Best monitor for photo editing and viewing - suggestions wanted

[Uri A]

Hi Bryan!

Why, oh WHY did I open my big keyboard??!? I really don't want to start an argument or a flame war, so let me say that if it works for you and you are happy with your prints - GREAT! Also: I am not a colour or calibration or monitor expert (and neither, it seems, are most of the people I have paid $$$ to, who DO claim to be experts).

The only reason I replied to this thread is that the OP and others were agonizing about the best panel technology, video cards, connectors, viewing angles, spending $$$$$$ on monitors, etc, and the article being referenced claims that you MUST export in sRGB to get a good print from your lab. Well ...... that is WRONG!

If you are shooting LF film, you are hopefully concerned with extracting the maximum possible detail and nuance from an image. I won't argue about whether sRGB is "good" or "bad" (it's great for online/websites, etc), but it IS the smallest, most basic, least nuanced colour space in use today. So an article that tells you to buy and calibrate the bejesus out of the most advanced and expensive monitor technology and then tells you that you MUST use the LEAST advanced and subtle colour space to export your prints is incoherent at best.

My 5c.

[Peter De Smidt]

Also..........I have battled with these issues since I first started doing anything digital. IMO for example trying to get a monitor image that perfectly matches a print so you don't have to make test prints is like chasing your tail. At some point you accept the fact that color calibration, profiling, softproofing etc. is never going to be perfect (and even if it is the person you send the file to has crappy profiling) and you do the best you can and send the file or start making test prints and waste some paper and ink.

IMHO for most everyone I know, teach, sleep with, shoot with, drink with or what ever with-at some point it is a far better investment to simply put gas in the car and go make images and buy a stack of paper and have at it! You can calibrate till you fry your brain cells and never make any images!

Kirk is spot on!

[patrickjames]

In a closed loop you can get incredibly close, but like Kirk says, as soon as it leaves your loop, everything will probably go to hell!

Bill, just use the DVIs. The advantage of display port is that it allows a 10 bit signal. Last time I checked there were only two graphics cards that would output a 10 bit signal and I don't remember if either were compatible with a Mac.

In other words, don't worry about it. Take your time to calibrate and profile the monitors, which should be automatic for you since you went with the whole enchilada from NEC. Sit back and enjoy the rest.

[Corran]

Uri - You're also talking about paper, which has it's own limitations in terms of color gamut. It doesn't really matter how high-fidelity your monitor is and how awesome the colors are if you can't put it on the paper.

Personally, I've never felt limited whatsoever in color gamut with sRGB. I think it has more than enough color fidelity to deal with any DSLR file, which have terrible color reproduction in the red channel anyway, but my color scans from chromes and negs also look great and have no discernible lack of nuance.

I think saying one person's technique is WRONG is just as short-sighted as saying yours is RIGHT. If the lab is using sRGB, I'd like to know why you think that it's wrong to use sRGB in your editing. I think that's the clincher for the argument. He really should've written "export in whatever color space your lab uses" and then there would be no issue, right?

No arguments or flame wars here, we are simply discussing!

[Uri A]

trying to get a monitor image that perfectly matches a print so you don't have to make test prints is like chasing your tail. At some point you accept the fact that color calibration, profiling, softproofing etc. is never going to be perfect

True, true, true .... in my 15 years shooting commercially, here is my experience:

Export file on 6-year old uncalibrated iMac to high-street lab:

Me: Hm. Looks a little darker and more magenta than it did on screen.
Printer: Yeah.. let's fix that and print it again.

Give file to super-duper mega pro lab, crammed with Eizos, Epsons, expertly calibrated $10,000 RIPs:

Me: Hm. Looks a little darker and more magenta than it did on screen.
Printer: Yeah.. let's fix that and print it again.

[Uri A]

Uri - You're also talking about paper, which has it's own limitations in terms of color gamut. It doesn't really matter how high-fidelity your monitor is and how awesome the colors are if you can't put it on the paper.

Personally, I've never felt limited whatsoever in color gamut with sRGB. I think it has more than enough color fidelity to deal with any DSLR file, which have terrible color reproduction in the red channel anyway, but my color scans from chromes and negs also look great and have no discernible lack of nuance.

I think saying one person's technique is WRONG is just as short-sighted as saying yours is RIGHT. If the lab is using sRGB, I'd like to know why you think that it's wrong to use sRGB in your editing. I think that's the clincher for the argument. He really should've written "export in whatever color space your lab uses" and then there would be no issue, right?

No arguments or flame wars here, we are simply discussing!

Right you are.

I did say if you get good results with sRGB - more power to you, but I do stand by the claim that there is an incoherence between buying the finest monitors and calibration and then using sRGB to print on paper. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link and sRGB is 20 year old monitor and home printer technology.

I would say that sRGB is the colour space that is least suited to matching screen to paper and that for that very reason I have never come across a lab (other than high-street Frontier minilabs) that uses it.

[Corran]

I'm not an expert on what every lab is using, but all of the mid-tier labs that I've used that cater to the average mom-and-pop photography business (like me!) and of course amateurs have used sRGB. The one time I used a local lab which was run by an older gentleman who frankly knew less about computers than I likely did when I was 10 years old, the computer prompted him to change my image to Adobe RGB, which I told him yes, do, since his printer was set up to that color space, and not a single thing changed in terms of color to my eye. The print looked great, just like I had seen it on my monitor. So I'm not sure what the big hooplah is about.

Now the likes of West Coast Imaging and such, I don't know what they use. I don't use boutiques like that, nor have I ever felt the need to. The only color issues I've had is cheap prints from the local bulk-item chain here. Their prints are ever so slightly warmer, while black-and-white images have a slight bluish-purple hue, very similar to what my Ilford MGIV paper toned in selenium look like (!). For cheap prints they work fine and I slightly edit my original before sending it to account for the shift.

[Uri A]

Great

[Bill, 70's military B&W]

Again, thanks to everyone, here as an explaination is my situation.

I ordered the Mac desktop off eBay and the beast has not arrived yet.
The 2 monitors hopefully will be there late this week.
I have NEVER color calibrated a monitor other than tweaking the R G B, contrast and brightness knobs.
Also I have not seen a good quality monitor except at the Apple store. Those Cinemas look great. Although I do not like the gloss.
Never saw ASUS, high end Dell, only NEC I've been around was office quality.

So I realize a lot of my questions were very basic, but I am not shy about asking.
I'm sure I will be asking a lot more when I am setting all this up

I also bought a 3880 and I've never printed before either.

Anyone want to come and live with me for a month or so.
Free room and board!
Bill

[paulr]

So I'm not sure what the big hooplah is about.

Here's a bit of my experience. It's not enough to draw a hard conclusion from but it may be relevant. Several years ago I did my first color show. I didn't have the means to print it, so I hired my friend who runs a an art printing service. At the time, we both used calibrated, high end, but low color gamut (sRGB) monitors. Mine was a LaCie electron blue, his a Sony.

Of my 20 images, about 12 of them printed without any issues. I did the color corrections and tonal adjustments on my machine, delivered the files, and my friend nailed the print on the first or second try. About a half dozen of the prints needed a few tries to get right. But there were two prints that gave us headaches. The printed output didn't come close to what either of us saw on screen. My friend had to mess with the curves for a whole afternoon to get the prints to match, and the resulting file he printed on looked like an acid trip on screen. These images had to be printed blind, by trial and error (just like in the darkroom). It wasn't cheap.

I can only assume the problem prints resulted from out of gamut colors on our monitors. I don't know for sure, but gammut issues certainly could be expected to cause problems like these.