24" 1920X1200 Monitor for Photo Editing, your advice, please
Leonardo
Wake up and smell the glaciersEagle River, Alaska Icrontian
I have reached the stage where I need better precision and a broader color gamut for my photo editing pursuits. Currently the monitor I use is a 24" Samsung Syncmaster. It's pretty good, but I really want to upgrade.
TN panels are a no go. They just aren't up to the task for the editing precision, true-color needs, and large format printing that I do. I am looking in the $500-650 range for a new 24" monitor, 1920X1200 resolution. I want the money to go for quality and precision, not silliness (to me, at least) such as built-in speakers or a TV tuner.
I am very interested in the Dell Ultrasharp U2410. The HP LP2475W is also attractive. Please give me your opinions and any experience you might have with these monitors or other competitive models in this price and quality (IPS panel) category. Your recommendations for online sellers would also be appreciated. Dell and HP seem to be the most reasonable sellers for their respective products. (Newegg's IPS offerings are quite limited, and their shipping options are terrible for Alaska.)
Edit: current monitor is a Samsung 245BW
TN panels are a no go. They just aren't up to the task for the editing precision, true-color needs, and large format printing that I do. I am looking in the $500-650 range for a new 24" monitor, 1920X1200 resolution. I want the money to go for quality and precision, not silliness (to me, at least) such as built-in speakers or a TV tuner.
I am very interested in the Dell Ultrasharp U2410. The HP LP2475W is also attractive. Please give me your opinions and any experience you might have with these monitors or other competitive models in this price and quality (IPS panel) category. Your recommendations for online sellers would also be appreciated. Dell and HP seem to be the most reasonable sellers for their respective products. (Newegg's IPS offerings are quite limited, and their shipping options are terrible for Alaska.)
Edit: current monitor is a Samsung 245BW
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I strongly suggest you take a look at the Lacie 324, HP LP2480zx, Fujitsu-Siemens SCENICVIEW P24W-5 ECO or the Samsung Syncmaster F2380M (in order of quality). These are all IPS, C-PVA or S-PVA panels with exceptionally high contrast and color quality. The Lacie and HP displays are truly world-class, best in breed.
If I'm paying over $1,500 for an LCD you better believe it's going to be 30" :P
To improve, you need to move into a different class of displays.
These are figures you just won't find in TN panels.
Lacie 324 starts at about $850
HP LP2480zx starts at about $2300
The Samsung F2380M has just been released, I believe, and it's resolution is 1920x1080. I rarely watch video on my monitors and don't like newer aspect ratios geared towards movie viewing.
But, for the sake of discussion let's say I wouldn't mind using 1920 by 1080, but I don't believe it's available to purchase yet, or at least, I haven't found it for sale.
Brightness, you want as low as you can get minimum under 300cd/m2... some can be set to 120 cd/m2 (effects the quality of the blacks you view, and 300cd/m2 is sometimes joked as being used for a car headlight)
Dispersion, which is how far up/down and left/right the display is
visible/accurate. 170 degrees in both axes is good.
EIZO Is very good for color and is considered the top end; look at CG243W
Lacie 324 does the full Adobe98 colorspace (best if you do CMYK work)
2690 series by NEC (the Lacie is rebranded NEC)
Some say the Dell ultrasharp are ok I have also heard some top HP LCD's are very good
Thanks for your suggestions, I will look them up. But my my budget will not allow for top of the line. I don't want to go above $650. I guess a more refined question at this point would be: What is the best 24", 1920X1200 monitor that I could get for $650 or less?
HP DreamColor LP2480zx, Eizo flexscan SX2462W, and Eizo ColorEdge CG243W. All three are over $2300 Which is the big hit. I'm still hunting for something a bit more reasonable in price.
What I've realized from working with other monitors that are lower end, you get what you pay for. Most lowend monitors are fine for games or movies but suck at photoshop and graphics production. If your willing to work by the numbers for color; most 1920x1200 monitors are just fine for sharpness and overall quality...if you watch out for the brightness issues, type of backlight, and type of LCD display. Stay under 300cd/m2 and set it to 150cd/m2 once you get the monitor so you don't blow out the blacks.
I have my LP2475W running side by side with a 24" Samsung 245BW Syncmaster, which is a decent quality TN-based monitor. The LP2475W is absolutely in a higher league than the Samsung.
On a side note: I bought the monitor from Amazon. The shipping rate was less than one-half of what it would have been from Newegg for the same service.
What Gamma adjustment are you doing? going form 2.2 to 1.6 or 1.6 to 2.2.... etc (or are you referring to Color space adjustments going from AdobeRGB to CMYK?)
I work in Gamma 2.2 which is industry standard for photos and graphics now. I also work in ProPhotoRGB for color space (until I need to convert to sRGB or CMYK for final output)
I agree the 102% of NTSC is much better then most LCD monitors that are in the 92% of NTSC. I Just wish it was easier to got the NTSC info to make comparisons, some manufactures make it hard to get the NTSC rating info or don't supply it.
Calibrating is the way to go, I have the Eye-one display2 and it can whip most monitors into showing decent color. but I've found that if the monitor can't display it; no amount of calibrating will make the monitor display the color correctly.
I'm planing replacing my eye-one display2 with a Color Munki so I have the ability to calibrate my printer and projector. The color munki is a big step in the right direction for calibration devices; reasonable price for something that does the three major tasks.
Good to hear/learn the advantages of non-TN panel from a technically knowledgeable person. I am sure the calibrator is most helpful with a better panel like your HP. With the Acer I have, all of the ranges are so narrow that finding the optimal is difficult, forget about the ideal. But it is fine for me.
The other issue with manual adjustment is with visual perception. What you see as accurate and what is factually accurate can be two different things. Room lighting, cloths, room color, LCD backlights, color perception, and many other things can effect how you see color and contrast. Two different people can see the same color different and would calibrate a monitor different from that perception. That's why you need a calibration tool, and why even on a calibrated monitor I still check the numbers in photoshop as I'm working.
(as for setting color space, I'm referring to the color space I work in with photoshop. I let the monitor calibration tool set the color profile for the monitor; since that is the job of the tool. Not setting a color space would mean working in a default color space, either your cameras, the file default, or photoshops default (typically sRGB or AdobeRGB) I prefer ProPhotoRGB as it is a larger color space, which is more color info; the additional color info is also the reason I work with 16bit files as well)