Alan321 Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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Look at different screens - even iPads and such - to see how you like the different pixels per inch. Higher ppi gives you smaller images when viewed at 1:1 (image pixel for screen pixel) but they look great. You might like a larger size on screen but then you might find that seeing and noticing the pixel boundaries is distracting. For me, less than 130ppi is no good, 130-180 is good, 180-220 is very good, more than 220 makes the images look very good but usually too small for me to see the details.
Some monitors such as my Dell up2414Q (185ppi) offer pre-set sRGB and Adobe RGB colorspace but you can still mess it up by changing the brightness and contrast manually. Some, like NEC with SpectraView II, can do that too but can also be switched to different configurations that you create, and it will automatically set the brightness for you as well as the colours. This allows tweaking image edits suitable for different print-viewing conditions by setting the monitor to those conditions. The NECs typically process more bits per colour channel internally and externally than the Dell can, which is a very useful feature for getting colour uniformity all over the screen, but they also generally have lower ppi at around 90-110 (too low for me).
I assume that you have colour profiles for your printer ink/paper combinations too.
Once you have the ppi sorted out in your head, consider how big you want the screen to be, and why. It used to be that bigger was the only way to get extra pixels but now you can do the with higher ppi instead. You can use multiple screens instead of or as well as a bigger screen, but you'll want a graphics card that can cope with the overall pixel count.
Also make sure that you can get the resolution and refresh rate you want (60Hz is better than 30Hz) from the graphics card to your monitor. e.g. they might need compatible connectors such as DisplayPort 1.2 or higher, or HDMI 1.4 or higher.
I consider matte screens to be far better than glossy screens but some others disagree. You decide what you like before you buy because especially in the cheaper end of the market matte is unavailable or more expensive. The high-end monitors from NEC and Eizo are all matte screens.
I recommend that you avoid too many compromises because all of your photography and editing is managed through the monitor. You can get consistently good results from a slow computer but not from a poor quality monitor.
- Alan
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