Win a free color-accurate monitor?

by Rich Seiling

Sound too good to be true? Well, maybe…

I’m not running a contest, but I can tell you how to see if you’ve won. If you have an Apple Cinema Display or an Apple iMac, you probably already have a color-accurate monitor.

Apple has a long history of offering top-grade monitors. In particular, their Cinema Displays and some of the large iMacs (24” and up) have been color accurate in the past. (We use a 23-inch cinema display at West Coast Imaging, and it’s a very accurate monitor.)

The problem is that Apple does not market these monitors as being color-accurate, like NEC/LaCie/Eizo does, by providing specs. Apple can change the displays at any time, so you don’t have absolute certainty of getting a color-accurate monitor. That makes a purchase of an Apple display as a color-accurate monitor a bit of a gamble, but at a practical level, you can usually win.

It works out even better if you already own or plan to buy an iMac, because the monitor is just part of the overall computer purchase price.

Even knowing this, I’m always hesitant to recommend buying an iMac for color accurate work because I don’t have the chance to test every model as they are released.

So, when one of the WCI staff members purchased a new 27” 3.2Ghz i3 iMac for personal use, I had him bring it in so we could compare it against our other color-accurate monitors.

We calibrated to a variety of white points from 5000k to 6500k and compared it to our  NEC-2690WUXi2 and a 23-inch Apple Cinema Display (both calibrated to 6500K.) We settled on a white point of 6200K for the iMac, as this gave the closest match to our other displays.

So how good was it? Pretty good. The higher end displays were more accurate, but the iMac was way better than some well regarded but not “color-accurate” monitors I’ve recently tested like the DELL U2410 or the NEC 231WMI-BK.

Where it fell short was in some of the reds, and subtle magentas.

So, was it good enough?

It depends on your use. If you already have an iMac or Cinema Display, and don’t have a color-accurate monitor, I’d recommend getting a monitor profiling kit like the i1 Display 2 and using it.

Based on my experience, most photographers are going to be more than happy with its level of accuracy.  And if you already have it, it’s a free equipment upgrade. Considering most people aren’t using a true color-accurate monitor, it’s a huge upgrade for the vast majority of photographers.

Now you might ask, Rich, would you use it?

Fair enough.

Well, I’ve been looking at color-accurate monitors for about 17 years, and I sweat color changes of one point in Photoshop’s color balance tool. In fact, I know I’ve got the right color balance when I go back and forth by one point and wish I could split the difference. (Actually there is a way, but at that point I’m within the repeatability of the output system so it doesn’t need half point accuracy.) I would see the difference between the iMac and my color-accurate monitor.

Having the extra color accuracy of a more accurate monitor helps me achieve greater accuracy, just like Iron Chef Morimoto’s $5,000 knives do for his cooking.  I’m still going to buy the higher-end displays.

Long story short, if your iMac or cinema display is your most accurate display, profile it and use it.

If you don’t have an iMac or cinema display, and need to buy a color-accurate monitor, look at the ~$340 NEC P221W or the ~$640 NEC PA231W that will give you more accuracy than the iMac I tested. Pros who make a living with their photos will find a highly accurate monitor is less than the cost of travel to most shoots.  And if you are a very serious amateur, it might be the upgrade that takes your printing to the next level.

So did you win a color-accurate monitor? Is there a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? You tell me.

Rich Seiling is a photographer and the owner of West Coast Imaging. You can see his photographs at richardseiling.com

The Myth of the Screen to Print Match

By Rich Seiling

One of the biggest misconceptions in color management is the belief that you calibrate your monitor and printer to match each other.

If you think that’s how it works, you’re not alone. And that belief will cause you problems and frustration at one point or another, if it hasn’t already.

Want to break through the misconception and learn how it really works? It’s not hard, it just requires a little under the hood knowledge of color management.

Let’s start with an example from music. Consider this: If a guitarist and a cellist were playing the same piece of music, would you expect the guitar to sound like the cello? No. We all know that the character of instruments is different, even if they are playing the same notes, so we don’t expect them to be the same. This is also how we should think (though, to a lesser degree) about monitors and prints.

The problem with the idea of making your monitor and printer “match” is that it forgets about the file itself…and the fact that the file is the most accurate representation of color.

Files, by their nature, are what contain the colors we want to reproduce. They are the most accurate representation, even though they record color in a numeric form our eyes can’t see. To see the colors, we need output devices, monitors and printers, which convert those numbers into a visual representation. To understand how they work together, we need to understand how colors are stored and translated.

Files contain the formula to actual colors, not just a vague definition of a color. A pixel value of 211R 0G 0B doesn’t just mean the 231st step of red above zero. It means a very specific color, as plotted in the spectrum as defined by a specific ICC profile.

The problem with monitors and printers is that they are each limited in the colors they can reproduce. This is constrained by things like gamuts (the range of colors they can create) and white points. When we measure and define the colors a device can produce, we have its colorspace, which can be described in a ICC profile.

The file almost always has more colors than the devices we use to display color. The way color management works is it uses these ICC profiles which describe a device’s colorspace to map the colors from the file’s colorspace into the device’s colorspace as accurately as possible.

Why? Well, you can’t just feed a pixel value of 211R 0G 0B from the file into a printer or monitor and expect to get the right color red. In all likelihood, you’ll need to feed in an entirely different combination of RGB values to the output device in order to get the same exact color as defined by 211R 0G 0B in the file. The color profile contains the information that lets the computer translate color from one colorspace to another.

This is the important point. Color management IS NOT trying to make the monitor match the printer. Instead, it’s trying to make each device, independently of any other device, represent the file as accurately as it can, within its own limitations. The file is always the starting point; monitors and printers are just representations of the file.

The reason we see a “match” between profiled monitors and printers is this: When we make each device represent color as accurately as possible, if the two devices are similar enough, then those two devices often display the color in a similar manner…so similar that we can say we have a “match.”

This is what leads to the idea of the “match,” and that idea causes many photographers great frustration. When one of the devices is more accurate than the other (usually the print, because a good print is more accurate than any monitor), then the photographer sees a difference between the two, and no longer thinks they are “matching.” The usual response is to think something has gone wrong, because they are expecting a match.

Instead, the photographer should understand what color management does, and conclude that they are seeing the limitations of the device. You have to realize that devices like monitors do not represent the print 100% of the time so you can shatter the myth of the match.

Now, I’m not recommending you throw away your color-accurate monitor, but to understand and work with its limitations. A true color-accurate monitor that has been accurately profiled can produce an extremely good “match” to a print for a wide variety of photographic applications. But when it doesn’t, we should look at the print (printed with a proven ICC profile) as the most accurate representation. One would not expect a student violin to sound like a Stradivarius, would they? So, while our monitor may be good for many performances, we’ll need to pull out the Stradivarius (the print) for our most breathtaking music.

Color Management is called “management” not “matching” for a reason, and now you know why!

Rich Seiling is a photographer and the owner of West Coast Imaging. You can read more of his articles at craftingphotographs.com

NEC Updates its 26 inch Display

NEC has a new version of its NEC LCD2690WUXi-BK called the NEC LCD2690WUXi2-BK, the "2" meaning it's new. A quick perusal of the specs show that the color gamut has increased, and NEC has refined the way they describe the gamut of the display.

For the new display, gamut is reported separately for "Coverage" and "Size."

"Coverage" is the amount the gamut of the display overlaps a specified colorspace. The new display overlaps 97.8% of AdobeRGB.

"Size" measures the amount of colors relative to a given colorspace, and for the NEC LCD2690WUXi2-BK, its size is 108% of AdobeRGB, meaning it has 8% more colors, but not necessarily the same colors.

Both of these concepts are best shown on the graphic pulled from the brochure for this product.

You can clearly see the NEC LCD2690WUXi2-BK and AdobeRGB cover almost exactly the same colors, but the size of the gamut for the display is slightly larger.

And while larger gamut displays are a welcome innovation, even this display does not cover all of the colors in wider gamut spaces like Ektaspace and ProPhoto, which I find invaluable in fine art printmaking. Certain reds and oranges just don't reproduce in AdobeRGB, so I avoid it, as well as sRBG whenever possible.

Apple Discontinues 23 inch Cinema Display

Apple has recently discontinued its 23 inch Cinema Display, most likely in favor of the new 24 inch Cinema Display LCD. The 23 inch model still appears to be available on the Apple Store, but is marked "DISCONTINUED." We don't have any test results for the new 24 inch display, but I'm not encouraged by the comments made by Apple staffers at its introduction. They say that the way to overcome glare from its glass cover was to "pump a lot of light through it." This is not the design philosophy that helps create a color accurate display. Maybe it will be good, maybe it won't, but unless you have a Mac with the new display adapter, you can't use it anyway.

On most things I drink the Apple Kool-Aid, but in the last decade I haven't been a big fan of their displays for professional use. They make great displays for the prosumer, but for those of us in the visual arts, we have far more choices, and far better documentation on the capabilities when we choose a third party product. The 23 inch Cinema Display is the first Apple display I was excited about in a long time, but alas, now it's gone...

Color Accurate Laptop Meets Important Need

Photographers who use Windows laptops have an exciting new option with the Leveno Think Pad W700.

Aimed specifically at the professional graphics user, the W700 is equipped with a host of features that graphics professionals rely on, including a color-accurate LCD, integrated color calibration, integrated Wacom graphics tablet, and dual hard drive RAID storage.

The deficiencies in color accuracy of laptop LCD displays are well known. They are not made with the same technology of “color accurate” LCDs. Even with careful calibration, laptop LCDs display poor and inaccurate color and density. Leveno has changed that by equipping its W700 with an LCD that can display 72% of AdobeRGB. This is as accurate as the best CRT displays, and is more than adequate for even fine art printmaking.

As a Mac user, I can only hope that Apple takes note and realizes that there is a demand for a premium laptop that caters to the needs of photographers, designers, cinematographers, and other creative professionals who need accurate color in a portable solution. For Windows users, you can have that solution now. My kudos to Leveno for seeing what the market needs, and being first to put a color accurate LCD in a laptop. I hope other manufacturers will follow suit shortly.


Press Release

More information at lenovo.com

30 inch color accurate LCD

As if I didn't have enough things on my digital want list, NEC has just announced a 30 inch, 4 megapixel color accurate LCD that displays 97.8% of AdobeRGB. Street price will be about $2,200.

Check out all the geeky details on the press release.

Will it make you a better photographer? No. But would it look really good on your desk? YES!

A cheap, accurate LCD?

Happy New Year! I hope 2008 is a great year for your photography!

The offerings of color-accurate displays in the last few years have been changing a lot. We went from really good and cheap CRTs, to really good and EXPENSIVE LCDs. What the market has been lacking is a cheap, good LCD. Well, ViewSonic may have the answer in their new VP950b and VP2250wb.


According to the press release:

The VP950b offers 98% NTSC color and the VP2250wb offers 106% NTSC color capability. By comparison, the average LCD only offers 72% color. Thus, the color rendering of the VP950b and VP2250wb is far superior to the average LCD.

Now, this may not mean much, as the NTSC color space is not the best measure of a display for fine print making...but the fact that they reference it at all is a good sign. Most displays that are in the realm of 100% NTSC tend to do a good job in displaying larger colorspaces like AdobeRGB. But since they don’t specify AdobeRGB, it’s hard to directly compare it to other displays without buying one and looking at it with our eyeballs. Given that the 19-inch sells for $350 and the 22-inch for $450, it presents a significant savings over a 23" Apple Cinema Display or 19" NEC LCD1990SXi-BK...no small consideration for the recreational photographer on a budget. I’ll be adding these to my never-ending wish list of products I’d like to test, and share more when and if I have a report.

LCD Update and Apple Cinema Display Results

Since I don’t know when I’m going to be able to give you a full report on our tests of the NEC LCD2690WUXI, I’m going to give you the executive brief today.

While I personally hoped this (by the numbers) super-accurate display would be the end-all, be-all display, curing all of digital printmaking’s shortcomings, stamping out imaging hunger and achieving photographic peace in our time, this has not been the case.

It’s a good monitor, but in real-world, side-by-side daily use and testing, the color accuracy (while better by the measurements) proves to not make any real difference over a ~69% AdobeRGB Display. I would not replace my existing ~69% color accurate display with it just because of the NEC's measured gamut...but if you are looking for a BIG color-accurate display it’s a good choice, albeit at $1,500.

This led us to do some additional testing with a brand-new Apple 23” Cinema Display ($899), and we were pleasantly surprised. The 23” Cinema Display was as accurate as our 19" NEC 1980sxi, and as accurate as the NEC LCD2690WUXI. To our obsessive-compulsive, color-critical eyes, there is no advantage to color accuracy with any one of these displays over the other. None perfectly matched the proof (and no display does), and all can make the finest-quality print (the finest-quality prints still require hard proofing). The NEC LCD2690WUXI has the advantage of size, but the Apple 23” Cinema display offers a huge size at a very affordable price, giving you the best bang for your buck.

As a side note, we have run into several problems with the NEC LCD2690WUXI, and have been through five different units trying to obtain a “perfect” one. Our first one was as “perfect” as they get, but we didn’t know it until we went through three bad ones and one more good one. We’ve had dead pixels in three of the five, all of them had a color shift in the corners from the off-axis viewing angle that happens with such a wide screen (we did not experience this on the Apple 23” Cinema Display), two have had problems with the backlight bleeding into the display area, creating a noticeable light spot, and our last two had slight vertical density bands in the center of the display. It’s possible to work around all of these issues, except for the blacklight bleeding, and NEC has been extremely cooperative in replacing every one.

NEC 2690WUXI

I’ve gotten a couple of e-mails recently about a follow-up report on the NEC 2690WUXI. We’re still working towards a final report, but I’ll tell you based on our experience so far that it is a very good monitor, but the greater accuracy is not a magic cure all for your printing woes. Our initial impression is that having ~94% color accuracy to AdobeRGB is not a 25% improvement over a display that renders ~69 AdobeRGB. More to come...

What does 93.8% of Adobe RGB Look Like?

What does 93.8% of Adobe RGB Look Like? We’re about to find out as we’ve just purchased a NEC MultiSync LCD2690WUXI for testing and evaluation.

Out of the box this is a stunning display...photographs look extraordinarily life like. With a 21.7 x 13.5 inch screen you see a 2:3 aspect ratio digital camera photograph at the same size as a 16x20 print, which in itself is pretty amazing. The color is brilliant....our initial take is that it is capable of showing more colors than we’re used to typically seeing on a display....but does that make it more accurate? We’ll let you know when we find out. Our definitive test is to use it day in and day out to make hundreds of prints, and then judge our experience to see if it is more accurate and easier to use.

To calibrate it we had to go to great lengths to tune down the brightness. In fact, the brightness control alone was not enough. Even with the brightness set at zero, our Gretag Eye-One Photo colorimeter was still registering 180 cd/m2, so we had to read the manual to learn about the “expert” on screen menu which gave us access to the “Low Bright Mode” which brings the overall brightness of the display down by 50%. With that adjustment made, we went back to the normal brightness control, which then had enough range to adjust our brightness to 120 cd/m2.

Another nice touch was the ability to adjust the annoyingly bright power LED on the front of the display. We switched ours to green and set it’s brightness at the lowest setting, because the last thing you want when doing critical color work is to be blinded by an LED that’s brighter than the sun.

We sure hope that this display is as accurate as the specs say, because it’s so wonderful to work with that it would be hard to give up!