colors. Wider range of color, same number of actual colors to use to fill that range equals banding or at least reduced tonality.
Wide gamut displays are not the photography wonder they are perceived to be.
I'm not expecting a wonder, just a good solution for editing A-RGB images. So you're saying an NEC 90-series wide gamut monitor will actually look worse and have more banding than a standard gamut display? Are you accounting for the 12-bit internal LUT that is used for calibration vs. calibrating the 8-bit graphics card?
All the pro and user reviews I've read say that the NEC 3090WQXi, calibrated properly with the monitor's internal hardware, has no banding whatsoever. In fact, it's a highly touted feature of the display. Have you seen different results with this monitor?
This is useful information as I'm about ready to push the button on this monitor.
Sal Baker wrote:
I'm not expecting a wonder, just a good solution for editing A-RGB images. So you're saying an NEC 90-series wide gamut monitor will actually look worse and have more banding than a standard gamut display? Are you accounting for the 12-bit internal LUT that is used for calibration vs. calibrating the 8-bit graphics card?
All the pro and user reviews I've read say that the NEC 3090WQXi, calibrated properly with the monitor's internal hardware, has no banding whatsoever. In fact, it's a highly touted feature of the display. Have you seen different results with this monitor?
This is useful information as I'm about ready to push the button on this monitor.
If you can afford the NEC, go for it. It really is a great LCD. My comments are about wide gamut technology in general. The problem is not the displays, but the sad fat that we are still living in a 8 bit color workflow on our computers. Sure some links in the chain are 10 bit or 12 bit (LUTs or Video cards), but some are not (Photoshop and Windows/ OSX). That means we are stuck with 16.7 million colors. Think of your LCD as a box of crayons. If you have 100 crayons in a small color space the difference between two crayons will be a certain amount. If you then go and expand the gamut of your box of crayons...well, you still have 100 crayons. Sure you have more range in color, but now the difference between two crayons will be more and you can't have as subtle a difference.
If you want an expert opinion, here is a quote from Karl Lang (developer of Sony Artisan CRTs and many other high end color systems).
"1) A wide gamut LCD display is not a good thing for most (95%) of high
end users. The data that leaves your graphic card and travels over the
DVI cable is 8 bit per component. You can't change this. The OS, ICC
CMMs, the graphic card, the DVI spec, and Photoshop will all have to be
upgraded before this will change and that's going to take a while. What
does this mean to you? It means that when you send RGB data to a wide
gamut display the colorimetric distance between any two colors is much
larger. As an example, lets say you have two adjacent color patches one
is 230,240,200 and the patch next to it is 230,241,200. On a standard
LCD or CRT those two colors may be around .8 Delta E apart. On an Adobe
RGB display those colors might be 2 Delta E apart on an ECI RGB display
this could be as high as 4 delta E.
It's very nice to be able to display all kinds of saturated colors you
may never use in your photographs, however if the smallest visible
adjustment you can make to a skin tone is 4 delta E you will become
very frustrated very quickly.
2) More bits in the display does not fix this problem. 10 bit LUTs, 14
Bit 3D LUTs, 10 bit column drivers, time-domain bits, none of these
technologies will solve problem 1. Until the path from photoshop to the
pixel is at least 10 bits the whole way, I advise sticking to a display
with something close to ColorMatch or sRGB."
So what about that wide gamut display? You could calibrate and profile into a smaller space to avoid these issues. When you need to use AdobeRGB you can then just switch over to those settings. When we finally do get 10 bit color, you'll also have the hardware you need. Since it really doesn't cost extra to get wide gamut these days its not a problem getting it. You just need to know how to use it. And if you are going to use it in a smaller color space the Apple displays pop up again as contenders....old hardware or not, they just get teh job done very well.
