I'd like to replace my CRT with an LCD and I was looking for some guidance. Right now I'm using a LaCie Electron 19 Blue IV and a cheap 17 inch LCS to hold my tools and palates when I'm working in Photoshop.

I'd love to have, and can afford, a big 30" monitor and I drool at the possibility, but I don't want to give up the accuracy of the monitor that I have. So can I buy a Apple or Dell 30" and calibrate it to do as well as my LaCie? Or do I need to look for something more specialized?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Wait for the new NEC 2690wuxi to start shipping, perhaps later this month, before you make up your mind.

Nill
~~
www.toulme.net

I've had my eye on that as a possibility. You think the color accuracy of the NEC will be worth the extra pixels of the ACD?

Remains to be seen, but that NEC is spec'd to cover 92% of the Adobe RGB space.

And I sure am happy with my little 2090uxi.

Nill
~~
www.toulme.net

For me the choice is either an Eizo S2410 or the NEC 2690WUXi. I was actualy waiting if Eizo would lower the price of the S2110 and S2410, and they did...today! The S2410 sells now for 1149 Euro while the NEC is about 1300-1400 Euro. An additional bottleneck for me is that the shops that are selling the NEC (by the way it's not in stock yet) are only willing to give me a pixel warranty if I pay E100 more

The Eizo CE240 would also be a nice tool, but the price is too high (~E1800) for me as an amature.

On this forum there is also a discusion from Karl Lang that Wide Gamut (WG) displays (the NEC 2690 comes close) are currently not the holy grail since the PC video system is not prepared for it (still 8 bit). a Wide Gamut display can show a broader colour spectrum (Adobe 1998 RGB) but it still supports only 16.7M colours, like any normal display. The spectraview software for hardware calibration of the NEC is not yet available too, it's also unsure if European models will support the Spectraview software. There is a lot of confusion on this subject.

NEC will also launch a 24" model, but that one will not have the wide gamut and will not come to Europe.

When you say the "PC video system" do you mean PC as in Mac or PC or just all desktop computers? Are there any computer/card combos that can really work in 12 bit?

As far as I understand Karl Lang's Story. current computers including Apple and Photoshop only sent 8 bit data to the monitor. Both videocard hardware and the windows/photoshop system needs to be updated before more then 8 bit data can be output to a monitor (any monitor).

a practical example:
asume that a current LCD can display 1000 different real life reds. This means the smallest red change you will see is about 1000/256 (8bit 0....255). a monitor with a larger gamut that can display lets say 1500 reds will cause a smallest red change of 1500/256. So the wide gamut display has a wider colour range, but the colours can be selected less accuratly. This could cause some kind of posterization.

But this is my interpretation of Karl Langs story, but I understand what he means (at least I think I do ).


Note:
I did some googling... on Windows Vista... I did find some articles about WCS (WIndows Colour System) it seems it should be ready for high dynamic range imaging. But even then both the video card, DVI connection and monitor should accept more then 8 bit. So I really don't know if a current Wide Gamut monitor and video card is ready for this.

According to this link Windows Vista introduces the scRGB colour space that uses 16 bits.

I recently got the apple 23" lcd and love it. Main reson is I shoot mainly for ad agencies and all the art directors view my images on apple lcd'd so if it looks great on my screen it will look great in theirs

That aside the apple is very very sharp and much better for evaluating shadow detail and noise than the CRTs ive had.

I'm pretty sure that the problem is with the DVI spec itself. The cable only carries 8 bits for each pixel. There's physically no wires on the connectors for more bits. I'm not sure how one gets more - maybe by using two cables, like high res monitors do, except with the second cable carrying more bits, instead of more pixels?

The two main components of a LCD monitor are the LCD and it's backlight. The backlight has a fixed brightnes and color temp. The backlight can only be controlled by the user controls. The colors are reproduced by the LCD/TFT panel itself. Every R, G, B pixel can be controlled in brightness. Most panels have 8 bit control, and only very rear panels (Like the NEC Spectraview $6000,-) have 10 bit control. So it doesn't make much sense to have a 16 bit DVI connection, while the LCD panel has only 8 bits available per channel. The amount of wires in a DVI cable has nothing to do with the amount of bits. You can compare it with a Serial ATA (harddisk) connection. The DVI uses a serial communication protocol, and as far as I know it already supports 10 bit DVI because the ATI Fire GL card supports 10 bit.