Color Accuracy

[Vudoo]

I am about to buy my first Mac and I am deciding between the late 08 entry level glossy MacBook Pro or the early 08 mid-level matte MacBook Pro.

It's going to be used for photo editing with Aperture and CS so my main concern is color accuracy. I already have an eye-one. With that said, can anyone confirm if the new glossy screen is completely color accurate? I read somewhere that glossy cannot display as many colors at matte.

 

[Fast Shadow]

If color accuracy matters that much you should use an external display, regardless of having a matte or glossy display on your laptop. The dithering used on the laptop displays will factor in, it's nearly impossible to consistently replicate the same viewing angle and lighting conditions when mobile, etc.

 

[Vudoo]

I have an external CRT that I plan to connect and calibrate the MacBook Pro to...unfortunately it's a little heavy to carry it around with a laptop.

So when I'm away from home photographing, it would be nice to do some editing instead of having to wait until I get home to edit the RAW files. And I prefer to edit once, instead of twice.

 

[Jethryn Freyman]

All Apple laptops at the moment use a dithered 18 bit TN (twisted nematic) display which can only produce 262000 colours.

You'd really want an external 24 bit display (16.7 million colours) to do proper editing.

 

[allanibanez]

From what I've seen the new MBP has better colour accuracy with regard to white balance. The older MBP seemed to have either a blue or yellow tint depending on nothing more than luck. That said, a laptop isn't where you want to do image editing, but feel safe in the fact that the new MBP is the better option, but be aware that colour saturation will look stronger and blacks blacker.

 

[bcaslis]

I am about to buy my first Mac and I am deciding between the late 08 entry level glossy MacBook Pro or the early 08 mid-level matte MacBook Pro.

It's going to be used for photo editing with Aperture and CS so my main concern is color accuracy. I already have an eye-one. With that said, can anyone confirm if the new glossy screen is completely color accurate? I read somewhere that glossy cannot display as many colors at matte.

I've never seen any display either laptop or desktop that's "completely" accurate. The new MBP is very good for a laptop, but it's not completely accurate. If you are doing this for a hobby, it's certainly good enough. If you are doing this for money, you can use it for initial changes but you will need a more color accurate external monitor for final editing.

FYI, I've calibrated mine with Coloreyes DisplayPro and the eye-one hardware and I'm very pleased with the results.

 

[alphaod]

All Apple laptops at the moment use a dithered 18 bit TN (twisted nematic) display which can only produce 262000 colours.

You mean 6-bit right?

 

[Timur]

Sorry for the double posts, but with so many thread starting the same discussion I can hardly write new stories everytime.

Unless you buy an HP 8730w with DreamColor screen most if not all laptop screens are pieces of sh*t compared to proper color-accurate desktop screens. You can have worse vs. worst, but you hardly get good. Does anyone here expect the new screen to be at least 8-bit at all?

Any situation where enviromental light is reflected by the panel will affects it's color reproduction unless you can compensate with brightness or finding a better position. Matte sometimes causes you not to do the latter when you better should. Because of matte screens diffusion spreading reflected light over a larger area these screens are even more affected. Albeit but on the other hand they are affected more evenly.

Apart from that matte screens always have less accurate colors because of their diffusing character also applying to the light emitted from the screen itself. You can easily see color twinkling (frequency modulation) happening when looking at large unicolor areas like the grey/light blue of this forum on many matte screens unless they are "semi"-matte/glossy and thus find a good balance in between.

Many people working in Print prefere sand-paper surface of matte panels for its closer resemblance of printed paper (aka its "disadvantages" like lack of contrast and intensity). But if you are working for Internet or video applications you really want to use glossy. Not only because of the higher accuracy, but also because your target customers will mostly use glossy themselves.

We had a detailed discussion about all that in this thread:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/581350/

Ask yourself which screen leaves more color-accurate screen estate (area) when reflecting a pointed light-source (indoor light)?

Which screen let's you see more of the actual screen image instead of the panel surface when reflecting a strong diffuse light-source (outside daylight)?

(the dust simulated the rough surface of a matte screen vs. the smooth surface of a glass screen)

One interesting question I have read here is wether the glass' thickness, or better to say diffraction characteristics, will allow proper calibration. Hopefully someone publishes callibration results anytime soon.

 

[tyler9xp]

You mean 6-bit right?

You can't distinguish between 262,000 colors with 6 bits. Using 18 bits allows for 262,143 colors (convert 111111111111111111 in binary to decimal for proof).

Whether Jethryn Freyman is right or not I don't know, but a 6-bit display would only allow you 64 colors.

 

[Timur]

You can't distinguish between 262,000 colors with 6 bits. Using 18 bits allows for 262,143 colors (convert 111111111111111111 in binary to decimal for proof).

Whether Jethryn Freyman is right or not I don't know, but a 6-bit display would only allow you 64 colors.

It's 6-bit "per color channel" (RGB).

 

[tyler9xp]

It's 6-bit "per color channel" (RGB).

There we go. 6-bit per color channel * 3 channels = 18 bits total. Makes sense. Thanks.