PC vs. Mac displays.

[Goodyear]

I always knew there was theoretically a difference, but...

Look at my avatar. It was scanned from a Polaroid print on a PC, treated in Photoshop with the colour management set up wrong (which I realised after the fact) so looks a bit murky on a PC because I never bothered to do it again right - and the scanner is now packed for the move next week.

But browsing here on my newy acquired Mac ( 🙂 ) I ntice that my avatar looks much much better.

So, which do you use? Why?

And how do you ensure that your images look their best on both platforms? Since I'm now a dual-platform monkey (my fooling with Linux is not enough to qualify for triple-platform status) that is the $64000 question for me.

 

[Todd.Hanz]

Most mac displays run a gamma of 1.8, which is brighter than PC's which tend to run on 2.2. You can change your gamma on your mac to run at 2.2 but the display is still a bit brighter on a mac.

I run a mac and tend to let my images look alittle flatter when uploading here because most people here use PC's, it's a tough call.

Todd

 

[ampguy]

interesting, does anyone know of any freely downloadable test software? I'd like to try to optimize my pc screen.

 

[tetrisattack]

At issue here is the display medium (LCD vs. CRT), gamma setting, and color profiling.

Mac displays are calibrated fairly well out of the box, with most macs shipping with profiles for most apple displays. There are third party calibration systems that you can buy, ranging from a hundred to a few grand. Think gretag macbeth. Apple's built-in profiles aren't bad and in lieu of a real colorimeter there's a wizard in the system preferences that you can run through, manually calibrating by eye.

Then there's the gamma issue. PCs have traditionally used the same gamma ramp as television and other consumer displays which I believe is 2.2. On the other hand, apple has historically used a softer gamma of 1.8. Things look darker and more contrasty at 2.2. Consumers love contrast, while professionals expend great energy managing it.

Lastly, the imaging quality of an LCD depends on many variables, including your viewing angle and the surface type and of the screen.

My subjective opinion is that LCDs are superior for editing and viewing b&w, because their response in shadow areas seems more robust and film-like, though I still prefer a CRT for color.

As a footnote, it's an interesting but not often mentioned fact that most LCDs only have 6 real bits of color precision (64 discrete shades) while a CRT can handle 8 (256). Good LCDs emulate the missing shades by oscillating between the two closest values.

 

[tetrisattack]

I run a mac and tend to let my images look a little flatter when uploading here because most people here use PC's, it's a tough call.

I do the same thing, unfortunately. If you view the gallery with a high-quality display, it's evident that most users' monitors are all over the place. 🙂

I get it looking good on my LCD and then ramp up the curves a little. Often times it's still too contrasty for a run-of-the-mill PC monitor to handle. 🙁

 

[Goodyear]

Interesting. So the answer to my question would appear to be, "You can't really."

I had the numbers 2.2 and 1.8 floating around in the back of my mind, but this is my first encounter with the what they actually mean in use.

Logically, then, if working for the web it would make sense to work on a PC, as this will let you see what the majority of the web browsing crowds will see. But then, if you take it at all seriously then your system will include some degree of colour management - which is almost pointless unless you assume everyone who views your images takes a similar amount of care.

So everything comes down to "close enough." By the by, I certainly don't go for absolute fidelity - I edit on a pretty cheap LCD, and my colorimeter is the cheapest of the cheap. But close enough...

Most viewing online use PCs, yet received wisdom is that Macs are 'better' for design/photography work - often including web work... that is crazy!

So as I make a day-to-day migration to Apple (for reasons not including the above), perhaps I consider maintaining my Windows desktop for photo work after all...

This matters for me as most images that end up in public end up on the web rather than displayed in any other way.

Thanks for all the input.

 

[Jonathan_100]

Mark,

I prefer the Mac monitors (both CRT and LED) to the PC brands. I find that they have better saturation and contrast than that of the PCs. I've had everything from the early NECs to the Mac Studio CRTs and now the Mac Cinema Display. My favorite was the Studio CRT. It had great depth.

In the end, it all comes down to color management for me. I prefer a monitor that I can calibrate easily to my output. I think that's the key. If you can look at your print and go back to your monitor, make a few tweeks and have it come out the way you expect, that's a good system.

Jonathan

 

[tetrisattack]

Most viewing online use PCs, yet received wisdom is that Macs are 'better' for design/photography work - often including web work... that is crazy!

The trouble of equalizing the input, editing, and output phases is never going to go away.

What you want to do is get it looking good and then, when you're ready to publish, make alterations to your image to match the target platform, i.e. the PC.

Also, if you think that's a headache, get a load of this. Remember PNG? Support for up to 16 bits per channel. Transparency. Lossless compression, better than gif. And, to alleviate the gamma dilemma, built-in gamma correction! Photographers, imaging professionals, and web designers alike should have adopted this format years ago, except for a number of crappy reasons, one of which is that it's impossible to determine what the real gamma of your display is.

There's an account of this here, aptly titled "The sad story of PNG gamma correction":
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/png-gamma/

The problems faced by PNG highlights the difficulty of color management in general.

So, don't throw out your mac just yet, just be aware of the difference in display technology. 🙂

 

[tetrisattack]

Oh, and, this is another thought. An interesting comment once made by Scott Eaton on photo.net (whose posts I often find sort of inflammatory, but that's beside the point). He pointed out that monitor calibration is further complicated by the fact that monitors are transmitting light, as a transparency would, while prints are reflecting light.

Therefore, no matter how good your method of calibration, you'll never get your monitor looking just like your prints, unless you somehow reduce the brightness and dynamic range to that of your output medium, e.g. an inkjet or print. Color matching is easy, but luminance matching is difficult.

 

[ffttklackdedeng]

Hmm, according to this site my TFT iMac (G5) has a gamma of 2.0 (going a few steps back makes it easier to guess). Anyone likes to check his setting?

 

[wyk_penguin]

This is probably stupid.

Why can't we upload a nice colour profile here and let everyone use it so all our monitors will look the same (lighting conditions of the workplace excluded)?

 

[Goodyear]

So, don't throw out your mac just yet, just be aware of the difference in display technology. 🙂

Wasn't planning to - it's too nice 😀

 

[ed1k]

Why can't we upload a nice colour profile here and let everyone use it so all our monitors will look the same

It doesn't work that way. First, your monitor has to be calibrated, it includes adjusting of hardware settings like brightness and contrast. Or put it differently, every monitor has individual colour profile and must be calibrated individually. Then you can take someone's else profile and see how your image will look at his/her monitor (or it could be printer profile from shop where you print your pictures, so you can guess tonality of prints you get). I mean you can see slightly differences in colours, but if brightness and/or contrast of your buddy's monitor is off, he or she will be disappointed by your picture despite the fact you used his/her profile to fine tune colours. Also he or she will be disappointed if everuthing is OK with brightness and contrast of monitor, but it's not calibrated and colours are significantly off.

PC world oriented primarily on business apps and consumers or gamers. They like contrasty and oversaturated images. Gamma of my CRT display at home is significantly lower than gamma of CRT display in office; and my LCD (S-IPS) display has even lower gamma. So, my pics looks different on every monitor, but some of them looked good only on one monitor. These pics are those that I edited on my LCD display when it was completely off (it came completely off out of computer store). Now, after ajusting my LCD, I have to re-do all those pics, because none of my monitors show them as I meant.

There are lot of info on net about monitor calibration. Cheapest way I found:
1) Change colour temperature from 9300K or above (default for office equipment) to 6500K;
2) Adjust brightness and contrast according instructions here
http://www.photofriday.com/calibrate.php

That's all. This is interesting page to check gamma
http://www.jasc.com/support/kb/articles/monitor.asp

For LCD monitor, you can check active matrix technology used at
http://www.flatpanels.dk/panels.php

If your TFT monitor isn't (S-)IPS type, don't use it for photo editing. That's most useful database about LCD monitors I ever found on net. You can enter IPS in search field and get all monitor models you may consider to buy, if you're looking for upgrade.

Eduard.