Monitors are Superior to Prints

[Paddy C]

Probably the best solution for screen viewing right now would be the Frank Petronio iPad app. You do have one of those right, Frank?

You would then be dealing with a reliable, consistent and knowable high quality display. You can then control the size, interaction etc and test. It limits your audience but gives you control.

I suspect the average quality of all monitors in use has, and will continue, to improve. However, there are still millions of crappy monitors out there and there will be for a long time.

 

[Photo_Smith]

I don't want to carry this too far, but . . . expensive, professional monitors of the future could be made to some ??? standard of color interpretation. When the color calibration data is tagged to an image, all monitors that adhere to the standard will display the colors as the standard says to interpret them. (or something along that technology path 🙂 )

Your comments on prints being "personal" is ever so true.

This was how a lot of pre press worked in the early 1990's nearly everyone had the same Apple displays, using the same 1.8 Gamma. Nowadays the range of devices runs from high PPI 4" phones to large 60" low PPI TV sets with every different panel type in between, characterising and calibrating them to a known standard is tough but the changing viewing conditions isn't really helpful.

To expand on your idea you would need a self calibrating monitor with sensors to detect both environmental colour and luminance constantly changing the monitor characterisation and adjusting-I think current monitor CMM is done by the LUT at startup so I'm not sure how possible it is.
I had a self calibrating Barco monitor over 10 years ago, so technology might solve the problem one day, but with ever increasing types of display on the market consistent colour between a thousand devices is nailing jelly to the wall.

 

[Baby of Macon]

This is a very good topic. I'm inclined to agree that calibration differences are less of an issue: certainly less of an issue than monitor resolution. I've tried to edit my images while travelling abroad on my Macbook Air and its nigh on impossible due to the computer's resolution.

 

[thegman]

I'm not knowledgeable enough on the topic of prints to say whether tonality, colour etc. is better on a good screen than a good print. However..

1) On my 3 screens at home (desktop, laptop, tablet), photos look different on all of them. Shadows which look blocked out on my laptop, are not on my desktop.

2) Prints are just there, they don't need to be turned on, don't illuminate the room.

3) Prints can be created inexpensively (10 cents for a 6x4 at my local Officeworks), and can be given away, sent away, and used without yet again picking up a computer.

For me, computers are a greater passion than photography, I'd rather be a "great" computer scientist than a "great" photographer. I don't think that computers have brought any great improvement to photography though, any more than they have to Michelin Star level cooking.

Maybe I'm just cynical though, maybe I've been using computers too long to be interested in every use that people put them to.

 

[Bob Michaels]

Unfortunately not, similar possibly; but not the same. We have a fully colour managed workflow here at college, even with the monitors calibrated the various different panel types will mean the photos look different. I am viewing pictures on an Eizo, an older Apple Cinema display, a Macbook and a Samsung LED. The Macbook is an older one, being off axis will make a huge difference as does the glossy screen, the Eizo is an expensive monitor and good the Cinema display also OK for it's age the Samsung less so.

Line them up side by side, use the same calibration device, and you'll have four different renderings of the same tagged image in CMM aware browsers.

I wonder if your and my conclusions result from an academic vs. a pragmatic approach, assuming your monitors are correctly calibrated.

You can see a file on one system and can conclude it is "very good, damn near perfect, not needing to change a thing". Then view the same file on another system and conclude it is also "very good, damn near perfect, not needing to change a thing". Then you put both systems side by side and notice slight variances. You ask "OK, which one of these is very good, damn near perfect, not needing to change a thing". Ultimately you conclude both are even though the side by side tests show some slight variance. To me, that is the same from my pragmatic view.

 

[Oren Grad]

So if you're tired of how photo sharing sites crunch and "enhance" our images, or how poorly tiny jpgs represent our best work...

...then don't use photo sharing sites that crunch and "enhance" your images, and don't post tiny jpgs that poorly represent your best work.

 

[mdarnton]

Everything I put on the web I spend the next couple of days running around to every computer I can get access to, my cell phone, and my tablet, too, trying to figure out how to make things look the best. Sometimes you just have to give up, though. Surprisingly, I often find that after going through the process, eventually I will end up with a better final result, one that doesn't stress out too much on any system. I view it as a way to filter out the eccentricities in my digital processing that I might not have noticed on any one computer.

One thing I never ignore, though is the clipping points on the histogram. Sometimes on Flickr I see some otherwise pretty nice stuff where the grey scale runs from, say, 10% to 90%--that is, all grey--and I wonder how people can even let that happen.

 

[Frank Petronio]

So far...

- Nobody has claimed that monitors are worse than prints, at least in terms of range and color.

- Nobody has offered anything constructive about preparing images for online viewing beyond the obvious common sense suggestions.

I get the sense that you guys rather bat around qualifications and excuses ;-p

 

[redisburning]

So, my recommendation for step wise sharpening didn't count why, exactly?

 

[pete hogan]

Review the tutorial page on the Ilfordlab-USA site. They will send you a print to use in comparing with a download of their image, as well as some suggestions for monitor use.

 

[Oren Grad]

Nobody has claimed that monitors are worse than prints, at least in terms of range and color.

Well then, since you asked: better for color, worse for B&W.

Nobody has offered anything constructive about preparing images for online viewing beyond the obvious common sense suggestions.

Because the biggest problem is calibration of your unidentified viewers' monitors, and there's not much you can do about that.

The best advice I can think of is to treat the on-screen presentation as a free-standing work in an electronic medium and optimize it as such, rather than trying to emulate the properties of a print.

Beyond that, there's no magic recipe; people have and are entitled to their own preferences for what a picture should look like. Unless you're trying to sell something, just season to your own taste and let it be.

 

[Frank Petronio]

So, my recommendation for step wise sharpening didn't count why, exactly?

Because you're insecure and kind of irritating? Personality counts for a lot. We're just not compatible, you can have the cat.

 

[Steve M.]

A monitor will usually look better than a print. At least a CRT monitor will. It will be back lit, giving a sort of glowing illumination.

Of course there's the little issue of permanency. A properly made B&W fiber print will last 100+ years. A photo file/computer monitor will last.....

Some people like to make BIG prints too. That may be another problem w/ a monitor. If someone says that they make big TV screens, indeed they do. Very low rez though compared to a CRT monitor, like the old gold standard, a Sony Trinitron.

 

[thegman]

So far...

- Nobody has claimed that monitors are worse than prints, at least in terms of range and color.

- Nobody has offered anything constructive about preparing images for online viewing beyond the obvious common sense suggestions.

I get the sense that you guys rather bat around qualifications and excuses ;-p

Fair enough.

To be honest, I've probably never used a good enough screen for long enough to say if it's better or worse than a print.

Constructive: Make your own photo site (it's not that hard really), so you are in complete control of compression etc.

 

[bobbyrab]

I recently went to a Nadav Kander show in Leica's London gallery. I really like his work and I was familiar with all the portraits shown from seeing them online, but I was very underwhelmed with the images as prints, they lacked the sparkle I was used to seeing on screen, and despite the large print size seemed almost less detailed, but that's just from being less punchy on paper no doubt. I did think at the time though, that it would have been a better show had they been shown on large screens.
A proper screen and calibration seem to be key, I'm currently going jumping through hoops trying to get an acceptable calibration of my Eizo screen. What it's software is telling me is properly calibrated, looks so off it can't possibly be right, yet tring to find someone who properly understands colour calibrating is proving very difficult.

 

[DominikDUK]

Frank monitors are neither inferior nor better a Salted paper print has a tonal range that blows away all other silver based photographic processes doesn't mean that it is better. The color on a monitor can be extremely inaccurate so again it is not better just different. If you prefer mat over glossy a screen sucks. If the web presentation is the final form of your work not a print than the images have a reduced color space the web does not use the full color space so again the screen is not better. A Duratrans can be considered a print I could also backlight a print and it will gain a lot and the screen will lose a lot compared to the backlit print.

For a pure B/W image use grayscale as opposed to sRGB at least you won't get a color shift. The frame of the image might help you as well and can control the look of the image to some extent just like a matboard with prints (color & B/W this time). Write some witty remark like if the image's too dark give it some spark by using the following brightness settings.

 

[bibz]

Monitors literally shoot light into your eyes. Prints reflect light. That is a pretty big difference. But being digital and currently very limited, displays will continue to improve for quite a while. And when the depth and contrast moves up on the displays, your d800e's photos are going to look worse and worse. It's a matter of data. Jpegs are like mp3's, lossy technology. No jpeg from today will stand the test of time. In 10 years everything untouched from now under 10mb say will look rubbish. With the raws you can re'develop' so to speak but by then who knows where the hi-tech imaging world will have reached. Film is archival. It won't change over the years, and what you can extract from it increases with technology.

I've never experienced anything like e6 negs on a light table. Truly 3d in a way 3dtv's wish they could be. I think backlit displayed film/prints will be in the future. It's a medium I'd love to play with. Just not with any crumby lcd tech!

 

[JoeV]

To walk even further around Frank's question without answering it ... monitors might have superior image quality over prints, but the lack of calibration of the (hypothetical) viewing public's monitors means that prints offer a more controlled means of purposefully conveying a specific image to the public.

Yes, there are differences that can arise from lighting variation (intensity and color temperature) that can affect the viewing experience of prints, but in general I'd wager a guess and say the experience is closer to what the photographer had in mind than the unknown condition of the publics' computer monitors. Which might help explain why prints are still popular. That, and the fact that they can be monetized and sold individually with a greater degree of intellectual property rights protection.

Which reminds me, way back "in the day," (before the phrase "in the day" was coined) there was a feature of the NTSC broadcast television signal called VITS (vertical interval test signal) that was used to lock the color, tint and contrast of a TV receiver to the standard of the network. Not all TV receivers had this feature, but it reminds me that perhaps future standards in computer display monitors would incorporate some calibration standards.

~Joe

 

[charjohncarter]

I don't know anything about monitors, but my son-in-laws Apple computer monitor sure makes my files look better than that do on my monitor.

 

[Pioneer]

I quit hanging my prints on my monitor to consider over time. They got in the way of my solitaire games and my wife couldn't check her e-mail.

...found it worked better to tape em on the wall instead...

...not to mention that I had to go buy a new computer monitor everytime I sold one...

😀

To be a bit more serious, a print, whether done in a darkroom, or from a computer monitor, has a beauty that is not dependent on an on or off switch.