New monitor advice

[ron1863]

I just bought a Samsung T220 22" monitor for approx. £185 on Boxing day from PC World.
Excellent, especially compared to my old monitor which was a Xerox 19" and as Graham says, a decent monitor helps you see any errors in your photographs.

[DavyG]

Thanks for replying so quickly Graham, it's appreciated.

Thanks also to everyone else who responded, there's some good advice to be had here.

Ron, it sounds like you grabbed a bargain, that particular monitor had some very good reviews.

Dave

[WhiskyBottle]

I bought the LG W2252TQ as originally planned. It now sits next to the CRT. The CRT is the first monitor and does the windows stuff, and the LG does the photo stuff. It was a very bright out of the box, but that was easily adjusted. I'm very pleased with it.

Typical photo editing setup would be NikonView and my database on the CRT, and CaptureNX and Photoshop on the LG wide screen. I would recommend a dual screen setup if you've got the space.

Only trouble is the CRT looks a bit sad now. I could do with another flat screen of the same spec. and height as the W2252TQ, but standard aspect ratio

Martin

[DavyG]

Thanks WhiskyBottle.

I actually run a dual screen setup, up until today I was using a 17" HP1730 LCD as my day to day screen with a Lacie 19" Electron19blueIV CRT as my main photo editor.

The main problem I experienced was that the HP colours were noticeably cooler then the Lacie and I inevitably forgot to switch the Lacie on when editing.

Based on the advice given here, I've now replaced the HP with a Samsung T220.

There's still a slight difference between the monitors but I've been able to adjust the Samsung so that the difference is minimal.

I notice that Geoff F mentioned that he set his monitor to sRGB, my Lacie has this function, maybe it's something I need to investigate further.

Thanks again to everyone who offered guidance.

Dave

[Jim Ford]

Nobody seems to want big CRT monitors dominating their desks anymore, so consequently they can be picked up very cheaply. I bought a Mitsubishi Diamond Plus 230 for £5 in 2007 at a car boot sale. The seller looked surprised when I just picked it up and walked off with it to my car 200yds away - I ended up with bruises on my forearms from the weight!

Although it looked clean with no screen burn, I quite expected it to not work and the fiver to be wasted - but I've been using it ever since, calibrating it every week or so with a ColorMunki.

Jim

[DavyG]

Originally Posted by Jim Ford

Although it looked clean with no screen burn, I quite expected it to not work and the fiver to be wasted - but I've been using it ever since, calibrating it every week or so with a ColorMunki.

Jim

Jim,

Do you find that, using the calibrator, you get a good colour match between the monitor display and your prints?

If so, do you allow your printer or photoshop to control the colour of the prints?

As you can tell, I'm not too clued up on this, I've been getting good results when printing but I think that's more through luck than judgement.

Dave

[Jim Ford]

Originally Posted by DavyG

Do you find that, using the calibrator, you get a good colour match between the monitor display and your prints?

Yes - within reason. The gamut of a monitor is different to that of an inkjet printer. A monitor can produce colours that a printer can't and vise versa. For a start a monitor uses the additive colours RGB and a printer the subtractive complementaries CMY. With a monitor you add colours to a black backgound, but with a printer you filter out colours from a white backgound. Given the huge difference in fundamental technologies it's surprising the results can be so good.

If so, do you allow your printer or photoshop to control the colour of the prints?

I produce a printer profile for Photoshop to use and set the printer driver to no colour management. This is the normal way of profiling a printer.

As you can tell, I'm not too clued up on this, I've been getting good results when printing but I think that's more through luck than judgement.

I think if you stick to the printer manufacturers' inks and papers you can expect to get reasonable results. If like me, you use third party inks and papers, then you're venturing into uncharted waters and have to sort printer+ink+paper profiles yourself.

Jim

[DavyG]

Thanks for the prompt reply and the guidance Jim.

I'll set the print options as you've suggested and try from there.

Have a great New Year.

Dave

[Jim Ford]

Originally Posted by DavyG

Have a great New Year.

Thanks Dave - the same to you.

If you're using printer profiling, you can get an idea of what the final print will look like by using Photoshop's proof option. You need to set the proofing to the printer profile you use. You can also see any parts of the print that are out of the printer's gamut. Be warned, though - you'll be disappointed with the flat looking colours when you toggle proofing, but when you look at the final print it will be OK. It's basically a matter of the white on the monitor being brighter than that of the paper.

Jim

[Tormentil]

Originally Posted by WhiskyBottle

.... I'll run windows on the CRT and the photo processing stuff on the TFT monitor.....

I always thought CRT's were better for image processing than TFT's ?