Since a large part of digital photography involves editing images on a computer, we felt it was time we looked at the factors that should influence monitor choice. The ability to see an image file on-screen with accurate colour and tone is essential for a professional digital workflow. To keep wastage to a minimum when printing, photographers need to invest time (and, usually money) to ensure that what they see on-screen is very close to their printed images. With an accurate, properly calibrated and profiled monitor you can get very close!
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Since a large part of digital photography involves editing images on a computer, we felt it was time we looked at the factors that should influence monitor choice. The ability to see an image file on-screen with accurate colour and tone is essential for a professional digital workflow. To keep wastage to a minimum when printing, photographers need to invest time (and, usually money) to ensure that what they see on-screen is very close to their printed images. With an accurate, properly calibrated and profiled monitor you can get very close! CRT vs LCD CRT monitors used to be favoured by photographers for their colour and tonal accuracy. However, LCD monitors are rapidly replacing them at all levels of imaging and it is becoming difficult to find CRTs. LCDs have certain benefits over CRTs:
However, they also have a few disadvantages:
Although you can calibrate and profile laptop monitors – and this will improve their accuracy – no laptop LCD can present colours, tones and contrast levels accurately enough to base serious imaging decisions on. They also offer a limited range of adjustments. Monitor Colour Spaces Essentially, only the most expensive monitors are capable of displaying colours outside the sRGB colour space, which is the basis for most imaging. Many cheaper monitors can’t even display saturated colours near the edges of the sRGB gamut and, for photographers who prefer to work in the wider Adobe RGB colour space, images on these screens will look flat. On a high-quality screen that displays the full sRGB gamut, Adobe RGB images should look better – but not quite as good as they would on a screen with a wider gamut still. There are some persuasive reasons for using sRGB as your shooting colour space: 1. sRGB is the default colour space for the internet and almost all printers (photo and commercial). Editing and outputting sRGB images should ensure consistent colour and tonal reproduction across a wide variety of output devices (printers, monitors, etc). If an image looks good on your monitor – and your workflow is properly calibrated and profiled – it should look the same on any other calibrated monitor and print out with the same colour and tonal values on any profile-enabled printer. 2. sRGB is better for portraiture as it delivers more natural-looking skin tones. 3. Certain greens can appear to fluoresce when an Adobe RGB image is output to an sRGB device. However, there are some equally persuasive arguments for shooting in Adobe RGB and buying a monitor that can reproduce most of the Adobe RGB gamut. 1. The Adobe RGB colour space is wider than sRGB, which means you capture more colour information. Photographers who shoot and archive Raw files may actually be able to obtain better images from Adobe RGB files because there’s more colour data to work with. And, in the future, printer manufacturers may release inks that can reproduce the full Adobe RGB gamut. 2. It’s easy to change the colour space of an image file when converting from Raw to JPEG or TIFF or after editing. If your monitor is properly calibrated, you will be able to see the effect of the change on-screen. You can also see whether the image will print out with the correct colour and tonal values or if some hues and tones are clipped. 3. If you have access to a printer that can handle 10-bit image files (such as the Durst Lambda) you will be able to make prints with the full colour gamut you have captured. For landscape photographers, this can lead to richer, more dynamic prints. There’s nothing to stop you from shooting in the Adobe RGB space and editing your images on an sRGB monitor. Although some hues (such as saturated blues and greens) may look slightly flat on screen, with a good inkjet printer, the colours should bounce back, demonstrating that only the monitor display is being clipped; not the file itself. Identifying High-Quality Monitors Professional LCD monitors can be distinguished by 10-bit (or higher) gamma processing, whereas other displays offer only 8-bit support. This difference is significant. Whereas a monitor with 8-bit processing can only calibrate the gamma curve in 256 steps, a 10-bit processor can calculate the gamma curve in 1021 steps. The result will be a smoother gamma curve and greater hue and tonal accuracy. Expect to pay a premium price for a monitor with 10-bit gamma processing. A quick-and-easy way to see whether a monitor is suitable for imaging is to check the range of adjustments it provides. The ability to calibrate and profile a monitor depends on being able to adjust both brightness and contrast as well as independently adjusting the red, green and blue colour channels. Some monitors are sold with one or more of these controls locked and this prevents accurate profiling. The ability to reproduce fine detail is also important as editing often requires parts of the image to be enlarged several hundred times. If the pixel structure of the screen is visible under normal viewing conditions it will remain visible regardless of how much you magnify an image. This can interfere with the amount of detail you see and make it difficult to apply fine adjustments to that part of the shot. Run a magnifying glass over LCD screens to check for dead pixels. Check the display’s angle of view. Although most of your work will involve looking directly at the screen, it can be handy to have a display that retains its accuracy for people who might view your image from one side when you’re working on it. Take a couple of your image files along and ask the store staff to display them on the monitors that interest you. It should be obvious which screen produces the best result. Having found a monitor with the necessary adjustment range and a fine pixel structure, the next task is to discover whether it provides even colour and tonal reproduction and image clarity from edge to edge. This is easy to do. Open an image file on the screen and move it about, going from side to side and top to bottom of the desktop. Watch for changes that occur in colours, brightness, contrast and sharpness. A good monitor should maintain consistency in all four parameters throughout the display area. Note: you need to be very discerning when judging a monitor’s performance, as these changes may be very subtle. Make sure the display is evenly lit with no reflections off the screen to prevent you from seeing changes. Monitor Calibration and Profiling When your monitor is calibrated to display colours accurately, it’s also easier to obtain consistent quality from edited prints if somebody else prints them – or uses them in an online application. Setting your monitor up correctly involves:
Both profiling and calibration actually measure the monitor/display card combination, so users need to be aware that some aspects of monitor display are influenced by the capabilities of the video card. Most video cards designed for gaming will perform well for imaging tasks. If you haven’t invested in a colorimeter and profiling software yet, you may like to check out the free monitor testing patterns offered by ViewSonic. They can be downloaded from http://www.monitorvictims.com/?main.
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